Technical AMA: Pre-Launch

Resistance developers answer community questions

With the recent announcement of our pre-mainnet launch, we wanted to give the community an opportunity to ask our developers tech-focused questions.

So, on May 21st we launched our Discord AMA, which resulted in a great turnout with countless observations, concerns, and praises addressed to our development team. Below is a transcript of that AMA broken down into categories. Enjoy!

Privacy

Why did Resistance choose ZCash technology over Monero or another privacy-focused protocol?
Zcash technology fit together nicely with our project and we felt it was something we could improve. We are also on close terms with Monero and are working with them to integrate Kovri into Resistance. We are also donating part of the exchange fees to helping Monero. We want the privacy community to grow together, not be segmented into rival groups.

Why did you choose TOR over Kovri?
We are working with the Monero team to improve Kovri and integrate it with Resistance. TOR is much more mature, so that’s why we started with it.

Can we expect you to switch over to ZK-STARKs for quantum-proof security?
We’re targeting CPU mining, so our PoW is initially GPU-unfriendly (meaning that mining on any graphics card should not be cost-effective) and we plan on ensuring that this remains the case.

Development Progress

How is development going with mainnet?
In terms of the status of our technology, our core tree source code for a Resistance node and our Testnet are very close to being released along with mainnet. However, while this is being delayed as we work on other aspects of Resistance, we continue to make enhancements to the core tree as well.

Will the source code be released when Resistance shifts to mainnet?
We are planning to release the source code for each portion of the project as we release that piece. So source code release will be followed after mainnet launch, once mainnet is running stable.

Features

Will Resistance offer customer support?
We do plan to have community support! That’s why we have dedicated 10% of funds exactly for this purpose. Initially, our team would act as support agents but in the future we will hire support agents from our community as well as dedicated staff utilizing our development fund.

Will you integrate TradingView charts into the ResDEX interface?
We are currently planning a major overhaul to our trading interface which will give detailed information and charts to advanced traders. The development work for these improvements has already started.

Will Resistance have a mobile application in the future?
We don’t currently have a mobile application in our roadmap. Many privacy and anonymity related features don’t work well on mobile.

Are there plans for ResDEX to offer Trezor support?
Our decentralized exchange currently supports Ledger, thus we have no short-term plans to offer Trezor support. However, it is definitely something that we will consider in the future!

Core Technology

Is the team worried about forks that attempt to remove the utility of the Resistance coin (RES)?
The team is worried about copycats forking Resistance prematurely, which is a reason why we’re not yet releasing our source code and access to our Testnet. Forks would not “remove Resistance”, but they could potentially affect the “value proposition” in one way (via added competition) or the other (advertise us as authoritative upstream, as we see happen with Bitcoin). However, Resistance is in fact designed in a way where existence of forks would not negate its network security.

Is the team concerned with blockchain bloat?
Potential blockchain bloat is a concern for us just like it is for other projects in this space. If it does become a problem we’ll likely approach it in the same way as some of the others. That would involve pruning and/or integrating lightweight nodes (Electrum-like). There might be other technologies and approaches available by the time this does become a problem, so we’d consider what’s current and choose from there.

What underlying protocol does the P2P order book network use?
It is a relay-node based protocol. A client communicates with relay node(s) to make or take an order. The relay node can communicate with upper-layer relay node(s) as well. This effectively constructs an n-tier relay-node based network. Every relay node has responsibility to cast its order book to child relay nodes.

Will Proof of Work and Proof of Research be implemented with RES token as soon as mainnet launches?
Yes, that’s correct. We are planning to launch PoR and PoW with final RES coin along with mainnet launch.

Does the exchange shard the order book to enhance scalability?
The order book and order matching are done through a decentralized network made up of two types of nodes — full relay and non-relay nodes. Full relay nodes are automatically run by masternodes, but can be run by anyone. Since masternode owners are rewarded for running full relay nodes, they are incentivized to do so. Full relay are the backbone of the P2P network and help connect various segments of non-relay nodes together.

Once orders are matched, the trading communication protocol is transmitted directly between the two peers performing the trade and those peers are no longer going through the full relay nodes during the trade itself.

The Resistance blockchain has similar speeds to Zcash, is that a bottleneck?
We’ve already moved from Zcash’s 2.5 minute to our 1 minute block interval while keeping maximum block size the same, so in those terms we’re faster. Also, Zcash is not bumping into their block size nor transaction processing speeds so far. Thus, we expect these speeds will be sufficient, but we recognize that predictions for a potentially explosive technology are hard.

Will you be looking to integrate payment hubs or state channels to increase speed and scalability?
We are always researching and trying to embrace new technologies that will improve our project. Part of our goal is to have the community ultimately integrate these improvements.

ResDEX

Is Resistance concerned for order book delays giving node-runners an advantage?
Using a full-relay node does give you a slight advantage as far as being able to see changes in the order book slightly sooner. However, this slight advantage isn’t enough to really matter. The network also has a reputation mechanism that helps ensure malicious activity isn’t possible.

For non-trivial scenarios, what is the procedure for atomic swaps?
We only support a single swap at a time, which means you can’t perform the next swap before the last swap is finished or timed out. The timeout value is an option selected by the user, but is set to 30 seconds by default. Also, an atomic swap process is hitting single order/price since it does not take multiple orders at a time.

