Mask Network July TownHall Recap

📆 Time: July 20th, 03:00 AM (GMT+0)

📍 Venue: Discord Stage channel (Click here to join)

🎬 See Recap here

❓Answer pre-collected questions

The Mask ecosystem is shifting from development from the official to integration works by community developers. Does this shift mean that Mask does not developing new features? Also, whether there are any ways to manage this new mode, such as the approval of new applications that want to be integrated into Mask Network, should it go through community review, and allow token holders to vote? Should we have a reward system for the integration? Also, in terms of marketing, how do we use the social aspect of Mask Network to attract users to use the newly-integrated features? Are there any marketing plans about that?

(Yisi) Mask Network is not shifting from official development to integrating community works. What Mask is trying to build, is a dapp market, which will be released in the Mask 2.0 as a core feature soon. The work Mask is currently doing, is to create showcases and demos of what could be done. In the future, Mask will shift focus to the building of the infrastructure. Applications running on top of the Mask Network will not be delivered by the Mask official team, but instead by the community members.

You said twitter and Facebook can’t ban your extension, can you tell us how’s technically it’s possible?

We get asked about this question a lot. Mask Network is part of the BlueSky ecosystem, which is funded by Jack Dorsey, who proposed the creation of a decentralized social media standard/protocol in December 2019. Mask joined this chat, and talked about the issues regarding the centralized social media protocols. We talked to many big names, include Tim Berners Lee, and we will post more progress in the future.

Check this article for the technical details about Mask Network.

What are some examples of applications that can be built on Mask Network? Is Mask more like a browser?

(Frank) That was more like a browser, any applications can be migrated to the Mask, especially after Mask 2.0.

(Suji) I can get a few examples. NFT marketplace might want to integrate into Instagram, right? So that part, I’m going to talk to you other in the marketplace to do some partnership. That’s not the super innovative one. But it’s interesting right? And social token or what if you can just make the tweet NFT, right? So that’s something that’s already happening. It’s relatively innovative. So it’s gonna work on Mask and it’s Cent it’s been working with Mask where we are a small investor. There might be more interesting case we can’t even imagine, right? If you remember the Uniswap case, what really happened is the first working, the first brainstorming blog is written by Vitalik. His personal blog and no one care for a while. We might just write a lot of interesting brainstorming ideas and write it down like, what if we can do that on Mask? What if you can do that on Twitter and the square and, Twitter, the Facebook, and YouTube? And wait for the best people to deliver it, or might be some of our internal members from our proper side, for-profit side or non-profit side. We just started to see themselves and then even like external capital traders for that. It’s not possible, right? And if you check out Gitcoin for Mask, we are one of the largest, I think we are number one project using Gitcoin right now, we have a lot of bounties there. I’m gonna have more bounties there. I think that’s something we can have decentralized. We have a community involved. Later on, that’s the important part.

Where is the $MASK road map now? Are all targets in accordance with the current road map? and what are the next steps that will be taken in the future? Could you please enumerate the development stages of $MASK? Which stage is the most important one for $MASK?

(Frank) For me, personally, I think Mask 2.0 is gonna be a really important milestone because the DApp store. It’s more to come to be.

