[SUMMARY] Monthly Video Update - December 2020

Karim:

Despite the delay in the Agoras.Live release I still think we ended up the year on a very strong note boht on TML and Agoras.Live side. Regarding TML, Murisi has continued his excellent work on the eval operator. He re-implemented it and improved functionality of the operator by allowing for larger program size as well as the much improved performance. The Eval Operator continues to be a very hot topic of discussion between ohad and the academic panel. On the syntax/language side, Omar continued his work on the parsing and the conversion to universe of size. An Important optimization for increasing the speed of TML programs. He Also added complex type specifications which are compound data types which are similar to C / C++ data types. He also fixed some bugs in the TMl parsing. Juan transitioned from working on TML for the last couple of months to working on a new high priority project in the month of December. The transition from the Omi layer to the ERC-20 Ethereum Platform. We have a candidate for the smart contract that will be necessary for the ERC-20 token. Ohad and Juan are currently testing it on the Ethereum testnet. On the TML editor side, Thomas continued his great work on that. He implemented the front end using the stencil JS tool which allowed him to implement syntax highlighting for TML and he fixed some bugs related to the syntax highlighting with respect to unicode, He also fixed a hard long standing TML bug relating to duplicate rules. On the Agoras.Live side there are 2 main reasons for the delayed release. First, we had to move to jitsi open source video platform to Big Blue Button for better reliability. Andrei had to re-implement the payment system for that. It was a lot of work and we continue to test with Big Blue Button. The other difficult task is the payment layer. We have transitioned from Omni to ERC-20. THe second reason for delay is due to rebranding. There is another platform with the name Agora. Being a video platform as well there is too much of a close call there so we are having to rebrand Agoras.Live. We are still working on the name. We are looking at February for a Beta release with potential main release in the May timeframe.

Umar:

One of the challenges we’ve had is how to specify the sizes of integers and factors that we have in TML. Previously, it was all fixed and static. However, depending on the domain and the model that should vary One of the solutions was to use types to specify what type of object a certain variable is referring to so we introduced integer corrector and symbol types so now you can define them for the predicates. THe other important thing was if you want to define complex types like structures. You can now group these primitive types to a complex type structure similar to C / C++. You can also map the variables against these complex types and you can parse them. This should be specifiable and the TML parser should be able to parse these types. We have built the first version of that. It can be used to convert the raw program into a size two universe program. We call it a bit program because we have exactly a bit specified for every variable constant and symbol. Currently the conversion from raw conversion to bit program is completed. The next step will be to take the bit program and map it into the underlying abilities and rules. That’s more challenging because the architecture is more complex and we have to cross and cut through lots of things to make that happen. I added some tests. Both of these changes have been checked in. I look for feedback from peers on how to further improve it.

Murisi:

Last month I was mostly working on Eval and some of the things I have done include a complete redesign of eval in order to circumvent certain requirements on the sizes of interpreters. SPecifically before you could only nest smaller interpreters inside large interpreters but now that is no longer a restriction. THe trick I used in order to achieve this was to use Linked lists in order to represent data in the interpreter. ANother thing that I have done is implement the eval operator and I have started optimising it in order to get practicable speeds. RIght now eval is currently only working on smaller programs. The reason being one of it’s bottlenecks is generating a large number of facts in order to interpret quoted programs. I have started doing a form of on demand evaluation in order to choose specifically between facts i want to derive and not derive every fact. Sometimes every fact is used later on by the program. I have also been researching extensions to eval. One in particular was self modifying programs and this would work by allowing a quoted program to modify the quotation that contains it and if a quoted program is able to this would cause eval ro start interpreting a different program, This is how self modification will be achieved. This may be useful as a mechanism for changing laws. The last thing I have been doing throughout has been identifying bugs and fixing them.

Tomas:

In december after several days of debugging I found a bug in TML. I’ve done some work on transformation of nested programs into a single nested program. It already works for programs without conditional statements like IF and WHILE. Regarding the online TML editor, I revised the front end parts and I fixed most of the issues including syntax highlighting of source files containing unicode. UI updates problems, and syntax highlighting for new TML features. I will be making further fixes and improvements to the UI.

