Beni Hakak, the Co-Founder and CEO of LiquidApps, spoke exclusively to CryptoNewsZ and discussed about the journey of LiquidApps, its groundbreaking technologies, and grand vision for the next couple of years.
Beni is also the Co-Founder and CEO of LiquidEOS which he established in 2018, a year before the birth of LiquidApps. Prior to that, he was Director of Operations at Bancor, Manager at Geektime, and a Strategic Consultant Manager at Ernst & Young. He also has considerable experience of working at Elbit Systems Ltd as Information Security Project Leader and as a Financial Consultant at The Technion and Technion Students Association. Beni graduated in Industrial Engineering and Management from Israel’s top technology institute, Technion.
CryptoNewsZ: Please introduce yourself to us. How did the journey of LiquidApps start? Who came up with the idea?
When I first met our CTO and my friend, Tal Muskal, we were working together at Bancor, which at the time was operating exclusively on the Ethereum protocol. We soon discovered the difficult scalability issues binding that platform. Looking for alternatives led us to EOS, and as we delved deeper into the tech details and the community, we became more and more optimistic.
LiquidEOS was my next step, creating a Block Producer based in Israel. We watched as the EOS network grew – and with it, scaling issues due to the network’s limited resource supply and the resulting costs. These challenges led Tal and me to create LiquidApps, which now provides the community with a range of products designed to allow much more effective dApp creation and scaling.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: As the CEO of the company, what do you consider your key responsibilities?
My key responsibility is to create the best solutions and services while simultaneously trying to make the lives of all our employees as easy as possible, helping meet any challenges that arise. Much like in chess, I strive to strategically plan the company’s next 5 to 10 steps and to illustrate the way we’ll get there. As long as the staff here at LiquidApps is motivated to put out excellent products and spread their excitement about those products to the developer community, while at the same time not being overburdened with unnecessary obstacles, I’m doing my job well.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: What was the biggest challenge you faced while shaping the company LiquidApps?
Once we knew the kind of network we had to build, our first challenge was creating a service that developers could use from the very first day we launched. We succeeded at meeting this challenge, and our launch service, vRAM, was usable from the start.
With many teams in the space recruiting from a small pool of genuine talent, building the right staff was our next challenge. We have succeeded here, as well, putting together an all-star team of dApp avengers.
Our next challenge was building the groundbreaking technology the DAPP Network relies on – and supporting a thriving ecosystem of DAPP Service Providers and dApps on the network. More and more excellent projects are announcing their participation with each passing week.
Now, our main challenge is to create a way for the DAPP Network to be utilized by a larger portion of developers around the world. To do that, we must bridge the gaps in communication and technology, which go hand in hand, as we build new services and explain them to blockchain communities. Our goal is for people to understand the services as soon as they are ready to go live.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: Can you talk about the developer team at LiquidApps? As the CEO, how do you motivate your team?
We have an amazing team. Tal Muskal, our CTO and co-founder, is one of the sharpest minds in the blockchain industry today. He leads a dedicated and talented group of developers, who together manage to create solutions and services that have never been offered to developers before now.
I believe that if you have a unified team dedicated to making a difference, set challenging goals for them (that are achievable!), and align them with your vision, they will follow you no matter how long the road might be. Well defined KPIs provide concrete milestones along the way to achieving our vision, as well as real-time feedback on each team member’s accomplishments, keeping everyone both focused and excited, including myself.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: How can the DAPP Network make the development of dApps more affordable and scalable for developers? Kindly tell us something more about the products and services of LiquidApps.
The DAPP Network eliminates many limitations that EOS – for all its advantages – shares with other blockchains, without breaking the integrity of the chain.
Before the DAPP Network, most dApps needed to both buy significant quantities of scarce memory (RAM) and regularly delete data to avoid endlessly needing more. We introduced the vRAM service to add caching capability, keeping data that is currently not in use out of RAM. Airdrops have already been executed cheaply with vRAM, and multiple dApps are working to integrate the vRAM system into their applications.
Without the DAPP Network, applications on EOS and other blockchains could not access external information in a decentralized way – things like random numbers, web APIs, other blockchains, and even simple timers were off limits or required centralized solutions. By using the services LiquidScheduler and LiquidOracles, including Inter-Blockchain Communication, dApps can now easily get this information and verify that it is reliable.
