Bridge Protocol March AMA
1.0 Bridge Protocol
- Q: How did you come up with your name?
A: Bridge felt like an appropriate name as we act as a side-chain (Bridge) for processing identities and access to micro-services within our marketplace. One of our top efforts is to achieve Cross BlockChain Standardization so we can truly build a bridge to any platform to allow for the leveraging of our services.
2. Q: What does Bridge Protocol look like 10 years from now?
A: We are a very ambitious but realistic team. Our identity management system has a very good chance to drive most of our lives. Companies from information management, HR, and tech are in search for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) solutions and identity security. Instead of going backwards and encrypting more, Bridge brings the opposite of that with better security.
3. Q: When can we expect announcements regarding exchange listings? Have you applied to any major exchanges yet and heard back?
A: We cannot comment on exchange listings under legal advice. As soon as we are able we will communicate relevant information to the community.
4. Q: Will Bridge be an industry standard protocol within the NEO blockchain?
A: We are using NEO along with their source code for larger processes. Initially our aim is to be the standard for every new NEO ICO and hope our community demands this safer solution.
5. Q: There are a number of similar projects. What is the comparison between them and Bridge Protocol?
A: The biggest separation is our largest marketplace and Tier Identities. Every other identity solution to my knowledge still makes the user hold sensitive information on their device. Our novel idea is to remove that aspect.
6. Q: Any plans to add Incentives for token holders?
A: We will be incentivizing the community as we grow. Our goal is to bring KYC and Bridge ID service to most consumers for free. We will achieve this by allowing business customers to absorb and offset cost. Legal agreements in our marketplace will be just a few of our many ways to monetize.
2.0 Business Strategy
- Q: Do you anticipate partnerships/endorsements with well-known entities?
A: We are already partnered and work closely with Clearify, which is a service which brings a high level of assurance to user transactions on the blockchain. We are also in talks with some well-known crypto projects for use of accredited investor status so United States citizens can safely and legally buy securities on their platform.
2. Q: Do you have any plans on creating additional advisors from industry leaders in your market space?
A: We will consider those who can bring value to our project. We are hiring now and looking for at least 1 more dedicated NEO-Python engineer to stay better abreast of any protocol changes.
3. Q: Do you believe your business model provides adequate flexibility to adapt to the potential upcoming regulations?
A: We are built with regulation in mind. We saw the need under ProjectICO for KYC and digital identities. Many ICO founders are scared to accept U.S based customers and crypto investment groups can’t invest in U.S. ICOs. Our premise will allow even decentralized exchanges to show regulators that they truly know their customer while using our blockchain solution to protect their more private information. Governments are only concerned that due diligence is being exercised and we are going to provide that assurance.
4. Q: Other companies are expanding into the areas of implementation within your business model such as tiered levels, KYC for ICOs, forms of Bring your own key. Do you see flexibility in adjusting implementation efforts or do you plan to implement the full road map before making such considerations?
A: KYC and Tier levels are just the beginning. We truly believe that our solution for legal agreements will change even some of the services you love now like LegalZoom. If you want to get a will, you need to fill out a LegalZoom questionnaire, wait for forms, then go to notary to sign. Bridge will digitalize those agreements and create a standard that will allow businesses to trust that signature. Our potential market opportunities are really exciting.
5. Q: Will you whitelist your platform to other business/KYC providers so they can meet the regulatory compliance within their own country?
A: Our blockchain can be utilized for small businesses to achieve cost savings as well as allowing more established businesses the ability to work with our engineering group to build a custom blockchain installed on their premise of choice.
6. Q: Do you plan to expand your implementation of KYC services outside of legal services and ICOs?
A: Absolutely, we are Business-to-business focused. Users will also be able to use their Bridge ID anywhere that accepts it. As we streamline our process, we believe that the consumers will demand this ease of use and security that it provides which will force our adoption even faster. Banks and any credit firm will heavily benefit from our Tier system. With regulations arising fast, adding a KYC process to an anonymous cryptocurrency will bring trust and creditability to the market.
7. Q: Elastos is about digital identity for content and IAM is for individuals. Is there any co-operation going on for future projects?
A: Both our teams have a great relationship and are committed to making their chain and NEO blockchain better together.
3.0 Marketing Strategy
- Q: How do you plan to get in front of the upcoming ICOs in the future?
A: Bridge will continue to bring professionalism and a viable solution. Our name is already well known and we have great connections within the NEO community. We will leverage our reputation to make sure we support the best upcoming ICOs.
2. Q: How and where do you plan to market yourself?
A: Right now, we are marketing through social channels and organic growth. We created in house tools for Linkedin automation to target and connect with other business owners as our solution is ready.
3. Q: Do market conditions affect Bridge’s business model?
A: We received enough support from our token sale to cover our expenses and we are covered from a liquid dollar standpoint to pay employees and run the business until revenue can begin. The SEC subpoenas of recent just reinforce what we have been preaching. The best businesses learn to work with governments to become successful.
4. Q: What is the marketing plan to increase the awareness of the Bridge Protocol project?
A: We aren’t going to create fake or overhyped partnerships before our product is fully scalable. It is nice to see others working together, but when a project is 1–2 years away from roadmap conception and they are partnering together then I am not sure what benefit that brings. We rather prove our worth and show our technology has real value besides speculation.
5. Q: Will BP eventually work with all global regulatory bodies regarding KYC and other regulatory compliance issues in this space?
A: Our focus right now is U.S. customers; as our marketplace grows, those with infrastructure for KYC in Europe will be on our target as well.
6. Q: With the current cracking down of ICOs on the Ethereum platform currently reflected, do you believe it’s going to be a problem conducting ICOs on NEO implemented bridge protocol? What is your opinion on NEO since you experienced difficulties during the ICO stage?
A: NEO has a lot of value and a business centric platform. Although there is much to be desired we are confident that in time and with a community of developers it can become great. How it operates is very unique and we will continue to bring new market fields to the main NEO blockchain to achieve a consistent and stable operating platform for businesses. The NEO community is very supportive and we believe most share our business mindset. The plan for NEO and Bridge will not be limited to just ICOs.
4.0 Technical Implementation
- Q: Do you plan to expand your encryption techniques to leverage Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) like others in the market such as VELIX and VALID?
A: We plan on using the Advance Encryption Standard (AES). Bridge eliminates a lot of the security risk because we aren’t holding sensitive information like Date Of Birth (DOB), passport number and driver license number. Once you are verified through our system you will be able to interact to the level of verification. We can keep our customers compliant without running the risk of compromising sensitive data. Adding capability such as ZKP increases processing power required to achieve the level of security and anonymity that we will be achieving with our implementation.
2. Q: Will users be verified solely on uploaded information or will there be a check against a larger trusted source? How you prevent ID fraud as driver licenses can be forged?
A: Our marketplace will have multiple KYC providers with the best technology and algorithms to check multiple facets of information to verify an identity. Bad actors will always be a risk, but we mitigate this by implementing increasingly stringent verification requirements for higher tier levels similar to a credit application.
3. Q: Will there ever be a yellow paper?
A: Our Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Andrew, will be releasing bi-monthly updates outlining technological status updates, progress reports and integrations achievements. Although most of the code we use is open-source, we plan to operate with proprietary code so only limited source code will be published.
4. Q: Do you already have your own private chain on which you can build onto in the future?
A: Yes, we are running our Private Net built on NEO source code. We were the first to answer to City of Zion (CoZ) call to support seed nodes and now also support a lot of the main NEO network.