Kilian:

I’ve been working on several things this month. A tau community handbook which will serve as a comprehensive guide about everything that could be of interest to existing and new community members. The goal is that when someone looks into the Tau community handbook they will get an understanding about tau, how to contribute and how to get rewarded for the contributions. I've also worked on the nearly finished Tau supporter program and hope to be able to launch it this month. THe goal of which will be to have the option to complete challenges and based on the traction you generate you will be rewarded in agoras. A great way to drive new attention to Tau. I have been working on the pitch presentation for the project. WE have several narratives. We are drawing closer to finalising the presentation and to turn it into an animated video. This month we were able to announce the two new advisors. Prof. Franconi (https://inf.unibz.it/~franconi/) joins our team as advisor in knowledge reasoning and representation. His research relates to Database, ArtificialIntelligence & semantic tech. Prof. Benzmüller, whose research includes areas of AI, philosophy, mathematics, computer science and natural language, will be joining our team, firstly to solve second order logic. We have also onboarded a 3rd advisor. His research focuses on combining the methods from formal argumentation theory, natural language semantics, epistemic and philosophical logic to formally model the mathematical philosophical logical and reasoning of humans. We’ve been speaking with potential partners for integration fiat to crypto gateways into agoras live. We still haven't found the ideal partner so if you have any recommendations please pass them onto us. The whitebit AMA has gone up onto tauchainfans.com. I plan to publish more community oriented content on there so check out tauchainfans.com for updates. The community member for this month is Jordi Capitan for constantly liking and retweeting our twitter posts.

Mo’az:

This month I have been polishing multiple parts of the Agoras.LIve site, We were working on polishing the home page in particular how we can display the knowledge providers there. We have settled on one of my iterations. Another thing I’ve worked on is the profile, how we can solve the issue of a single user can be expert in multiple areas of expertise, video uploads and an area where the user can introduce themselves properly. We’ve polished the search on both mobile and desktop. We’ve also been working on the feed where the user can ask multiple knowledge providers for help on a specific task at the same time.

Andrei:

Last month and christmas holidays I’ve been working on implementing the payment system into the video communication platform. It was a very hard task but I needed to be sure everything was properly encrypted on the user side as much as possible. Let me demonstrate how it works. [https://youtu.be/9-xYdKTiOHs?t=1314] Let schedule a call with albert einstein for 60mins for today. You can see it now has a proposed meeting and notification that there is a new appointment. We will accept it and go back to our user profile. The meeting is now. We encrypt storage in order to verify our payment and then we get to the platform. This is Albert Einstein's wallet on exchange. The call has been confirmed and we can make the call. It will cost 1020 agoras for one hour but for this purpose I have set it to 1 agoras just to demonstrate. We want to pay so we encrypt our storage in order to create the payment code from the exchange. SO we got this code. It is encoded with Albert's public key. With that encrypted key we can proceed with the call. IF the payment fails the payment will show as unpaid. Albert can discuss with students and/or ban them from the meeting. IF we check the balance on exchange we can see it has come through. So we got our payment for the class and we can proceed.
Now we will make a list of what shall work on what should work on the agoras platform and test the site with the team. We will then have a closed beta and work with Mo’az to further polish. We will invite the community for a round of testing. Then it will be publicly released to everyone.

Juan:

My work this month was around the eth infrastructure and the implementations of a ERC-20 token for the new version of the Agoras token. We’ve put a lot of attention into the security concerns with ERC tokens. We set up some code and scripts to interact with Ethereum in a convenient way for our requirements. I’ve been analysing feasible implementation for multi sig wallets and the off chain payment system is required to run agoras live. Shifting from Omni layer to Etherium and concentrating on the feasible security flaws of the Ethereum structure.

Fola: I’ve been speaking with BCEX and UCEX regarding the questions about withdrawals within the community. I await their response. We have signed a contract to list our ERC-20 token at UCEX once it is ready. We have on boarded a new team member, He is a student of Prof. Benzmüller and he is going to be helping on the developer side of things. We’ve been working on Fiat onramps and hope to have that feature to buy agoras using credit/debit card. Rebranding we are naming agoras. The agoras token will stay as Agoras but the agoras live platform will be renamed. It could be renamed Tau but we don’t know currently. We are working with lawyers to make sure people’s data input on site is held in regards to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) We don’t want to hold any user data and want to make sure the platform goes out inline with GDPR guidance we have to abide by. In Addition to the UCEX exchange we have a new exchange we have signed to with the token trading pairs ARGS/USDT and AGRS/BTC. The announcement of which will be coming soon Once the ERC-20 token is ready.

Ohad:

I have been working with Juan to create the ERC-20 token. WE’ve been doing some testing on the testnet and I guess it will be finished in a few days. AS fola says New exchanges are coming, WE can’t say their names now but I’m pretty sure it will make the community very happy. I’m also working on the explanation materials we have for Tau and Agoras. They are exciting ideas. They just need the right words to explain them. I have been studying finite fields and in general fields of characteristics too which can be seen as an aspect of boolean algebras that apparently is unstudied and should be very fruitful for all kinds of logic including second order logic. I’ve also had a lot of discussion with Prof. Franconi about everything but in particular about self interpretation aspects of TML and the languages for law in general.

