AMA Recap: StrongNode
Hello $START-ers! Here you can catch up with the AMA with the team behind StrongNode, the next generation of edge networking leveraging blockchain.
We got through a lot of information, but if you want more they invite you to visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and join their Telegram community!
The highly-anticipated QuickStart IDO on Polygon (MATIC) is fast approaching. Find out how to get involved here.
Let’s get into the AMA…
Moon Trips
Let’s welcome StrongNode’s CEO, Daniel to the Starter community @StrongNode_CEO
Daniel Saito
Hi Everyone.
Moon Trips
There he is, the man of the hour!
Moon Trips
How are you doing today?
Daniel Saito
Doing well thank you. You are my 6th AMA actually.
Moon Trips
WOW!!!
I told you guys he was busy!
Daniel Saito
Our follower growth just doubled from the last 20 days.
Moon Trips
That’s amazing!! Let’s keep it going strong.
There has been a lot of hype about StrongNode in our community. Let’s give the people what they want shall we?! 🥳
Daniel Saito
Sure, let's get the show on the road.
Moon Trips
Let’s start by introducing yourself to the Starter community.
Here are some links to check out: http://strongnode.io https://twitter.com/strongnodeedge
Brandon S
Hello everyone, Brandon, VP of Community Operations on hand :)
Daniel Saito
hey Brandon
Moon Trips
Hello and welcome Brandon! Nice to have you here as well :)
Brandon S
Thanks for having me!
Daniel Saito
Hi, my name is Daniel Saito. I was first introduced to the personal computer at the early age of 8, I grew up always curious & always pushed the limits on what you can do on your PC. I ran a very popular BBS in the local Los Angeles county area and had multiple computers hooked up to modems and phone lines. At the most, I had 4 lines coming into the house which were then split to 8 modem pool dial-up BBS service in LA county. I was always curious about how many people I could connect to at any given point in time. Then I barely graduated high school, but university classes were a bore and I spent most of my time in computer labs and interning at internet startups.
I eventually found my way to Japan and started one of the first Internet Service Providers in Japan. We started from the apartment and clustered Sun Classics on top of each other, if we ran out of room we rented the next room over until we took up the whole building with computers. Those were fun times, in the middle of Shibuya at the early age of 21.
We sold the ISP to PSINet for $50M and took some time off. Only for the telecom bubble to burst and for me to go back to work. I was able to work for Rupert Murdoch out of his Hong Kong offices and launched two satellites into stationary orbit to start a satellite broadcasting service called JskyB (sister of BskyB out of the UK). After successfully launching the broadcast network, we acquired PerfecTV and became SkyPerfecTV! (All those satellite dishes on homes/apartments are my service).
I went back to the states to pursue other projects and went to San Francisco and designed my second ISP with SEGA. We built a console from scratch, made a false promise to Microsoft to help finance an extra 4MB of ram under the guise that we could install Internet Explorer in that memory footprint, as adding more memory would cost SEGA margins per unit sold. We designed it with a modem and ethernet adapter, with the idea to make the first-ever low latency gaming network exclusive to consoles. That ended up being my second ISP, but for the USA / EU markets. At the same time, I was able to work with the SONIC team to develop the first network-based game on a console, called Chu Chu Rocket. This was the first of its kind, you can youtube it the gameplay was mad…
But I digress, eventually I left SEGA after making the decision to sunset the console and pursue other interests. I landed in OpenTV where I got to play in embedded programming and injecting java code at the boot loader level and execute interactive tv applications. I helped work on numerous projects for interactive television, some also won Emmy awards for technical achievements. Afterwards, I ended up in the research phase and joined France Telecom to help work on the MPEG4 specification and author with other license stakeholders. As we released MPEG4 to the world, it became the mainstay of what drives video on the Internet.