(Yisi) I guess I can cover some like development aspect here. We’re releasing our Mask 2.0 pretty soon, but still like under development. And then we want 2.0 to be released at a steady, bug-free one, so it’s gonna take some time. We have made a Google form. So if you guys are interested, you guys can just sign up. Then we will send you guys the beta versions of Mask extensions to try out but we are not planning to release it within this month. My best shot will be in the middle of next month. August 15th or 20th, I guess. As we mentioned the last time, it consists a bunch of great features, not just the third-party Dapp market, but also the new account system, so that you guys don’t really need to like back up your like private keys anymore. Not just private key, mnemonic word. Instead, we will provide you guys an option. But this option is actually a little bit less secure. So that’ll be optional. So you guys are still, if you want, you can still like store your private keys or your mnemonic words to yourself. But if you want to have better, well, less secure, but better uh experience, you can just rely on our email or phone number recovery system. We will publish some articles before we release this feature. Also, we are still planning to release the Mask login. Someone asked why we cannot just log in to our Mask forum with a Mask Network extension? We are still developing this feature. It’s not that as easy as login with MetaMask. Because for some of the the platforms where services you are using, for example, the most on direct one was like Uniswap or Sushiswap. You can connect to a wallet to it. But on the question is they only have like one single account which is the wallet address. In the forum? We’re not forcing everybody to login with their wallet. Because we also have this traditional username and password pair, as a really traditional and the most intuitive login pattern. That’s been using most of the services or platforms. We want to stay compatible with these platforms. Say, still if you want, you can still login with your username and password pair, but we are adding an option for you, that you can log in with your wallet or even your Mask Network extension. Now, regarding this feature, we are planning to talk with some other major platforms. We were forums to persuade them to accept our infrastructure. That’s why we’re using a really complicated set up, which is called web authentication protocol, which has become the standard for less than 5 years. It’s supported in main browsers. So it’s gonna take some time for us to develop it. And then we will definitely release more details of the Mask 2.0. For the next 3 or 6 months, our focus will be Mask 2.0. And also we will have the multi-chain wallet which has been covered by Frank and Taylor earlier. Then I said we are planning to integrate a lot of very soon, along with NEAR protocol or NEAR blockchain. Also, I’m thinking about integrating NERVOS into our ecosystem, I talked to the founder, and they’re willing to be part of our ecosystem. Maybe you guys can see this NERVOS or CKB wallet very soon in our extension, but it’ll be covered in the Mask 2.0 article, so just stay tuned. And then our main development focus will be a bunch of things in the next 6 months. I guess Suji can like talk about more on the marketing or some other aspects.

(Suji) It’s been pretty much covered. Our weekly active user is at the 30k, 40k, I think sometime 50k or even more active user. And all of them have wallet, right? Some of them trading. I haven’t had the detail number, but honestly, I think it’s way lower than us. I’m not sure they really think about the scaling problem. What if they just have 1 million user, how to make sure this is all secure? This is actually a very serious question.

(Yisi) I don’t think that’s can be explained in one or two sentences, but web of authentication is a new standard that you can log in with the keepers instead of the password and the user and password pair. It will be quite smooth. And it’s compatible with the major platforms, or even the major, all the browsers you’re using right now, including edge, safari, and the Chrome, and FireFox. And Brave. I guess Opera also support it. We wanted to be a browser ecosystem instead of a small group that only some apps can take the advantage of. We definitely will cover this in the articles, but I’m super worried if we can catch up with 2.0 to release it. So if not, we’re planning to ship it with thing like one or two versions, say, 2.1 or 2.2. It’s a little bit complicated. So please allow us for some more time.

Hey Mask, I see the vision of the project. I still feel that there is true need in Social Media NFT. Will you develop a proper Mask Network NFT Marketplace on Social Media.I feel like Twitter is the wrong place to buy NFT, it’s not easy to find potentials NFT that may seriously take value in time. You guys have to make it more secure and simply for users (Twitter & FB). We want to collect NFT!

We have the attempt to build Mask on top of Instagram, that’s definitely the plan, since we have a larger NFT audience in Instagram. Twitter may not be a great place for the NFT marketplace, and it might be true. We are thinking about the way you showcase the NFT.

Then when you want to show off your NFTs we are planning to create a NFT gallery, like Twitter profile, that once you opened anyone’s like Twitter profile, if they have any NFT associated with his like account or address, it’ll just automatically showcased. We are still developing that. Then hopefully, at all, you guys will see that in the Mask 2.0, something else regarding the NFT marketplace. I guess we can consider building a place. We’re building a website for the NFT marketplace, for such an empty marketplace. But since we already have Rarible, OpenSea or other great NFT market places. We want to take the advantage of the network effects of social media. So if you want to show off your NFT, you can directly just post an OpenSea URL of your NFT, and then other people that has that have installed Mask Network can see that in your post.

Yeah, I think one more thing is the multi-chain. I think one thing we can do is try to aggregate all of these NFT marketplaces.

