I gotta admit, I always have a smirk of superiority on my face when people ask questions that imply that they think of XEL as a "regular" cryptocurrency.
Sorry for being so inactive at the moment. I don't feel like I can contribute much at the moment, neither ideas nor time.
One question regarding the hardcoded guardnodes: I still don't understand how these are determined. I get the hardcoded part, but how does one (or rather an institution, I guess?) become a guardnode in the first place?
Now, this would actually be an interesting idea, wouldn't it: if guardnodes and maybe even supernodes would be managed by universities and similar institutions, this might create a) a certain positive reputation of the project and b) incentivize those institutions to actually use the Elastic network. In any case, I'd love to get those involved. is anyone up for lobbying? I don't have contacts in that regard.
I discussed the elastic project with 3 Phds this week to start gathering use cases. All of them agree, there are applications across nearly all research fields.
I think the biggest strength for the project is seen when you spin it as an on-demand technology, and target the more under funded universities that dont have large super computers on site and typically use cloud computing. Elastic becomes the clear winner if the miners can handle the specific jobs, if there is amble supply of processing power around the clock, and if there is no gap in technological understanding...(blockchain is a daunting word to some)...The application needs to have a very user friendly front-end, basically so the user can access their account, input the job, egress with data, and feel safe in the fact that multiple people would be handling their data for processing the jobs. (i tried to explain security through obscurity, piecing up the data so no one could recreate the whole data set as a security strength - but ran into more questions..) such as, I was not certain how to address the question of data security in transit and at rest on individual processing nodes. I think that is a 2 part answer, the in-transit part from EK; and the at rest part from coralreefer.
I agree with ttookk on the marketing of the product, i think thats the path of least resistance. But I also feel like the real potential for XEL might require a more formal organization around the project, and some legal security around the code base. My one contact is a VC in the neuroscience field and kept harping on securing the intellectual property some how to prevent competition. Obviously, these are topics the developers need to address. I have heard EK wants to take a step back once the mainnet is live - which is easy to understand after putting forth so much effort. But I would really hate to see someone snag the XEL code and try to package it as their own application. I mean clearly the "concept" is valuable, so IP theft is definitely not out of the question.
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