Aug 27, 2020
AMA at Blockcircle Community — Summary
This is a summary of the PYLON AMA session that took place on Friday 21st August 2020.
The AMA was held in the Blockcircle Telegram community and the following lines offer a all the Q&As that were addressed during the session.
Please tell us about yourself and your role in the company.
Gerard Bel: Hello everyone, this is Gerard Bel the CEO of Pylon and it is a pleasure for us to be here today.
We can only tell you that we are a young and ambitious team that is really going to change the way the energy market is conceived.
We have already been able to demonstrate it with our first services and we will continue with our ambition to bring collective self-consumption to all Spanish and Portuguese consumers in the first phase and after dominating our niche market, we will expand to the more use cases and markets.
We are always focused on creating business models, which can offer real value on the customer side, because it is the customer and the market the only ones who can validate the business models.
Our mission is to make the customers happy because in the way we see and understand business this is the best way to make our investors happy, too!
The last point that I want to remark is that the tech will only help to scale your business but the market is not going to buy the tech, is going to buy business models that are validated by the customers.
Thanks for your attention and time, we will be here to answer all your questions.
Markos Romanos: Hi everyone! It’s a great pleasure to be here.
My name is Markos Romanos Im the CCO of Pylon Network (https://pylon-network.org/) and the admin of our Telegram community (@pylonnetworkofficialtelegram).
Pylon Network’s vision is to digitalize the energy sector to make it simple and transparent for everyone. The team’s mission is to enable any energy player to offer personalized digital services with minimal interactions for consumers and energy businesses alike.
We have developed our blockchain technology to design a decentralized database for energy data (Neutral Energy Data Hub) to facilitate and accelerate digitalization of the energy sector and the energy transition.
We are following a bottom up approach, working with the protagonists of the future energy systems: us, the consumers. This — and the fact that we test and implement our solutions and business models with the real market and consumers — is what differentiates us from other energy projects.
Which area does #Pylon focus on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake,Dapps..)
Staking. PYLNT are being staked to become federated nodes in Pylon Network and receive the utility coin PYLNC as a reward.
What are the advantages of having an open-source infrastructure project?
Cooperation and community support. Also removing the barrier of technology lock-in which is crucial when implementing an innovative project in a traditional sector, like the energy sector.
I read in your whitepaper that you offer personalized services, what factors in particular do you study and analyze to provide quality care and usefulness to each user?
We are in daily contact with different companies from the energy sector, understanding the needs of their customers. In that way, we are able to offer personalized services in an easy, simple and transparent way automating the data access of their consumption behavior.
After the commercialization of our first services we are now pursuing the collective self consumption use case, where we help the communities share a common solar installation, while maximizing its financial performance.
Are there any new partnerships and interesting upcoming use-cases?
We are working to deploy our use case in the real market. Our use case for our technology is the Collective Self-Consumption schemes, where we have some pilots closed and more are coming up in the next years. We are first movers in the Spanish market where this kind of schemes are pioneering the European energy transition.
Adoption is one of the most important factor that all sustainable blockchain projects should focus to be more attractive in the investors eyes. Can you tell us what Pylon has done and plan to do to achieve adoption in the reality, real use cases, our real society?
For us it is the most important thing - our basic aim.
To achieve adoption we need to be able to offer real value to the final consumers - which is something that we have been working on for many months now — and with the future announcement of new pilots we will start improving our solution until we have a perfect fit in terms of satisfying the needs of the market.
How do you plan to spread cryptocurrency in Community? Do you plan to develop a project in this direction ?
This is again related to the market adoption: we need to be able to solve the customers problems, and to achieve it we need to be able to develop the solution with them and not for them. Because the customers are the ones that eventually decide what works for them, and what not.
• How does Pylon benefit the energy sector? Why is a cryptocurrency necessary in this sector?
- Transparency
- Customer-centricity
- Dealing with problems of data accessibility, and offering the full control of personal data to the consumers (Neutral Energy Data Hub)
• To use Pylon, do I need to buy an additional device or pay for an app? Is the service completely free?