Defi will be there. We’re in a good position that we can even aggregate or decks again, like why ancient, direct, we can agree and again, like minimalist it. We are also a bit focused on NFT it’ll be a really multi-chain and multiple ends up to marketplace through a universal from or universal entry point. We’re trying not to take care of any time soon, but that would be something quite soon we can do. About NFT, I think it’s about the social interaction, social token, right? That’s something we’re working on lately as well. We’ve been talking with mostly all these players. Honestly, there’s a lot of problems with their solution, or they’re still trying to do something eternally as well. There’s no social token provider have able to help more than two-three hundred people do have their social token. It’s all pretty limited. There’s something we’re gonna do together with the NFT like just think about every person, every user on Mask can just issue their own social token. And then you can use the twists or maybe your NFT as collateral for the underrated value. That would be really, really amazing.

What are the $MASK plans to educate and raise awareness and adoption among the community to make more people understand about the project easily ?

In the English community, we are creating content, starting to create different content. So a lot not just like KOLs but also we want to have, we want to see the KOLs now might be able to arise from the Mask ecosystem. If anyone wants to have any ideas like they want to do their own kind of content creation, gates, or not to actually feel Free to actually get in touch with us. Let’s see if we can actually help you in any ways to help you gain, more exposure, et cetera et cetera.

But in terms of just marketing in English, and on a global scale, we’re thinking more like we want to create a thought leadership pieces. We want to create a multimedia formats for content such as podcast, panels, articles. Also, we want to also try new forms, which is short-form videos, tik-tok, such as Instagram. We’re also planning to me. You just innovate on the content so that more people, then I have last time to know about us might be able to take a few minutes and listen to the key points, essentially, the key points of what we’re trying to say.

And we’re also trying to elevate our voices through our ecosystem projects. The project that we have worked with, the project that we have invested in, the project that we’re very close to it. That is mainly about the content size. And in terms of the distribution and marketing side, we’re definitely looking to work with more KOLs on the global scale. So if you guys have any recommendations or if any great KOLs that we should work with. Please let us know.

Will we have MASK BEP20 on Trust wallet soon? (From forum user TreeHugger)

You can select “BEP20” at the exchange, so when the cryptocurrency is withdrawal-led from the exchange, it is a BEP20 token.

When will the airdrop of the unsuccessful ITO participants will be distributed?

We will have Airdrop 2.0 when Mask 2.0 is there.

Does Mask have any plans to access Layer2 networks, such as Arbitrum, or any plans for other public chain options in the future?

(Frank) We integrated Polygon, where we have integrated Binance and probably we’re going to be integrating more Layer2 networks as time goes by, depending on the popularity. I would say this Solana might be a good option as well. That would definitely be the case.

How are the plans Mask Network shaping up for marketing and building strong core community which is essential for any new project in the crypto industry?

(Frank) In the English community, we are creating content, and hoping to see more influencers arise from the Mask ecosystem. If you have any idea, please feel free to get in touch with us. On a global scale, we want to create a multimedia format, for content such as podcasts, panels, articles. Also, we want to also try new forms, which are short-form videos, Tik-Tok, etc. We’re also trying to elevate our voices through our ecosystem projects. The project that we have worked with, the project that we have invested in, the project that we’re very close to.

(Taylor) So in terms of actual marketing plan, we are uh work and talk with a bunch of western key opinion leaders, including the podcast, where he has, And we are also in talk with the bank’s community poster, I’ll see at the back stop.

What reason does Mask exist?

We are still years away from a fully decentralized social media. Even though we have creators like Aave, who plans to build a like Twitter on the Ethereum. Like we still have to admit that the fact that the people will still need to spend some time to migrate to that platform. Say, if you’re using Twitter, it’s really hard to like to move to another platform. Then like even though you move to that place, you still need to ask your friends to move there too, because that’s a social media. You cannot just like have no friends, but just like browse that platform or forum, like solo. Like you want to talk to the other people, you want to communicate. But like once we don’t really have any users there, and you don’t really got the chance to like for to meet your end. I guess, even though we could build such a platform, it’s still gonna take some time before we can fully migrate to that platform. And we are fully aware of this like thing, because like Mask Network is more like a piggy bank on all the social media. But we are also in part of the like the that or the creation of the next generation decentralized on social media protocol. Once we have gathered tons of users, say like millions of users. As our users migrate to the new web, or social media easily. But it’s gonna take some time, maybe a few years, maybe 3 or 4 years. We still have time to prepare for this like migration.

