Metronome Meetup Wrap Up — Chicago August 2018
Members of the Metronome team were excited to speak at the first official Metronome Meetup in Chicago. Matthew Roszak, Phil Gomes, Alexandra Prodromos, and Dariusz Jakubowski all enjoyed the chance to meet some of the rest of the Metronome community.
The Talk
Matthew Roszak is a career serial technology entrepreneur. Describing how he entered the cryptocurrency space, Matt focused on how blockchain technology’s ability to foundationally change the world made it attractive — indeed, captivating. After investing in the space for several years, he co-founded Bloq, Inc. with one of the original Bitcoin developers, Jeff Garzik. Soon after, Bloq launched BloqLabs as a venture research studio to explore, partner with, and build the next generation of decentralized protocols and applications.
BloqLabs is a strategic and technical partner to many innovative projects, and Metronome was one of the largest to date. “We wanted to build something as if we had a blank slate,” Matt explained, “my co-founder, Jeff Garzik, has been in the space since the very beginning and I wasn’t too far behind.” Elaborating on their collective experience in the space, Matt said the two recognized the need for a cryptocurrency that built off the lessons of the cryptos that came before — and one that was built to endure beyond those who created it. “Many cryptocurrencies and projects today are incredibly reliant on a single group of people or company, if they disappeared tomorrow *poof* those projects are gone. We wanted to build something that outlasted the designers and wouldn’t need them once launched.”
On Self-Governance
Part of this “built to last” paradigm is Metronome’s first design principle of self-governance. A cryptocurrency should outlast those who made it, and the way the team decided to address this issue was through a few avenues. “There’s no foundation that doles out bounties, no singular group defining what Metronome is,” Matt said, “and we think that’s a good thing. We’re all equally able to define Metronome.” Once launched, no one has special privilege or access to the deployed contract code. This is one reason the team audited it so extensively, Matt pointed out. “It was like watching a rocket launch, because we couldn’t change it. I remember thinking to myself ‘Please don’t blow up,’ but our hard work and attention to detail paid off — Metronome had no security issues, it didn’t get hacked, and we didn’t break Ethereum. It works.” He continued, “this was one of the first larger BloqLabs projects, and I joke that we chose the hardest kind of system to build, since we can’t change it after launch.” The discussion of self-governance immediately went into portability as well.
On Portability
“Part of that self-governing dynamic, is that you — as an owner — have 100% control over where your MET reside. As long as that target chain is compatible, you can port there for any reason.” This is a crucial part of Metronome’s self governance. Matt continued with a hypothetical “if you think Vitalk is going to introduce changes to Ethereum that you don’t like, or say you don’t share the values of the underlying chain community, you can port away from that.” He continued on what kinds of chains we might expect, “right now it’s EVMs (Ethereum Virtual Machines) — but we’re looking into some other turing complete style platforms like EOS. We’ll keep everyone up to date on where we build new targets, but obviously the rest of the community is encouraged to think up and target new chains.” Matt also discussed chain death as one potential reason to port from a particular chain. The compatible chains will then adjust to mint an amount of MET commensurate to their share of the global supply in the Daily Supply Lots.
On Reliability
“Because you can know the global supply on various chains at any given time in Metronome, and the issuance is set in code, we can predict with high confidence the total amount of MET in existence at any point in the future — to the day.” Matt explained further, “Bitcoin’s issuance stops around 2140, Ethereum’s is a big question mark, but you can know Metronome’s supply in the future, without having to guess.” This sort of reliability is helpful for those making plans in the future, and something that even the 38th director of the US Mint, Edmund Moy, mentioned in his recent panel with Matt at the Voice of Blockchain conference just a few days before this meetup. It’s all about the long term with Metronome.
On the Initial Supply Auction
Matt discussed how the ISA worked, with its descending price structure, and what the goals of that were. “We wanted to ask the market, since we were launching just a cryptocurrency, not a company or a foundation, what it thought the price of Metronome ought to be. We sadly launched it in one of the worst crypto winters up to that point.” Matt continued, “but we were so proud that all of the proceeds from the auctions — and every subsequent one — stayed in the ecosystem for you, the community, not some obscure bank in Switzerland.” Following up on his “bear market” comment, “but honestly, maybe launching in a deep bear was a good thing. It’s good people got to buy MET cheap, because now we can all come along for the ride with no place to go but up.”
