Advertisement
Today at CryptoNewsZ, we are joined by Alex Alexandrov, CEO and founder of Velas, Advisor and Investor at Mind AI, Strategy Advisor at SonoCoin, co-founder and CEO of CoinPayments and former founder of Coincable.com.
CryptoNewsZ: Hello and welcome to CryptoNewsZ, Alex. Our readers would love to know more about you and what sparked your interest in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry?
I started in crypto back in 2011 and got really interested, as I was in FOREX trading at that time and saw the new opportunity to trade more fairly with cryptocurrencies. I was importing and reselling mining equipment from China in 2012–2013, and that led to founding a company in 2013, called Coinpayments.net, which is now the largest altcoin payment processor in the world, accepting over 1600 currencies, and with 3,000,000 active users.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: Velas enables secure, interoperable, and scalable transactions with blockchain. What led you to launch Velas? Can you please tell us how the Velas blockchain works?
Coinpayments let us see a lot of developments in the space over time, as we had to integrate, maintain and run different coins and tokens on different blockchains on our platform. Facing issues and problems with existing blockchains, led to an idea of creating a universal distributed ledger technology which would be interoperable, eliminating the human interference for maximum decentralization and scalability.
Velas blockchain utilizes a unique, innovative consensus mechanism that it calls Artificial Intuition Delegated Proof of Stake (AIDPOS).
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: How did Velas come up with the unique concept of implementing Artificial Intuition in the Velas ecosystem? What are the advantages that Artificial Intuition brings for Velas as well as its loyal users?
In layman terms, this means that the underlying technology seeks to collect, identify, and assess patterns and relationships across all of the data sets that go in and through the Velas network. This allows the blockchain to operate in an ultra-efficient manner but that doesn’t mean that it’s solely controlled by some unpredictable robot. In the case of Velas, AI aims to function similarly to human consciousness, or, more specifically, its intuition.
Velas’ innovative technology allows its blockchain to validate and process up to 30,000 TPS. This amounts to a block per/second speed of anywhere from 1 second to 2 minutes. Ultimately, this will be determined by the Artificial Intuition algorithm, based on the network’s demand.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: Security is the greatest concern looming over the cryptocurrency space, how does Velas address the prevalent security issues?
If and when the Artificial Intuition protocol encounters potential network inefficiencies or malicious behavior, the network can make adjustments without needing to reconfigure the output criteria.
Moreover, Velas takes precautions against 51% attacks and double-spend attacks by implementing a cycle-block every 24 hours, selecting the nodes who have the most stake to represent it. Thus, new blocks must be signed by 80% of cycle-block nodes — which makes it illogical for intruders to break the system since they will have to own the whole network first in order to do it.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: Generally, how does AIDPoS help incentivize the high level of efficiency of the Velas ecosystem?
The DPoS consensus algorithm, enhanced by our AI, basically clears the ledger from unnecessary workload, allowing either to accelerate or slow down the whole network depending on the functioning capacity. The high speed is also achieved thanks to Schnorr signatures — a specific type of multi-signature that provides cryptographic proof when one wallet is owned by multiple parties.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: Alex, do you think the two really different cognitive processes— Artificial Intuition and Artificial Intelligence, if integrated well can help in anticipating and preventing unpredictable situations?
Absolutely, each node in the blockchain forms its own dataset (or, in other words, a training sample) from the blockchain data. Then, based on this data, the genetic algorithm starts training by utilizing a matrix with random weights, and every next layer is learning from the previous one. The network trains itself before each block cycle until a 70% probability is obtained. After that, the matrix with the smallest error percentage gets loaded into the next era. That allows the network to continuously optimize and expand its efficiencies with AI, all the while imitating human intuition.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: The Velas roadmap has many promising projects in the pipeline, would you please elaborate on what we should expect. Do you also have any upcoming partnerships coming in?
We are currently preparing to release our multi-signature wallet. Additionally to current exchanges EXMO, IDAX and BW.com, where Velas coin can be purchased and traded on, our coin (VLX) is expected to get listed on some of the major exchanges before the year-end. Velas hopes to launch its hardware wallet in the first quarter of 2020, as well as its fully open-source framework.
Alex Alexandrov
CryptoNewsZ: You have extensive experience as a cryptocurrency educator, a cybersecurity advisor for public sector institutions and a public speaker; you are also an esteemed Board member of Blockchain Society Canada. What advice would you like to give to novices and entrepreneurs looking to start their careers in the cryptocurrency industry?
Becoming CEO of multiple companies and active in different roles within the industry is definitely exhausting and will demand more time than you have in a day, so be prepared to cut off some friends, social life and find someone who loves you and can be there for you and spend some quality time with the one in order to maintain sanity. Velas got started because yet again being in the space I am since 2011 I have not seen some of the problems solved the way I feel and think they should be. I wouldn’t do it if I saw someone else do it the way I considered right, so my advice from all my experiences in business is to find your special skill or talent, or know-how and turn it into a business and build a community around it. Success is never guaranteed unless you get what you are doing and love it. Plus unique business is where it’s due to the global connectivity of the internet and blockchain.
Alex Alexandrov
Advertisement
Alex, thank you for the interview and for sharing your insights on the cryptocurrency and blockchain domains. CryptoNewsZ team wishes you tremendous success in all your future endeavors.