I was called back to Japan to research for the Japanese as they were willing to pay top dollar for a security encryption researcher. I applied for the position and ended up authoring the framework of trusted mobile computing and what we call the “security enclave” in modern-day 4G and 5G phones. As I wanted to pursue further ventures I ended up running a MySQL community out of the extra room of my apartment. Which eventually turned into the Asia HQ for MySQL. We grew MySQL in Asia from zero dollar business to a billion-dollar exit. Only for us to repeat this with MariaDB a few years later. Then I dabbled in cryptocurrencies, mined a lot of BTC, bought a lot of BTC and lost a lot of BTC… started working with ICOs in 2017 like OST, BLZ, WAX and others as a technical advisor. The culmination of life’s experience ended up here with you today.
Moon Trips
💥 boom
Brandon S
For my part, I am a 13 year veteran of the US Air Force, VP of Community Operations and General Manager of Original Gamer Life. I’m a full-stack developer, so Daniel’s experience with MySQL and MariaDB are just some of the reasons I’m so excited to be on this project. I think just about all of us in the developer world have come across MySQL at one point or another. I’m also an Air Force Wounded Warrior Mentor, so physical, mental, and financial wellness are very important to me as part of this project.
Moon Trips
Wow, very impressive! Thank you both for sharing all that. You guys were built for this.
Ok, now we’d love to hear a brief description of StrongNode. Tell us what it’s all about!
Daniel Saito
StrongNode is an Infrastructure-as-a-service technology company and innovation lab. We harness the power of latent and idle compute like the CPU/GPU cycles, network, and storage of the everyday common man/woman. In return, you get paid in StrongNode tokens [$SNE] when you lend your network and compute resources. StrongNode was the name picked out by our amazing marketing team.
The mission and vision of StrongNode? We are on a mission to power companies globally through the next generation of edge networking by uniquely harvesting a trifecta of idle compute resources and leveraging new blockchain technologies. We wanted to address the last mile, which is the EDGE and build a global edge network through access and monetization of idle resources.
Brandon S
StrongNode is an infrastructure-as-a-service ecosystem built on the EDGE where you, the users leverage your excess capacity (CPU/GPU, bandwidth, storage) as seeders for the network. We’re not your typical node validators; we go right to the edge with compute power, providing what amounts to a virtual supercomputer to crunch data for medical research, AI/ML, and of course my favourite… game servers.
Daniel Saito
see even our messaging is in parity...
Brandon S
Daniel has taught me well :)
Moon Trips
Ha yeah, you guys are on point. That sounds really cool and different from similar companies I’ve heard of with that “last mile” part.
And I’ve got plenty of devices on standby…I’m ready!! haha
Daniel Saito
How many do you have laying around in your immediate vicinity?
Moon Trips
4
Daniel Saito
Ok, how many of those are you using at the same time?
Moon Trips
2
Daniel Saito
The other two are just laying there probably charging on the dock and doing nothing, correct?
Moon Trips
You got it
Daniel Saito
With StrongNode you would just install a binary, register yourself as a user and pass kyc, there that's it, you are in. When that device is in that state (like charging), it will process the next CHUNK of BIG DATA that gets broadcasted to you. You process, return and get paid.
Moon Trips
Sounds super simple for the user, which is key
Brandon S
We’re looking to change the game and make accessibility a big priority to bring in non-crypto users into the crypto space.
Daniel Saito
Yeah, we wanted something that was simple that can get people onboarded onto crypto...
Moon Trips
That’s really smart.
It will open this up to so many more people
Brandon S
I visited my family recently and got so many questions about the point of crypto because a lot of them don’t understand it. StrongNode provides a lot of the utility and the “so what” behind it.
Daniel Saito
From a StrongNode perspective, gaming is a segment that interests us mainly from a GPU perspective, since the user footprint has specialized GPU modifications to their gaming rigs, hence tapping into the power of GPU farming.
Brandon S
Especially with games having FPS locking too. So many cycles we could be using.
Moon Trips
I love it, huge potential here.
Tell us more about the rest of your team members and their backgrounds. Surely there are more than 2 of you managing this massive project.
Daniel Saito
This increases our footprint as a service and adds functionality in tapping into GPU resources which will open up AI/ML markets as Brandon previously mentioned.