No hardware is needed for utilizing the Neutral Energy Data Hub.
Who is building the business and tech and your upcoming plan in the near future?
We are developing both as said. Our upcoming plans and milestones can be found here: https://pylon-network.org/review-pylon-network-progress-milestones-2020.html
How will you attract potential users to your platform considering that it is powered by blockchain ?
We are obsessed with offering real value with our technology! And we think that this is the only way that can lead to adoption. So you know what the answer is :)
Prioritizing the market and the needs of our customers.
The main problem related to energy is precisely its cost and difficult access to hundreds of people around the world. Is it for this reason and in order to decentralize it and make it accessible to all that you united the blockchain and the energy sector?
It is more difficult than this, we need to understand and adapt the solution into the regulations of each country, and believe me that is really a hard work
What are the major milestones you have achieved so far?
Check our blog post, offering a summary of our milestones for this year: https://pylon-network.org/review-pylon-network-progress-milestones-2020.html
Is your team the best?Do you have any blockchain engineers on the team or have plans to add additional?
The main thing is not the tech is how you are able to create value to the market. But this doesn’t mean that our team is not the best.
I think we have a DREAM team — of course!
• How does Pylon benefit the energy sector? Why is a cryptocurrency necessary in this sector?
Is not necessary at all, this is the major effort for everyone. At the end the market will not care about what technology you might be using or not; they will care if your product is offering enough value for what they’ve paid.
Our aim here is using the coin as a gas to access the decentralized Netural Energy DataHub, offering it for a Software as a Service that is going to be paid by the companies.
What your plans in place for global expansion, are you focusing on only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships?
We are currently operating in Spain and our plans for expansion include Portugal, France and Italy in the long term (see more here: https://medium.com/@pylonnetwork/pylon-tokenomics-summary-2797baa66f86)
The MainNet is set to launch by the end of this year and we are currently developing the first tools that will integarate with Pylon Network (Neutral Data Hub) in order to demonstrate them, while improving them with our partners.
What’s the main mission & Vision of Pylon Network?
Our vision is to change the (bad) perception of the energy market that people have. Our mission is to offer the maximum personalization in Digital Energy Services but in a simple and easy way, which will actually help consumers take decisions instead of confusing them.
Why should we invest in Your token?
Because we are strong in our niche market and we are currently in a commercial stage with our first services.
Having this position we are able to better understand the needs of the market and will help us to deploy the CSC tool by the end of this year.
What if another similar project show face in the nearest future, how do you plan to beat these possible COMPETITORS ?
In the short-term we have an advantage because we are already in the market, with real customers and real products. Our current position gives us an advantage and sets a barrier for new entrants — at least for the short-term. Furthermore, if any new companies or projects with similar solutions attempt to entry the market it is more likely that they will collaborate with us because of the uniqueness of our solution.
From a more long-term perspective, what really matters is the ability to help consumers and we are very confident that our current strong position in that sense, will allow us to maintain this advantage throughout.
It is in our core belief that this is more important than focusing only on the short-term return for the investors (and it will offer more benefits for them, too, in the long-term).
What are the main use & utilities of Pylon Network? Can you please explain what the CSC use case is about? Why is blockchain needed there?
In a Collective Self-Consumption (CSC) scheme there is the need to simplify operattions and increase the interoperability. The need for both comes from the need of multiple energy stakeholders to interact and cooperate (exchange information).
There is the need to trace and certify transactions among them and also protect the consumers privacy and personal data, between all these stakeholders (consumers, managers of CSC schemes, investors, electricity suppliers, system operators).
What is the inspiration in building this kind of project Pylon Network that is designed for energy sector? Why do you choose energy sector as your focus and what problem you wanted to solve?
Because is the sector that we really love, and there is lot to do there
HIGHLIGHT the UNIQUE FEATURES of this PROJECT if I’m to choose this PROJECT over other COMPETITIVE PROJECTS ?
I would say in summary:
* Blockchain designed for the energy sector — high speeds and scalability combined with negligible energy demand
* No added hardware (meters) needed — able to access all utility meters in ESP (~28M) and developing the same capabilities for France and Portugal.