Can you talk more about the vision you have for the Great Metaverse Yisi Liu talked about? How is Web 3.0 better than the current internet and how do you push user adoption?

(Yisi) That’s still a concept to most of the projects. I guess if you guys are interested in our long-term goals, here is it. For now, we’re still an extension. But the extension got some limitations, such as we cannot do something that’s super feasible on the website itself. It could also have some like security issue. But we are trying to like fix them or at least we can like fix some of the security issues, like along with MetaMask, such as the security ECMA script, Still taking some time and still limited.

But that’s not in the part of our long term. Because in the future, we could become a very large decentralized App market, or third-party dApp market. We don’t really want to be limited by the browser extension. So in the long-term goal, we’re planning to create, developing our own browser. We haven’t told our audience about this at all. But since you guys are interested, I can shed some light on this web browser, which has already been planned for a long. Then we believe that in the next 2–3 years, we can finally release a beta.

And then on, we will build this. Firstly, we will build it upon, just like what Brave has done. And on top of this browser, we will integrate all the Mask features inside of it. Besides that, we’re also planning to integrate some decentralized data or storage protocols, such as IPFS, Arweave, or even the decentralized database. So in short, this browser has been in our plan, this browser could be the access point to the whole or to the broader metaverse. That you can connect to anyone else in this metaverse because we are utilizing all the decentralized protocols. This could lead to the better access point, to connect to the planet or to the universe to your interest.

In the future, Mask Network will no longer just be a browser extension, but we could become a browser. It could be a browser but think about, in some other ways that browser, it’s pretty opaque on the desktop. We can do more things on mobile phones. In short, Mask Network is gonna spend a lot of time, even focus on the building of this metaverse in the next few years. But it won’t be available very soon. We are planning to release an Alpha version of the like as early as of like next, we can still sign up for the beta, but it’s gonna take some time, but it has been planned. We have talked to a lot of projects inside of Web3. And we have dragged a lot of attention, and the man powers to help us build this. Let me finish that. So if you guys are interested, we will release some brief introduction to that maybe later this year.

🎙Chat with Cameron Hejazi (Co-Founder and CEO at Cent)

We have a special guest!

Cameron Hejazi (@chejazi), co-founder and CEO at Cent joined our chat, and shared his thoughts about the Mask browser:

I think what you just said is kind of it. Buy your NFT, think that in the past several months, we’ve seen the industry, the NFT industry, which is very young. Really kind of like create a lot of headlines and waves around the act of purchasing NFTs. But I think the next sort of big moment for the industry is just gonna be around like minting out a ton of things, whether it’s alike or opposed, or uncommon or anything like that. A subscription. We’re gonna start to see a lot of data that isn’t financial, just getting put in NFTs, put in blockchain networks. And so at that what we want to do is accelerate that, because we think that will lead more sales down the line, but really like we’re in such a very early stage of this of the NFT movement. It’s like a big sale that will dominate the headlines, but this is really about kind of giving control and ownership to people who are using platforms and protocols on a more universal basis. And oftentimes, that’s not financial. And so we’re gonna be explaining ways in which we can accelerate that.

💬 Live Q&A

Question 1: How do you see the trajectory for Web 3.0 coming here? If the bear market continues? Do you think that’s gonna hurt projects? Or make it easier to kind of work and quiet?