Brandon S
The team has been incredible to work with already. Daniel and much of the team have been working together on a lot of massive projects for the past 20+ years in some capacity or another.
Moon Trips
That’s always a good sign. How many team members do you have now?
Brandon S
I believe we’re up to 26 between C-suite, engineering, marketing, operations, and back-office support
Moon Trips
Wow, that’s pretty big
Brandon S
It has been amazing as an indie developer myself to witness the dev team working together. I look forward to Dev meetings every week.
Moon Trips
That’s really great.
Daniel Saito
The StrongNode core executive team consists of 12 (+13 back office) equally passionate and dedicated people with years of expertise working with some of the biggest names in various industries, with dozens more members working day in and day out that make up the rest of the StrongNode team.
With more than 20 years of diverse experience working with global companies, I lead the StrongNode team as Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder. My former role as Managing Director for MySQL K.K. played a pivotal role in the growth of MySQL’s open-source database solution and its $1B exit to Sun Microsystems in 2008.
My CTO is Colin Charles who I have had the pleasure of working with over the past decade. He was an early employee of RedHat Linux and took it public. We think we know a thing or two when it comes to open source and now, we have token economics on our side to help innovate.
Alongside me is Zivago Lee, my grade school friend of 35+ years who oversaw ticketing infrastructure for the Beijing Olympics and operates all fleet management at FORD Motors, he oversees network and infrastructure, and finally Gil Bashan who heads our product, he comes from Adobe and has decades of product management experience.
Carmen Campo is the team’s Chief Marketing Officer. She has been the Director for Corporate Communications at LDJ Capital and oversees Media Operations for The Soho Loft Media Group for more than 10 years, working with Bloomberg, Forbes, WSJ, Entrepreneur, HuffPost and VentureBeat to name a few. She previously worked for global brands Gap Inc and Intertek. Lionel Iruk serves as the Chief Legal Officer. With over 12 years of experience, his legal practise focuses on international business compliance, corporate tax, fintech laws, and international wealth management.
Zivago Lee is VP of Technical Operations, with over 20 years of experience in systems engineering and node network operations. He worked for SoftAware Network Inc., Zynga, and currently works for SPIN Scooters, a Ford subsidiary. Evan Kubes is the team’s VP of Esports Management. He is the President of Rumble Gaming and co-founder of MKM Group, a law firm dedicated to esports and content creators.
Completing the core team, Retired US Air Force Major Brandon Sivret is the VP for Community Operations. He is the co-founder of Silver Sun Systems and an executive officer for military gamers. We have recent hires that have been the former EVP at Electronic Arts who will oversee Marketing activities and a CFO who is a Harvard / Wharton Grad who worked as an auditor for a leading fortune 500 firm. So, I built an ALLSTAR team of technologists, marketers and finance operatives.
Brandon S
I really can’t express enough how much I love working with this team. They’ve helped me swap out my uniform for a business suit and I couldn’t be happier.
Moon Trips
Wow, it’s nice to see a packed, experienced team. Definitely seems like this team is capable of getting the job done.
Daniel Saito
It’s pretty cool, I have been honoured to be working with a great team that believes in the same vision of what we are trying to accomplish.
Moon Trips
Now we see why you have such a massive plan of attack — you have the crew to make it happen 💪
What milestones have you achieved so far and what’s ahead in the pipeline for StrongNode?
Daniel Saito
Well, we are constantly hiring, so if you are interested in working with us feel free to drop Brandon a DM and let's see if you’ve got what it takes!
Moon Trips
I’m sure some folks from the community would be interested.
Daniel Saito
I would say that there are a lot of milestones to celebrate within StrongNode, I think first and foremost — attracting the talent behind such an endeavour. Like all my previous pursuits, it was hand-choosing team members and have them all execute one goal… Building a working business around it and have the employees reap the rewards. That seems to be a recipe for success. As for other milestones, creating a POC and starting on MVP was a great milestone internally in the early stages. Most recently would be closing our financing round and being oversubscribed, saying no to money sucks.