On What’s to Come
Metronome’s future is a community-driven effort. Something that Matt predicts is that part of these efforts will include chains competing with one another to hold larger amounts of the Metronome global supply. Then, their daily supply lots can sell more MET and more of their own underlying tokens can go into the Proceeds and Autonomous Converter contracts on their chain. Matt said “this kind of competition is good, because it will drive innovation. Want more of Metronome’s global supply on your chain instead of Ethereum? Build out cool use cases for Metronome on your chains and deploy those contracts. The ACC and Proceeds contracts are really neat things to have on a chain, but they’re just the first layer.” He went on to note that this is likely where we’ll see the most advancements in machine to machine payments with cryptocurrency.
Wrapping up, Matt went on to open up the floor for discussion, questions, and comments.
The Q & A
The Q & A part of the Metronome meetup was thought provoking and inspiring. It was an excellent barometer for the understanding interest level among community members. Below are some of the more interesting questions and discussions.
What sort of competition does Metronome face?
Metronome’s competition would be against other cryptocurrencies in general. It is part of the future of crypto as a risk-adjusting, built to last cryptocurrency. While portability is obviously one of the cooler parts of Metronome, it’s not all it is. “It’s a single cryptocurrency that can live across these chains,” Matt said, “and, kind of playing into the competition I mentioned before that means it is provably scarce and there is an incentive to try to get Metronome on your chain.” Smart bridges and some of the other interoperability efforts — while important — are just kind of comparing “apples and oranges” since their goals and structures are so different.
Lessons learned from the ISA?
“There were a few things we learned, and things that other projects that choose to use a descending price auction model might take away from our auction.” Matt said that building out limit order functionality into the auction might have made a better user experience, and potentially limiting the amounts that single addresses could purchase. However he also mentioned that this potentially would have just led to whales making hundreds of Ethereum addresses to participate at pretty much the same capacity they would have anyway. They’d just be “sneaky whales,” and doing it that way might even have inaccurately inflated the amount of holders. Instead of knowing one address (whether a group or individual) purchased a large amount, we might be skeptical of addresses with maxed out purchases.
Why did you choose a model of inflation over the somewhat typical deflationary nature of many cryptos?
“This is something we thought long and hard about,” Matt said, “and we consulted many economists and prominent thought leaders on this.” Ultimately, the ongoing mintage is meant to do a few things, 1) encourage its use as an actual currency, 2) keep people from only hoarding it, 3) encourage innovation with it since it does more than just sit there, 4) dilute the holdings of “whales” and 5) allow new entrants into its ecosystem more easily. “I actually love that Bitcoin is deflationary,” Matt noted, “but Metronome is trying to do something different.”
What happens to the MET or underlying token on a chain that dies?
One of the really cool parts of Metronome is that it can be ported away from a dying chain. Matt predicted that there could even be “health barometers” of certain chains within various wallets. “It could let you know, potentially, the score of that chain and help some owners decide if they want to get off that chain — but ultimately it is the owner’s choice to move or not move.” Since the interlocutor seemed particularly worried about chain death, Dariusz also talked to him during the networking session over beers. Ultimately, for one to not be able to port away from a chain would require a few things: chain death would need to be 1) immediate and 2) absolute — such that you one couldn’t see it coming and there was no way to prove how much MET you had at the time of death (meaning all copies of that chain would have to be completely gone). This is another reason why Matt’s prediction of a score or health barometer might be a really interesting item for the community to pursue.
Conclusion: Cheers, Beers, and More Meetups to Come
We want to thank everyone who came out, and look forward to seeing everyone who can make it to the upcoming ones. Hopefully this wrap up was useful for those who couldn’t make it out to Chicago this time. Keep an eye out for announcements about upcoming meetups. If you have suggestions for meetups we should try to attend, speak at, or if you are building a meetup yourself, let us know at info@metronome.io. See you soon!
