Sep 6, 2021

Recap: AMA with Josh Goodbody, COO of Qredo Network

Qredo Network is an early-stage project that is listing on WOO X. We find out some firsthand info from the team building this Layer-2 network.

In anticipation of WOO X and WOO Network’s listing of QRDO, September 5th saw an AMA with Qredo COO Josh Goodbody in the WOO Network Discord! The WOO community got a chance to pick the brain of a top team building an emerging project in the crypto space — and got some QRDO token rewards in the process!

Wasn’t able to catch the AMA live? Here’s a write-up of what you missed, while the full version can still be found in the #qredo-ama channel on the WOO Network Discord.

The Introduction Round:

Ben Yorke: Give us an elevator pitch on Qredo Network. Why should the crypto world take notice?

Josh: OK, let’s go. So at Qredo what we are doing is building the infrastructure for the multi-chain universe.

As the industry has scaled, we have seen the emergence of a super fragmented market, with siloes of assets. Blockchains and protocols are not interoperable. This is fundamentally contrary to the principles of decentralization. We embarked on a mission to fix this. We take a radical approach to cross-chain connectivity, and have built and launched a decentralized MPC-secured custodial and settlement layer 2 network.

We are blockchain-agnostic, so we can work with ~95% of the layer 1 and layer 2s out there. We enable users to hold their assets securely, and transfer them across our layer 2 network without any of the delays and costs associated with the layer 1. This enables us to do amazing stuff like cross-chain swaps, without any wrapping or pegging — they settle instantly! The possibilities are endless…

Ben Yorke: You are someone I’ve been aware of for years, dating back to your time working with exchanges. Can you give people your background info to get them up to speed?

Josh: I’ve been with the team for 5 months now — prior to this I’ve been working with the founders for around 15 months, as an advisor. Prior to my time in crypto, most of my career has been spent as a derivatives and financial markets lawyer, where I held General Counsel roles in FinTech. When I first met the Qredo team, in 2018 I was Global General Counsel for Huobi Global, where I ended up leading the Institutional Business. After two years I move to Binance, where for one and half years I led the EMEA region. Joining Qredo in April has been a whirlwind — we’ve kept heads down building and now we are super pleased to be able to finally talk about it.

Ben Yorke: You’ve spent years working with exchanges. Why the sudden jump to building blockchain infrastructure? What really sold you on Qredo?

Josh: Alright, good question. Having worked since 2017 in the exchange space, I’ve had first-hand experience with the growing pains the industry has faced as it scaled. For example, at a large exchange I worked at, on volatile days we were paying millions of dollars in Ethereum gas fees to enable users to withdraw their assets. This coupled with the fact that all the scaling and settlement solutions being brought to us involved complex synthetics, wrapping and pegging, made it clear in my mind that infrastructure was the number one issue facing the crypto economy. In my mind there had to be a better way…

Seeing firsthand what the Qredo team has achieved over the past two years, and understanding how powerful and transformative this infrastructure can be, meant it was an easy choice to jump headfirst and get building with the team.

The Community Round:

Ben Yorke: The first question is from @capcosmos — he asks:

“I’d like to learn some more details about the QREDO wallet that allows to trade, transfer and take custody of digital assets on a decentralized network. The QREDO wallet allows to appoint an unlimited number of signers, and seamlessly delegate the authority to originate transactions. As I understand Gnosis Safe is your close competitor? Please share what unique features does your wallet have that make it better than the competing solutions.”

Josh: Hey @capcosmos, the key difference is in the implementation of the multisig. While multisig wallets such as Gnosis use on-chain transactions, Qredo uses multi-party computation implemented with threshold signatures (MPC TSS ) to take the signing process off-chain. It’s a big shift towards security. Unlike multisig, there is only one single signature created on the layer 1 chain, which is signed by distributed nodes that contain secrets representing parts of the private key.

This way of implementing multi-signature signing has multiple advantages:

Transactions can be signed faster off-chain because they don’t rely on transacting on slow underlying chains.
Signatures computed off the chain do not incur network fees.
No need for multiple wallets for different blockchains, which is cumbersome to deal with and makes reporting difficult.
Blockchain-agnostic — while multisig wallets are tied to a specific blockchain, MPC works on the standardized cryptographic signature algorithm (ECDSA) that can be implemented across 95% of blockchains. Unlike Gnosis Safe, which only allows management of ERC20 tokens,
Offers enhanced privacy because transactions are not conducted on chain, preventing potential attackers from peering into your company signing arrangements.

As you can see, HUGE benefits vs traditional multi-sig providers.

@Luiswe is also asking about the MPC tech — He wanted you to “explain how you’re leveraging the Multi-Party-Computation technology to provide a safe non-custodial wallet, compared to other custodial platforms?”

Josh: Qredo offers the cryptographic breakthrough of multi-party computation (MPC), implemented using a Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS). Shares of the cryptographic key are contained in the MPC nodes, which are distributed on the network. Together, the nodes generate a digital signature to sign transactions without ever producing a private key.

This is standard practice, but — in most MPC implementations — the private key shares are created and stored in multiple virtual machines, or vulnerable hardware enclaves like Intel SGX. These nodes are typically controlled by the same organization, leaving assets exposed to rogue employees, conspiring cloud providers, or other colluding partners that might decide to do a runner with the funds.

Because keys are held in their infrastructure, organizations running these MPC wallets act as a custodial counterparty — they are needed to sign transactions. Whereas with Qredo, the MPC nodes are distributed between security-hardened tier 4 data centers distributed across global financial hubs and controlled by the Qredochain.