Moon Trips
Haha yeah, but that’s amazing success at the same time!
Brandon S
I’m really excited for StrongNodeID, which will shake things up for KYC and introduce our SSO, revealing the true power behind our ecosystem.
Daniel Saito
The creation of the innovation lab was a genius model for our plan to get scaled out where we will incubate future projects with great leaders/entrepreneurs behind each team, as they will use the StrongNode infrastructure in a forced adoption model and help us grow.
Brandon S
The social impact behind the innovation lab is what really excites me. Tackling social issues while building the resources necessary for true change is a huge win.
Moon Trips
I also love the social impact focus that you have lined up. And that you’re solving real-world problems with responsible practices.
Daniel Saito
Well, I think it leads up to a new narrative, if you are socially responsible you should be compensated.
Moon Trips
A necessary narrative even.
Daniel Saito
Ringing in a new proposal for UBI (universal base income) Strongnode style.
Moon Trips
I imagine you must not sleep much with everything you have accomplished so far along with the ambitious roadmap ahead 😅😂
Daniel Saito
But why we are here today is not only for your crypto to participate in our IDO (for those of you that are going to participate, 🙏) but also to start an idea in your mind that Crypto also grows up. It becomes more structured where the biggest community of users/developers/financiers can get together and start new initiatives like GREEN MINING as Computing for a Purpose.
Brandon S
We’re really all about building a community of communities with lots of other projects to come via our innovation lab built around the same, shared philosophy.
Moon Trips
That’s when a real difference can be made
Daniel Saito
Times have dramatically changed and life as we know it won’t come back as if it was 1999.
So we made StrongNode, made with ❤️ for the NEW normal.
Brandon S
And why I’m thrilled about Original Gamer Life. I remember experiencing true community in MMOs like Everquest and Ultima Online before toxicity felt like the norm.
So we’re going to do that with OGLife and build communities based around positive shared experiences
Moon Trips
The better normal :)
Daniel Saito
I believe the social awareness mantra for OGLife is mental health and suicide prevention.
Moon Trips
Gaming is huge right now anyway, but with the positive angle you’re bringing to the space, I think it’s really interesting and people will be very receptive.
So important… This all sounds really brilliant 😎
Brandon S
It’s very personal to me. I’ve lost friends in combat and unfortunately outside of it to suicide, so I’m on a mission with OGLife to raise awareness of how gaming can help.
And of course, StrongNode helps with financial wellness so it can bring ease of mind to individuals struggling with those issues as well.
Daniel Saito
It’s too early to talk about OGLife as this is about StrongNode. OGLife will add value by adding gaming servers at the edge so we can remake low latency gaming with tokenomics, reliving the arcade and LAN party experience.
Moon Trips
Great OGL teasers, we’ll be excited to learn more. Yes, let’s come back to that at a later date.
Can you explain StrongNode’s tokenomics and how $SNE will be utilized in your ecosystem? Do you have a tokenomics onepager to share?
Daniel Saito
Yeah Brandon please share (my mouse ran out of batteries)
Brandon S
Moon Trips
Seems like nice, clear tokenomics.
That’s what we like to see! 👀
Daniel Saito
Indeed.
Moon Trips
So all of the incubation projects will utilize $SNE within their own ecosystems?
Brandon S
Yes, each of the projects will act as user adoption/acquisition to run the StrongNode technology rewarding you with $SNE, but will also have their own tokenomics and economies.
Moon Trips
Got it
So who are some of your competitors and how is StrongNode different / better than the competition?
Brandon S
I love answering this question because StrongNode is doing things differently and aiming to shake up the crypto space with our StrongNodeID for KYC and SSO, long term vision for the project, and the green computing that Daniel mentioned earlier.
Some of our competitors focus on the NODE aspect, but we do it to bring the power of the NODE to the wider world instead of just focusing on acting as node validators.
We also have the innovation lab aspect so you will keep seeing new projects come out directly tied into our ecosystem. It isn’t just a one and done effort. We will continue releasing new projects that are value-added to our overall vision and share in our mission.