Q&A:
Q: Are the team full time employees or part time contractors?

Fola: All of us are full time. The exceptions being we do have some part time team members joining that will be Lucca who is a student of Prof. Benzmüller, and the university advisors that have joined the team on our advisory board also work part time. Our hearts are in this project fully so we are all in, all of the time!

Q: For five years now, little to no effort has been put into Agoras or Tau being known or participating in the cryptocurrency scene. I see many community members being fed by this. A negative sentiment can obstruct the building of participation that's needed for feeding an eventual TML base. How are you planning to fix this?

Ohad: Indeed in most of those years, there was less effort. I was virtually alone and couldn’t handle everything but now things are completely different. We have the whole team including Fola and Kilian working on forming a massive outreach. I’m sure you will feel it quite soon.

Q: Is Ohad working on this project full time?

Ohad: Yes, definitely. This project is the most important thing for me but also because of the promise I gave the community. Beyond this I see Tau as really the most important in the world and I see people who really get to understand Tau to agree with me on this. So, I definitely don’t work anywhere else. This is the most important thing for me.

Q: A small amount of agoras is held for Ohad and the team. How long can this project live with the money available?

Ohad: The small amount you refer to is the amount we will keep once the full products are ready. We do have a large amount of agoras that until then we intend to sell further in a good point in the future once the project has gained traction and so on.

Q: Is the team running to a budget, including allocation of money for marketing. etc ?

Ohad: Yes definitely, we have a budget for marketing and paying the team and finishing all of our promises. Definitely.

Q: Coingecko and I’m sure others have pages that link to news of crypto. Can we start to upload our news to these sites?

Kilian: We will check with coingecko to see if the option to do is free or paid. For paid options it would make sense to upload our video and pitch presentation once it’s ready. We can distribute the video across all platforms. For free options we can definitely sharing our monthly updates. A good idea, I’ll create a list of the places we can do so.

Q: Throughout our time of development, have we seen much outside interest from other blockchain projects?

Kilian: We haven’t really seen interest from other blockchain projects but I believe that has to do with us not having a released product yet. Once TML is released I imagine that will spark external interest from other projects.

Q: What event do you think is necessary to increase the price of agoras. Adding team members surely doesn’t affect the price. Can we expect a rise in the price before agoras live is released?

Ohad: Of course we cannot specifically say anything about the rise of price. We are actively working on releasing materials that explain the project. Once one understands what the project is about then there are very few questions about it’s value. We also prepare materials for outreach to bigger audiences outside the crypto scene for example the release of TML. Of course we actively work on listing on big and reputable exchanges.

Q: What are your realistic expectations on when Agoras live will be released?

Andrei: We plan to release a closed beta in February and after that we will release it when we are happy with the quality of the service it offers 2-3moths to implement everything after the public testing. Perhaps May? However, with software development it’s difficult to predict.

Q: Now that agoras live has been delayed should we lower our expectations of being listed on a US exchange in Q1 2021?

Fola: We didn’t and don’t have plans to get listed on US exchanges in 2021. However, it is one of our goals and main efforts. WE have a few hoops to jump through that relate to the release of the token and the platform development itself. We do have a non US exchange announcement coming we believe you will be happy with. We continue to work on getting better exchanges for your guys to trade on.

Q: How do you envision the coming months regarding the visibility of the project to the cryptosphere. Do you have any plans to make people interested in us ?

Kilian: Yes, specifically the tau supporter program to drive attention to the project. We will reward community members on the traction/interest they bring to the project, For creating content, for completing challenges that often is related to creating content about tau across social media channels. For example if you got a large influencer to report on tau chain to present our project and it gains a lot of attention then you will be rewarded for that.
Fola: With the rebranding effort we will start marketing into the blockchain space as well via a number of different methods. New website, other new materials that will help new community members become engaged.

Q: Is it possible to refund my BTC if I participated in the ICO?

Ohad: There are no refunds in the participation of the ICO. As you can see we have made quite a lot of progress on development and we hold ourselves to these obligations so we are committed to developing this project and will continue to do so.
Q: Does the team have any plans to do an ICO refund like NEO did? When can we see a release of Tau?

Karim: Tau is our full platform and it depends on many core technologies and components of IDNI. Not just TML which in itself is still in development. Other components such as the internet of languages, the scaling of discussion features and the mapping of opinions. All of these need to be implemented before we can release Tau. Since some of those efforts are very much still in progress I can’t give you an exact date for the release of the entire Tau Platform but I can promise we’ll address that in the next call.