Can the exchange focus server power on specific assets in order to reduce network load?
Such an option is not possible on our decentralized exchange. However, you can reduce network load by using electrum servers instead of running in native mode. Additionally, you can disable assets so that you avoid unnecessary network load.

Can the choice of native or electrum be individually specified by trading pair?
Yes, this is done on a per coin basis. You could have Bitcoin natively connected (to a blockchain running locally), and another coin connected to electrum. It’s fully customizable!

MINING & RESPOOL

By making mining accessible to anyone with a computer, are you not reducing the coins value?
Increasing the number of miners in our system will not decrease the value of our coin. The supply curve is not dependent on hashrate, nor the total count of active miners. In fact, increasing miner count will increase the hashrate, which increases our network security and implies that more people are utilizing Resistance. With additional use we will then see an increase in overall value.

Will rewards from mining RES tokens be dependent on the quality of your CPU?
Just like with other projects in this space, the mining returns will depend on the hashrate, which in the case of RES will vary by CPU and RAM configuration.

There are various references made to a ‘6.5% trans mining’ figure. Do you have any additional information about how this relates to the Resistance platform?
More details about trans fee mining will come after we launch our mainnet, so stay tuned!

What are the plans to expand Respool? Will it eventually live on ResDEX?
For PoR, we do plan on adjusting the whitelist of BOINC projects. In doing so, we’ll consider the safety of allowing a certain project. We might also consider how exactly such PoR “mining” competes with our usual PoW mining — for example, we might reduce the overlap in order to allow more kinds of hardware to be used, thereby keeping our PoW hashrate higher. However, we do not expect to integrate Respool directly with ResDEX — these are different parts of our project, operating on different timeframes.

Governance

Who do you envision operating nodes? Is it more for corporations, traders, or developers?
Our goal is to target the mainstream so that anyone can easily use our exchange and reap the benefits that our platform offers without needing to understand the technical aspects of how privacy, anonymity, and decentralized trading works. We also want to provide the necessary functionality to advanced traders and corporations, but in a way that is easy for them to use as well.

Bitcoin does not have a conventional front-facing organization. Will Resistance be similar? How will that work with decision making and in particular how might that work if there is a need to liaise with authorities?
We are planning on releasing Resistance to the community. It will be similar to Bitcoin in the sense that we are planning to have a Resistance Foundation. We have been working on extensive governance documentation outlining this process and will share that with the community as soon as it is completed.

How long until Resistance becomes a decentralized autonomous organization?
This will depend on how long it takes Resistance to be embraced by the community. We need a strong community to hand the project off to, and the more quickly and actively the community is engaged, the more quickly we can hand off the project.

How will listings be determined? Will it be centralized like IDEX or have a Fork.Delta like decentralized aspect to it where you can trade contracts?
Right now our team controls the code base, and we decide what to list. In the future when we decentralize the ownership, it will be done by the community through masternode voting.

What about non ERC20 coins? How will listings for those be integrated?
Most coins that support atomic swaps and can be added. For those that don’t support atomic swaps, they can be added at a later period when they do integrate atomic swaps.

How will amount of confirmations needed for deposits be determined? Is there an oracle for coins where double spend attacks happen often?
We can touch upon this question at a later period. The answer may be clarified for you if you read the official atomic swap protocol documentation.

Fees, Liquidity, and Market Makers

What are USD/GBP/Credit Cards Fees (on top of underlying mechanism)?
We use Simplex and our fees are 7.5% (third-party).

How does Huobi provide liquidity? Do they use their market makers on ResDEX?
We will be discussing the Huobi partnership in more detail at a later period.

Will base pairs be RES & BTC? What Stable Coins are available upon launch?
Yes, RES/BTC will be a base pair. Stable coins that support atomic swaps would be available along with the ones that are on Huobi since they provide liquidity.

How many assets/pairs will you be rolling out when mainnet goes live?
We will start by offering coins that we have liquidity support for. Eventually, masternode voting will determine what coins are listed. More quantitative figured will be shared as we move to exchange launch.

Have you considered fee discounts for holding coins?
By staking Resistance coins in a masternode and providing those services to the network, you receive a reward.

What about dividend mechanics from trading fees? Will it be a transfer system or something more similar to BNB burns?
Although we discussed dividends in the early days of our project, for legal reasons we are not pursuing this angle.

APIs and User Interface

Are you planning to stabilize and publish APIs for Market Makers and GUI integrations?
Yes, we are going to be open sourcing this once we finish releasing the platform. All parts of the platform (including the blockchain core and ResDEX) are built around API interfaces that allow users to expand on the platform.

What is the process of adding an asset to your TradingView?
To add an asset to your TradingView, you simply select the coin from the list and choose if you’d like to use electrum or native mode. Furthermore, to add new assets to the platform they must be approved by the Resistance team (ultimately the Resistance community). Most coins can be added to the platform within minutes.

Ecosystem

Is Monero your favorite privacy project in the space?
We don’t have favorites! We like a lot of privacy projects. We do happen to have a working relationship with Monero though, which is why you see additional material.