• Cameron: Yeah, it’ll definitely make it easier. Um for, especially, it’s night and day honestly. When the bear market sets in, it’s like I’m not on Twitter, I’m not checking the news. I’m not looking at crypto prices. It’s so welcome. But that’s just my opinion.
• Yisi: I guess, to be honest, in the bull market it’s really hard for us to hire anybody. But hopefully this all be resolved in a bear market. Hopefully we can hire more people and that’s gonna like share his talents in the cryptocurrency market or the blockchain market. But for now, we’re feeling so hard to hire anyway. Because yeah all the developers are so rich.
• Suji: A few numbers here like probably guys don’t really really realize, for example, Maker have more than 100 people. I think even it’s close to 200, more, 150+ employees or they don’t have a company structure these days, but it’s more like company structure, something like if they pay them. So they have not right more. They’re hiring like crazy because they are like the the business oriented sales. We got around 40–50, still expanding. And I think right now, the industry, needs some new type for the industry. The bull market is good in that you can attract people like new graduate student or people like Adam from the Uniswap, it was definitely out of the computer industry, right? So the bull market will attract people like that, but only the bear market can keep those. That’s my stay in the industry so that you can work with them or hire them. Or do many things, et cetera et cetera. Yeah, I think it’s like you got both sides, right? Plus, while during the bull market, we see the exponential growth of the installation. We sure gonna release the number soon, because Mask 2.0 is coming, we’re gonna release the whole Mask 1.0 number from 2019, actually. Early 2019, to May this year, right? Around nearly 2 years ago, you’re gonna see exponential growth, but actually, some of them are not really due to the price. Some of them are our data user for the functionality. And they just stay there during the bearish market. So it got both signed in my opinion, but before we talk to the token investor, it will help her a lot. We have our treasury have this year. We got ripped as well. But luckily, that we hold most of our assets in the stable coin, we get a plan in the wrong way. And and just we have a venture on, as I mentioned, that you’re sitting upright now by some our investor. They’re helping this venture. You’re gonna see news probably very soon, 1 or 2 months. Yeah, but I think it’s complicated. Right? For the bull market, there’s still time for raise. It’s hard time to build.

Question 2: So for anything that you end up building on mask in the future, do you see those as independent projects are as linked to mask.

• Suji: I think it will be independent project like if we’re just doing a tool, like a voting tool on Twitter to collaborate with Snapshot or other existing project. It will not be necessary project. You can just keep as a small open-source tools. For things like social token, if our engineer or some outside bounty hacker like people collaborate with Cent. They have this great idea of social token and make it the mbp and has some growth on Mask, definitely. That issue is outside major customers of VC money or angel investment money. And what we’re gonna do is we have a small entrepreneur, as I mentioned, and we’re gonna ensure or our investor are gonna ensure all these people who in support us for a long term. Yeah, and a lot of public chains are doing that, right? Solana, and NEAR, and Flow. The difference is that we don’t really gonna limit their tastes on public chain or their taste of decentralization. We don’t really worry about that because aside from building on top of the existing Web2 platform. Mask is one of the great option. And we definitely like to support these new funders, right? And from the DAO perspective, the only thing we can do is donate or a bounty or a smart grant, but I think that will be good for starting. It’ll be more and more for-profit venture capital coming later on, I think. That’s something you want to build, right? And even right now, if you have a small foundation, a lot of venture capital revealed it as a sign of a great endorsement. And if you’ve got, like, shared by Vitalik, it’s also really with you know uh something, you can even change price. Not good, but it’s it’s also helpful. That’s why we’re just trying to set up, as I mentioned, a way to interact with the other people to work together. It’s not possible to do everything alone, right? So that’s opinion for NFT is the same, right?

Question 3: I’m kind of well connected to the NFT sector. I’ve heard from my friends, that investors will throw money at almost anything right now, because of how bullish the market looks as a whole. So I’m wondering if you guys with your investment rounds behind you, are you going to ever do another investment round?

• We are only raising for strategic, strategic partners or strategic check, not really just, financial check. Um like, there’s a lot of sure financial VC. I think there they’re slowly exiting their allocation, because that’s the market. That’s definitely understandable. And we are the super low price compared to the high, right? And that’s going to, be it will be not responsible if we just decided to do a massive raise to pure financial, we see like sushi, experienced. Right? So we are doing around and there’s several very strategic people or company or fund already committed and you can see a news soon. We won’t need any pure financial check if the party, if that partner don’t have any stress. I still believe that strategic value is very important, right?
• For example, if you’re in game industry, if you’re in blockchain game, you’re definitely money from Sony or Nintendo, those IP providers was large game company. I think these guys will be similar to what we need on our own roadmap. But for now, a financial check is not what we need. We have a pretty long runway 4–5 years in the current burn rate. And with our treasury hole, given the price for 5 years, it might give another 3–5 years away at that time, right? And we don’t even calculate the treasury of the Mask token we hold. So we won’t really do massive raise just for living.

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