Moon Trips
That’s pretty badass.
StrongNode truly goes to the edge of innovation
Brandon S
As edge as anyone can get, right to your living room and on your terms.
Moon Trips
This will definitely change the game
Why did you choose Starter as your primary launchpad?
Brandon S
I was browsing through the channel earlier, so this question is very relevant to where our minds are at right now in terms of upping the crypto game. I saw other projects that are launching, coming up soon and what is planned for the future and feel that we’re in really great company here. A big part of it is because of the community that has been built up in this space. One of the biggest reasons though is because Starter is one of the first truly decentralized cross-chain launchpads. We have a great partnership with the amazing team at Starter and are very excited for our IDO and future endeavours.
Moon Trips
Yeah, the Starter team and community are pretty awesome, aren’t they?! 😂😅
Brandon S
Can confirm!
Moon Trips
And what made you decide to launch on Polygon?
Brandon S
For Polygon, the advantages are faster transaction speeds and lower cost than Ethereum. We also have some great partners and other potential integrations and pairs we can leverage in the future. Staking Matic is also an incentive for users to earn. But, the most important thing to note is that we’re working to become blockchain agnostic so Polygon is a great home base. We will build on Ethereum and others, but we decided to start here. We also have the advantage that Starter is on Polygon, so that’s a big bonus for us.
Of course, we have to mention the benefit of working with QuickSwap. They have been amazing as well, and that only sweetens the deal further.
Moon Trips
Yes, they are certainly both really great to work with!
We’ve passed the 2-hour mark so let’s open it up to questions, sound good?
You ready for them?
Brandon S
💯
Moon Trips
Let’s do this!
The chat is unmuted and you guys can ask away!
Deepak
As I saw on the website StrongNode will operate in a B2B and B2C business model. Could you share with us, what StrongNode products are suitable for B2B and which StrongNode products are suitable for B2C? as individual customers why do we need a StrongNode?
Brandon S
The entire ecosystem creates its own economies, which will lead to long term use of our token. Enterprise Nodes, which are B2B can offer up their excess resources to earn while they may also have large computing needs which then require them to spend those tokens to utilize our network. The same circular economy goes for our B2C users, which we call Node Seeders, reminiscent of torrents with seeders and downloaders for sharing content. If you seed for us you earn tokens and you may want to access our services to host game servers, stream content, or even share content so you will have things for which you can spend these same tokens. Unlike others who want you to rent a node or lease it from someone else, you are the node provider and it can be as simple as playing a game running our technology or accessing our standalone application. Again, we’re not crypto node validators, we are direct access nodes where you become the node and provide that compute service to our network. The same opportunities that B2C or even C2B, if you think about the relationship, offers are available to everyone in a multi-directional economy.
KAL-EL Cryptonian
What is your strategy for building a strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to develop globally?
Brandon S
We’re already leveraging our strategic partnerships to identify influencers and communities to cross-promote and work with on current and future projects. Since we’re more than just a single project, we have other IDOs and launches coming up where we will leverage their communities as a user acquisition strategy to grow all of our communities together. Community is one of the most important things for us and we’re already building local and regional communities in addition to the global StrongNode channels. We have channels for Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Japan with more coming up soon. We’re always looking for more partners to get involved with assisting us to grow, so please come on by the StrongNode Telegram and we’ll get you hooked up with our team.
Moon Trips
Ok, that wraps up our AMA session for now! Thank you all for the questions. @StrategyBro & @StrongNode_CEO thanks so much for coming in and sharing more about StrongNode with our community.
Brandon S
Absolutely, thank you for having us. It has been a true pleasure to share more about the project and we welcome everyone to stop by our Telegram and continue asking questions.
StrongNode is doing something so different so it might be difficult to grasp at first. A lot of people expect crypto to be complicated, but we’re shaking up that idea, so the more we can help you understand how and why we’re on the path we’re on the better.
Moon Trips
A great shakeup indeed!
StrongNode
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