The Qredochain is a Layer 2 network that provides an immutable registry of assets and activity. Each custodial operation — each transaction, each signature, and each change to wallet custodial policies — is mined into the blockchain. In this way, the network literally becomes the vault. Qredo does not have access to private keys and is not a counterparty to any transactions.

Ben Yorke: Alright last question here from the community round, this one from @donilnilton9.

‘The version 1 (v1) mainnet launched late October, just as DeFi was starting to mature from its experimentation phase to a global phenomenon. And you plan to launch Qredo mainnet Version 2 soon.What brought about this new version? What will be the difference of Version 2 from 1? What does this new version holds out for users?’

Josh: Hey @donilnilton9. The key distinction here is that Qredo V1 is decentralized infrastructure under some centralized control of Qredo Ltd. Qredo V2 represents a fully decentralized approach to crypto asset custody, delivery and settlement. The Qredo team is taken out of the picture and nodes are controlled by independent third parties — removing any counterparty risk and enabling all users to trade and store assets on a truly trustless network.

We plan for the network and community to govern itself through a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) So alongside this goal, we are planning lots of other technical innovations: V2 will significantly speed up the time we need to integrate with new L1 chains.

We will be introducing the Qredo Layer 3 — a secure, end-to-end encrypted decentralized messaging network, to handle everything from machine to machine communications to storing and providing an audit trail for pre-trade communications. The creation of Loan Pools to easily access highly leveraged trade credit, as appropriate for flash loans or yield farming. For liquidity providers, they will resemble a short term money market fund

Full details on Qredo’s pathway to decentralization can be found in the White Paper:

Qredo White Paper

Edit description

www.qredo.com

The Open Round:

Ben Yorke: Alright think we should open up the channel for questions from the community. @Josh_Qredo can pick three questions that rub him the right way and of course, those winners will get some of those sought after QRDO rewards

Q1: What’s is different from Thorchain swaps and how you solve the problem of scalability

Josh: Great question. We admire what the THORchain team has built, but we’ve taken a very different approach. Our layer 2 network tracks the ownership rights to the layer 1 assets in everyone’s wallets, and this means these ownership rights can be transferred instantly, without any of the complex pooling of assets, and the vulnerabilities that come with it.

Additionally, it means the pricing for these cross-chain swaps can be much tighter. Win-Win!

Q2: Hi Josh, Are you already in talks with other blockchains/ centralized or decentralized exchanges or dapps (aave etc) to make a collaboration/integration with your project?

Josh: Absolutely! WOO Network is one of the first we are pleased to announce, and we have so much in the pipeline… We will be working with some of the largest DeFi providers in the space, banks, custodians and may DeFi projects to help give their users secure decentralised custody and settlement functionality.

Our goal is to support all of the ecosystem, so we will cast the net wide and get involved with many projects

Q3: Can you list 1–3 killer features of your project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about?

Josh: Hah! I always get this question and it’s one I love answering. 3 killer features are:

Qredo’s cross-chain nature, bringing cross-chain atomic swaps.
Unique implementation of MPC.
A new Layer 2 that’s compatible with almost all Layer 1 blockchains.

Q4: Here you create a wallet called “Qredo Wallet” I see you mentioned you don’t need to use private keys. So to reassure investors, tell us have you completed the security audit? Maybe by a third party? as We have seen so many hacks, exploits & stuff like that this year, What actions have been taken to protect the community from it?

Josh: Hey @sal13. We have carried out two audits with QuantStamp, and are currently mid-way through another audit with another company. Given the nature of our project, security is obviously at the core of what we do. We take it incredibly seriously.

There is a nice quote from the guy who founded Intel, Andy Grove, “Only the paranoid survive”. He was, I think, talking about company strategy but it also sums up our attention to asset and user security and getting it right.

Regarding other activities: NCC Group, the cyber security experts, carried out an assessment of the Apache Milagro MPC library and Zokyo pen-tested the web and iOS app. Quantstamp has also audited the token repository. And if you didn’t know, we have insurance — from Lloyds of London, underwritten by Sompo.

Ben Yorke: Awesome — before we wrap up — I wanted to ask a few more questions from the community although these didn’t make the cut for the rewards — I still want the answers.

What was the motivation for Qredo and WOO Network to collaborate? How will this collaboration be useful for both projects in the long term?

Josh: WOO Network has a long track record of pushing boundaries in crypto and product. When we first met the team during our investment round It was clear that our infrastructure could help power more innovation, and we’ve always wanted to do this with them. I can’t elaborate too much on what we are planning (:fire: )but utilizing our cross-chain infrastructure will open up many avenues for product creation. Working with the WOO team so far has been a pleasure!

Ben Yorke: Another question that I thought was interesting:

“What is the relation between Apache Milagro and QREDO?”

Josh: We believe in the power of open networks! In 2016 Qredo Co-founder and CPTO Brian Spector launched Apache Milagro, a set of core security infrastructure and crypto libraries purpose-built for decentralized networks and distributed systems. Qredo operates under the umbrella of the Apache Foundation. This opens our project to a vast network of contributors and allows enterprises to license under the well-established and broadly used IP protection of the Apache License.

Ben Yorke: One last item before we wrap up — it’s about the Organisation Account, which allows multiple users to be added to an account and allocated different roles and features.

Josh: Yes so the Qredo Network is open for everyone, for free. For enterprise/organizational users, Qredo lets them implement bespoke governance and appoint an unlimited number of signers, delegating permissions to fit custom custodial policies.

For example, a CFO might have transaction signing and network withdrawal permissions, whereas a trader may only be able to transact on the network, or a compliance officer may only be able to view transactions and network activity. The whole point is to make the experience flexible and scalable. We have a lot more planned, but we think our functionality is some of the most flexible and intuitive in the market

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