XAG Labs AMA: development plans and future roadmaps
On September 3, 2021, Kawada Hidetoshi, the head of XAG Labs, accepted an exclusive interview with a blockchain media in Shinjuku, Japan. In the interview, Kawada Hidetoshi responded to the community’s questions on various aspects, involving current cooperation, development plans and future roadmaps. The following is the interview transcript:
Q: When did you start to get in touch with the blockchain? When did you decide to join Xrpalike Gene?
A: I have established a Japanese Ripple Gateway together with my partner in 2016, and have accumulated a lot of industry experience. Before joining Xrpalike Gene, I also served as a blockchain technology consultant for many companies. I have noticed Xrpalike Gene since last year, but formally joined in 2021 when XAG Labs Co., Ltd. was established.
Q: What role will XAG Labs play in the future? Does it have official support?
A: Of course, we have received strong official support from Xrpalike Gene. XAG Labs will become Xrpalike Gene’s Asia-Pacific headquarters. After becoming the Asia-Pacific headquarters, we will register developers from all over the world, maintain consensus nodes, and develop new functions.
Q: Can you be more specific? For example, about consensus nodes.
A: Well, Xrpalike Gene is decentralized. Because of some legal cases in the United States, we believe that a globally distributed consensus network will be more conducive to the development of the cause. Since the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Headquarters, we have taken over about one-third of the consensus nodes, the other one-third are in charge of the XAG foundation, and the rest are run by the cooperative super nodes. Therefore, Xrpalike Gene’s network is strong enough for us to develop various applications on it. In fact, our development progress is very good.
Q: Are there any practical applications?
A: Yes, for example, the use of XAG to purchase Japanese real estate that we launched earlier has helped many overseas owners. These are large-scale transactions on the chain. A typical case of small transactions is to help tourists make small payments during the Olympic Games. There are also cross-chain applications, such as payment in conjunction with the Filecoin network. But these are just the beginning. Our future is that not only institutions and technical personnel are using this network, but everyone can use it.
Q: If everyone can use it, can I use it?
A: Yes, you can generate a wallet now. Then you can issue assets on XAG ledger and make payments. In order to make it easier for everyone to use, we will publish a document on how to set up a gateway, including versions for ordinary users and professional users. Ordinary users can issue Tokens without having to learn programming, while professional users can perform more advanced operations through programs. To achieve this goal, we will also upgrade our wallets to make them more usable. We are in talks with the most well-known wallet service providers, and the next version will be launched soon, which will have more assets and more convenient for users to issue assets.
Q: Great. Can I exchange various assets on it?
A: Yes, one of our future work directions is to make Xrpalike Gene the “Internet of Value”. Various assets, even NFTs. You will see the emergence of various gateways in the coming year and realize cross-chain through the services of the gateways. And you only need XAG.
Q: In addition to these, are there any other plans?
A: Our technology roadmap is very clear. In addition to the upgrade of the wallet, the development of various practical applications. We are also building a new generation of liquidity engine and smart contract engine. This will be the infrastructure for next-generation applications. When these infrastructures are complete, users can not only issue assets, but also contribute existing assets to the liquidity engine and smart contract engine. This will be a vibrant value network. In the next two years, our employees will be very busy.
Q: Wow, it seems you are very confident. Frankly speaking, there are various chains now, do you really think Xrpalike Gene will win?
A: Very confident. The old generation of blockchains is too heavy, low performance, and not environmentally friendly at all. Xrpalike Gene’s consensus mechanism is very advanced and does not need to consume more energy. And our network performance is very high, enough to support the use of millions of users. Now, excluding the number of exchanges, the number of accounts on our chain is about 90,000. It can be said that there are hundreds of times more space, and we are very confident about it. In fact, thousands of new accounts are set up every month, and this trend is still accelerating.
Q: Thank you very much for participating in our interview. It seems that I should set up a new account now.
A: Thank you for your arrangement.