* Validated the replicability of the business & infrastructure model in other EU countries — namely, Portugal & France.
* Avoid dependency on 3rd parties and other blockchains (e.g. Ethereum)
* GDPR-compliant — The end consumers are in control of their data.
* Fully open-source and open-standards infrastructure, able to accommodate data from all kinds of sources and stakeholders.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES:
We are the first movers in the market of Collective Self-Consumption (CSC), dominating the market and we are focused on the validation of business model for the market.
We are not developing the solution for a corporation. But for the market.
We are working together with the new protagonists of the energy market: the consumers and local communities.
What is the currency name of PYLON? How many quantities of supply are available? And where will the supply be allocated?
The name is PYLNT is the token, and now there is 560k PYLNT in circulation (out of 633k . https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/pylon-network/
There is also PYLNC (that will be released with the Mainnet), which is the utility coin and will be distributed throughout the next 16 years until the total supply reaches 100M PYLNC.
You can check the Token Paper to see distribution allocation: https://pylon-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TokenPaper_PYLON_ENGLISH-1.pdf
(Please note that an updated token paper will soon be released)
You recently updated the tokenomics. Can you explain why and what changed?
We explain more in our article here:
https://medium.com/@pylonnetwork/pylon-tokenomics-summary-2797baa66f86
Which major problems are there which are solved by Pylon Network?
Data accessibility; Increase interoperability; Increase trust; Reduce operational cost and time response.
What role does blockchain play in the energy sector?
The Collective Self-Consumption (CSC) use case requires communication among various stakeholders, allowing them to exchange information and cooperate without frictions (even though their interests might not be aligned, as they might be competitors etc.).
Now, in the digital era, this information is data — and to be more precise — electricity consumption and production data.
Pylon Network applies its blockchain technology to create a Neutral Energy Data Hub for these kind of data, serving the CSC use case as our first use case.
So any other application that requires multi-stakeholders’ cooperation, blockchain can play a role and offer value by combining transparency and privacy.
In an energy system that becomes more and more distributed (prosumers etc.) the need for blockchain will become bigger.
There we see many projects that claims they are fully Decentralized. But they done their work in a Centralized way. How can we sure that pylon is fully Decentralized? Can you please tell us what’s pylon working method?
There is a balance that is needed, especially when talking about market implementation. The energy sector is very closed and centralized “by nature”, so there needs to be some kind of balance.
However, we are taking the following approach to ensure that Pylon remains as decentralized as possible, within this environment:
- Our blockchain code is open source. This means that any developer can integrate their services with Pylon’s Neutral Data Hub without any cost.
- Our Neutral Data Hub has no barriers to enter.
- Everyone can become a Federated Node
Just to close, I would like to highlight that for us decentralization comes more by giving the right to the consumers to choose how to utilize their data and having full control over them — and less by the technology specs.
How many partners currently have trusted #PYLON technology and what benefits do these partners bring to #PYLON and vice versa?
You can check our website PylonData (https://pylondata.com/), also more (and more exciting!) are coming.
Which problem you solve with the integration of Blockchain with energy market? And what motivates you to chose this Blockchain application?
The benefits from the combination of blockchain + energy were mentioned before. Our motivation is to dedicate ourselves on something with a positive impact for us and the future generations.
What are the differences between a normal Node and a Federated Node Powered by Pylon? And why a energy related project like you need have Nodes into its ecosystem?
After the tokenomics update that we published recently, there are only one type of nodes: the Federated Nodes.
The nodes are required to validate all transactions of energy data between the Neutral Energy Data Hub and the integrated digital energy services.
More info can be found in our Token Paper: https://pylon-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TokenPaper_PYLON_ENGLISH-1.pdf
What’s the utility and real life use case and application of pylon?
The current validated use case of Pylon Network is the space of Local Energy Communities, and more specificially, the use case of Collective Self-Consumption.
