Vali November 2018 Update
As November draws to a close, RED CTO and SWAZM CEO, Vali Mălinoiu, stopped by to provide some valuable updates accompanied by an impromptu Q&A:
I want to share some updates with you.
We’re working continuously in order to release the next big version of the RED Platform. That means that we are in discussions with companies that manage the billing of energy in order to introduce bill deductions using crypto. We’re also in discussions with payment gateways in order to make the acquisition or the payments easier for everyone. We’re also working on the web version that will be released in the next release.
I can give you a glimpse of the feeling around the office:
Everybody is working nonstop :D. The good news is that next week we will also have the first batch of smart meters embedded into our platform, from real producers and consumers.
I know that everyone wants a release before 1st of December, and this is what we are working towards, but I want everybody to understand that we need to deliver something solid, and at the same time we are growing our team and trying to deliver a great product.
As you can see, we have new websites:
SWAZM swazm.com and RED: red-web.swazm.com
These are not yet finished; we have some other things to finish there but it’s something that I wanted to share with you guys.
RED community: What is the status of the exchange (trading/matching engine)? It is an interesting part, especially if it can be used for other projects :D
Vali: I am glad you asked, let me show you something:
These are custom hardware wallets that will hold the private keys of the contracts and can be read by only a set of the master nodes used to sign transactions.
RED community: Can smart meter data be smoothly registered on SWAZM yet?
Vali: We are fully ready for smart meter data and matching.
RED community: Any major issue with Swazm integration on RED?
Vali: We don’t have anything that can be called an issue with SWAZM integration. The thing is that, it’s a lot of functionality that needs to be designed/architectured/implemented/tested/deployed/fixed and so on.
RED community: Noticed that 2.5mil operations are 90% read… 10% write. What about 90% write… 10% read?
Vali: We have tested with 50/50% and 100% write some of them are between 700k to 1.1kk and 2kk even. We noticed that it depends on the filesystem when you write data. We need multiple types of storage in order to come up with something conclusive.
RED community: No issue on the write, correct?
Vali: No, the data is preserved and consistency achieved. This is what is taking us so long, it’s the bedrock that no matter what we do is still taking time.
RED community: You mean the consistency?
Vali: no, I mean the underlying layers — deployment procedure, deployment update, security, app development and integration, signing, and things like that. We need all these things for a transfer and we need all these things in order to record meter data in real-time.
RED community: I hope you have enough resources for such complicated jobs 👍
Vali: We are growing by the day. I have interviews day and night with the sole purpose to grow a great team that will fully deliver this platform. On the other hand, Armand is working towards growing the business with partnerships and new deals.
RED community: Have you thought about any possible solution for stakers (client)? Maybe some kind of PGP signed letter as proof of staking?
Vali: Yes, we have thought about something that will be “verifiable” for a generation event.
RED community: I have been hearing closed beta testing with RE internal customers for RED-P? Is it true?
Vali: We are going to use real customers/real production points for the meter integration.
RED community: So meaning right now… no closed beta testing with customer yet, right?
Vali: Not something that we can call a beta. We are calling it an alpha.
Due to the fact that the manufacturer of our meters had some issues, it delayed us too. Unfortunately (and fortunately) the meters are custom hardware/software made by RED.
RED community: What about the health risk posed to children by meters?
Vali: Our meters, and the way they work, won’t even tickle a fly.
RED community: What happened with iOS?
Vali: We have the app live on testflight; we want to push the new app on the AppleStore first because we have a new SDK that needs to replace the old one, and we didn’t see a point. Apple wanted to know how exactly the fiat/MWAT exchange will work; also we had some layout/description issues but we’ve taken care of those.
RED community: Most important question… will there be any release in December? An MVP at least?
Vali: A release in December will happen for sure, but I want to state that we will prefer to take our time than to deliver something faulty and unusable.
We’ve had chats with guys that do market making in the industry in order to see how a solid market making would look like.
RED community: Don’t want you to work through Christmas with a new bride as well. 😂
Vali: She’s very supportive of what I do and loves what RED is about and she has faith that’s for a good purpose.
Armand is working towards so many deals, and I am always caught at the office. I’ve seen feedback that people are not really satisfied with the interval of us doing updates but I want to assure you that we are doing everything that we can in order for this to be something really unique and struggling to make it into something really big. Tomorrow we have a meetup here in our office in Bucharest where we will speak about the technology behind RED, and why it is so important.
RED community: We are afraid customers might not be happy then run away due to RED-P’s further delay…
Vali: I don’t think that’s going to happen.
RED community: Vali, thanks a lot for jumping in the main chat with firm words and restoring the mood for the community here! 😄👍👍
Vali: It looks like Crypto Winter paid us a visit, all of us in the crypto community, but the best thing for us now is to stick together, I know that I am sticking with RED and SWAZM!
