December 22 AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO

In this article you will find the answers that our CEO, Claudio Parrinello, gave in the AMA session on December 22.

Before answering your questions, let me first start with some announcements.

As you know, we are a very young company, so all systems are not yet perfect. For this reason, and by reviewing what happened in the last two months, we have decided to extend a measure that was so far applied only to Kaiterra and Awair sensors:

All sensors currently in the PlanetWatch network will enjoy a free two-month license extension, which will kick in once current licenses expire.

This is a way to say thank you to all the early birds in PlanetWatch.

We’ve been listed on the MEXC exchange. It is a very large and reliable exchange and I believe this will contribute significantly to PlanetWatch adoption worldwide.

Today 400 emails for Type 1 devices have been sent, thus we are moving ahead with sales. I am very sorry that some additional delays have been experienced by US-based PlanetWatchers. Hopefully, this is going to be sorted by next week: the problem is related to some delays in clearing customs for plug adapters.

Please let me remind you again not to trust any web rumors about PlanetWatch. I have heard many bizarre stories in the last few days e.g. somebody saying that we are going to ban all the sensors in a specific country. I strongly recommend that you do not make any financial decisions based on strange rumors. Only trust official information channels.

People are voting on a Governance decision. I am quite happy to see that lots of votes have been cast. Unfortunately, some iOS users experienced challenges. The technical issue is not a PlanetWatch internal problem, but nonetheless we managed to sort it out.

2021 milestone review

I would like to have a very quick review of what happened in 2021.

• 1.5 billion data streams processed by PlanetWatch;
• 135 million blockchain transactions on Algorand’s mainet;
• Over 30.000 sensors connected to the network;
• Planet Token listed on three major centralized exchanges.

These figures summarize to a good extent the traction and the fast progress of our project.

I think it is worth recalling the very strong endorsement we got from Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez, who personally welcomed PlanetWatch to Miami. This is an important milestone in terms of getting institutional endorsement to our project. We plan a large deployment in Miami as disclosed in the Decipher event.

Another important milestone is the deal closed with Borderless Capital, a very forward-thinking VC that set up a 10-million dollar fund dedicated to speeding up the development of PlanetWatch.

Our indoor air quality monitoring activities, in particular in some Hotels, have led to a scientific paper jointly authored by PlanetWatch staff and academic researchers. The indoor data that we took in that Hotel were deemed relevant enough to justify a scientific analysis. To me, scientific validation is a prerequisite for market validation.

What about 2022?

We believe we can become a global reference for decentralized high-resolution air quality monitoring. Now we need to scale up, deploy in several relevant cities, show that the data we deliver are relevant and lead to actionable recommendations. In the process, we will release new devices and do our best in catering for the level of hardware demand that we are seeing from the Community. We will also look into opening up new use cases and working on projects such as water monitoring, yet we will not rush into it.

We are working on potential synergies with the Helium Network too, but I should not say more than this for the time being.

Some sensor prices are going to increase in the near future, however we always play it fair, so here is the announcement:

Prices of sensors sold by PlanetWatch will increase as of Jan 1, 2022. But if you buy your license before the end of 2021, you’ll pay the 2021 price for your Type 1 or Type 3 sensor when available.

Here is a preview of a new Type 2 outdoor air quality monitor device, which features Wi-Fi connectivity and a solar panel and is able to measure PM 2.5.

This is one of several devices that we might release and onboard next year and I believe they will all be satisfactory both in terms of availability and performance.

Here you can find PlanetWatchers’ questions to Claudio

Will there be more growth and sustainability in the project? If so, how long do you think it would last? 

I have just spelled out a few key elements in terms of the traction that we are getting. We have a lot of people knocking on our door, including institutional investors, so I believe we are on a good track.

Is PlanetWatch a “for profit” company?

Yes, we are aiming to strike a balance between being profitable and being fair and open to everybody. 

Hello, I just wanted to confirm with Claudio on the Type 3 Sensor GPS issue and whether we can change the address from the PW Headquarters to our own addresses in the PW app? 

Yes you can do it. Please insert the correct address as soon as possible via the Explorer.

The order tracking is not working.

Please, refer to the tweet we sent, in order to have an exact explanation of what kind of info you can get from that page.

First of all, congrats for the 1.000 Airqinos and 25.000 Type 4 sensors! What a milestone! In regards to the sensors, can you give an update on which cities are already covered well with sensors? Is there a global top city list?

If you open the PlanetWatch Map you can get a good idea of where we are already and also where we are going. We are already present in a significant way in a number of cities including Riga, Budapest, Munich, London and many more.

In 2022 we are likely to go big in Miami, Berlin, Zurich, Copenhagen, London Madrid, Porto, Lisbon, Rome, Dubai, Barcelona, Valencia, …

Any chance you will collaborate with Yieldly and start a $Planets staking pool?!

As you have seen, we are doing many things in our own way. We are not very keen on standard staking schemes. We are about to launch early next year what we call the “Stake for the Planet” initiative, where you will be offered the possibility to stake PLANETS and in return help us plant trees in sustainable forests. 

Hi Claudio. Could you please talk about the return process of Kaitera cartridges. Who’s going to fund it, how long will it take and what about rewards whilst cartridges are serviced.

We will discuss this in more detail later on. I think you can see by now that we are fair and you will not have any nasty surprises related to servicing of sensors.

Dear Claudio, I am going to buy a few Arqinos for a few different countries. Will I have the option to choose different network providers depending on the destination country and the area coverage or will it be taken care of by PW? 

We provide the device with a SIM card which ensures worldwide connectivity. 

What wishes do you have for Planetwatch for the year 2022?

I believe we have a huge opportunity to create a framework which leverages the citizen science angle, engaging ordinary people in projects with a real scientific impact on the world, and creates at the same time a profitable business which delivers value, health protection for everybody and education. There are a number of innovative features in our pipeline. My wish really is to manage the growth of PlanetWatch, which is very very fast, in the best possible way.

Will you update the Map?

We will look into updating the Tier structure next year.

Keep watching our Planet and get ready to help us make it greener by staking your Planets!