The Collective Self-Consumption (CSC) use case requires communication among various stakeholders, allowing them to exchange information and cooperate without frictions (even though their interests might not be aligned, be competitors etc.).
Now, in the digital era, this information is data — and to be more precise — electricity consumption and production data.
Pylon Network applies its blockchain technology to create a Neutral Energy Data Hub for these kind of data, serving the CSC use case as our first use case.
We have made an explanatory video series on our Youtube channel, and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrVxT1YtR90PKyOrm8kSq8C-d4IPr-fJe
You will agree with me that ADOPTION and UTILITY is very key to project survival and success, what’s being done to drive global adoption of pylon?
For the time being we are focusing on EU, where regulation, infrastructure etc. is harmonized. This is very important for the energy sector, since we are talking about a heavily regulated sector that cannot avoid the existing grid for example.
We have already validated the replicability of our infrastructure and tools in other EU countries and more specifically France, Portugal and Italy.
These markets have many similarities with the Spanish market (infrastructure, regulations and market size) in which we are already offering services .
More info about the customers / partners can be found here: pylondata.com
Can you tell me How many Alternatives Power plants are working with you?
Last October we announced the first of the collective self consumption installation that is running on our testnet.
You can check out a number of videos we have regarding that:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36zL-LpsjfU&t=4s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLAnOngpuq8
And per our roadmap, more will be announced before the end of the year.
When we speak about Energy (public service by the Governments) we need to Talk also about regulatory terms, so can you tell me How Pylon manages this ? How many countries can enjoy your services?
We are focused in the Spanish energy market, and we have adapted our solutions to this energy market requirements. At the same time we have also validated/tested our software in other markets like Portugal and France — with similar regulatory terms.
The use case we are focused is the CSC, which also has a huge potential in all these countries.
I am an ETHICAL HACKER AND EXPERIENCED DEVELOPER, do you have plans for HACKATHON so as to check the security of your ecosytem periodically and also invite developers to build on pylon?
Of course! That’s one of the main reasons why our tech is open-source. However, we do not expect to begin any such initiative before the launch of MainNet.
As a developer I Know SOLIDITY, Java C, KSML, how easy is it to build DApps on pylon?
You just need to connect to Pylon blockchain to develop a DApp with the language you know.
You can add if you want about the energy data stored on the blockchain and the user can display the data on a DApp entering their private key.
Marketing is a central element for every project, so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieve the goals set. What is your strategy to attract New User and Investor to Pylon and keep them long term?
That’s right, but there is something more important, which isthe TIMING!
If you do a strong marketing efforts with only tech evangelism, the result is focused on the short term. If you do it when you have implemented real products in the market, then you will be able to maintain the market traction in the long term. And this is our focus: demonstrate first, hype after!
What are your plans in place for global expansion, what are you focusing on at this time, expansion, marketing, partnerships or exchange listing
As a business strategy, we are focusing in our niche market, in our case Spain and Portugal, once we will leads this market we will penetrate other european markets as France, Germany and Italy. By successfully dominating our niche market the future expansion will be easier and quicker.
Most of the investors just focus on the price of the token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. Can you tell us the motivation and benefits for investors to hold the token for long term?
We are really focused on the market and regulation, we have built the legal framework for data sharing between energy stakeholders in Spain and we have validated its replicability in all the EU coutnries.
As you mention in some of your questions, the regulations in the energy sector are so strong and is one of the most common barriers. We will launch the pilots this year with a real use case using our blockchain tech, while offering a real and validated business model. As we always do, we will then work close with our customers and partners to improve the solution and suit their needs.
Our priorities are three:
- Customers,
- Customers,
- And customers!
Many thanks to everyone for their questions and participation. And many thanks to Blockcircle community for the accommodation!
In retrospective, we realized that some of the questions escaped our attention and they were not answered (the amount of questions that came in, was bombastic!).
For anyone who would like to learn more about these questions, feel free to get in touch with the team via the links below! We are always here to help :)
Stay tuned. Stay connected. Stay updated.
Web || Twitter || Linkedin || Facebook ||
Medium || Reddit || YouTube || Instagram