And prior to the DAPP Network, EOS applications generally required all users to purchase accounts. This process is not always straightforward and is a hindrance to user adoption. Some applications purchased accounts for their users, but the cost per user has only increased as RAM becomes more scarce. LiquidAccounts removes this key obstacle by enabling radically cheap user accounts trustless proxied through a standard mainnet account.
Bringing access to all of these is the Zeus Software Development Kit, which provides EOS developers the tools and samples they need to build these services into their smart contracts.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: What are the unique features of vRAM, LiquidOracles, and Zeus?
The vRAM System enables the storage and retrieval of potentially unlimited amounts of data affordably and efficiently. This enables EOS RAM to be what it was intended to become: a lightweight cache layer for storing in-use dApp data only.
For example, our recent RAM usage analysis of the social media platform KARMA concluded that the dApp could reduce its weekly RAM needs from about 1.4 megabytes to just 4 kilobytes. More importantly, this would allow KARMA to stop regularly purging user posts in order to recycle this expensive RAM. These posts can now remain forever.
LiquidOracles provides the solution to a serious problem for blockchain applications: how to receive data about the outside world. Other solutions generally require the trust of an in-house or third-party oracle, and in some cases that could mean susceptibility to dishonest behavior – for example, manipulating some data so that an account controlled by an accomplice can receive a payout from the dApp using that data. LiquidOracles introduces the ability to use multiple providers, to verify on chain the information they provide, and to cease staking to and using any provider revealed to be untrustworthy. dApps can now act on information from the Internet and other blockchains, and their providers are strongly incentivized to provide only honest information.
Zeus is a dApp Software Development Kit (SDK) acting as a one-stop-shop for dApp developers. Templating smart contracts, simulating a blockchain node with a single command, enabling testing and deployment of smart contracts – all of these features make dApp developers’ lives much easier. Zeus’s Alpha version has already been released and can be used to learn more about each DAPP Network service and to enable your dApp’s smart contracts to utilize the services it needs.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: What are DSPs? How does one become a DSP in LiquidApps?
DAPP Service Providers (DSPs) are individuals or entities who provide additional storage capacity, communication services, and/or utilities to dApp developers building on the blockchain, playing a crucial role in the DAPP Network. DSPs can be BPs, private individuals, corporations, or even anonymous entities. The only requirement is that each DSP must meet the minimum technical specifications for operating a full node on EOS.
DSPs offer their packages on a free market basis. dApp developers are free to choose whichever service package most suits their needs and then stake the required amount of DAPP tokens to that DSP to gain access to that service package. They are incentivized by the DAPP token’s inflation.
Not only can DSPs use currently developed services; they are free to build their own unique services, as well. In fact, we have been contacted by several DSPs looking to build specific services like KYC, push notifications, phone number verification, and location services. We have also been contacted by service providers who are planning to shift their services onto the DAPP Network soon.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: Tell us about the DAPP token, and where we can use it?
The DAPP Token is the key to the DAPP Network. It is a utility token that enables developers to access the tools and services provided by the network. dApp developers are free to choose whichever service package most suits their needs and then stake the required amount of DAPP tokens to that DSP to gain access to that service package.
DAPP is a crucial part of the provision layer between dApp developers and the DAPP Network service providers (DSPs). It has been used continually, from the day the DAPP Networks launched, for airdrops running on the vRAM and LiquidOracles services. And with more services being introduced and more dApps and DSPs announcing they are joining as every new week passes, we are eager to see what the community will build next.
Beni Hakak
CryptoNewsZ: What is next in the roadmap for 2019–20? Where do you see the future of LiquidApps in the next couple of years?
In the first half of 2019, we have successfully delivered on the things we envisioned for LiquidApps. We are moving fast, investing great effort into creating additional tools and services aimed at solving the obstacles that are currently delaying dApp development, scaling, and adoption on multiple fronts.
I believe that LiquidApps will be the leading player in the blockchain ecosystem before too long. We’re certainly working to make that happen.
Beni Hakak
