November 3rd AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO

In this article you will find the answers that our CEO, Claudio Parrinello, gave in the AMA session on the 3rd of November.

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

All paid Type 3 and Type 1 sensors have been shipped by now. 

The new App has been released. It is hitting national App Stores gradually – the timing does not depend on us.

This App is a major milestone for PlanetWatch. It has required an incredible amount of work, and I really want to pay tribute to our CTO Ivan D’Ettorre and all his technical team for working round the clock for several months. 

Please, be patient as we have a huge flow of App requests on the servers and we are not Google yet! We are scaling up resources in real time, so it will take some adjustment period. 

Please read our blog posts regarding the App and activation procedures. If after reading the posts you need support, please do not send emails, as it is not the right way to get support. Please open tickets instead. 

By the way, we will launch the first Tech AMA form next week, so you’ll be able to ask all App-related questions.

Now, let’s come to a big issue which have raised a lot of question, “Know Your Customer”, KYC:

1. Why?  

As I mentioned some time ago, you should not think of PlanetWatch as a “mining” project. In a typical crypto mining project, i.e. bitcoin mining, users can use any piece of hardware as long as it can run the right algorithm. You can build mining farms, the more units you connect, the more money you can make and there is no way to cheat. 

PlanetWatch is something different. PlanetWatch is a global environmental monitoring project based on Big Data, with incentives for data contributors. We give incentives via PLANETS tokens to those who commit to sending us meaningful data from which we can extract scientific as well as business value. Unfortunately, this commitment can be broken by people who try to cheat. Unlike bitcoin mining farms, which are ok, building PlanetWatch sensor farms is cheating, because this type of data is not useful, so if you send us “farm” data and get PLANETS in return, this is the same as buying food in a shop with a fake dollar bill. Unfortunately, in a large community you always get some people who try to cheat, and we want to get rid of them. 

Before the introduction of KYC, if you were a PlanetWatch cheater, you could set up a sensor farm and earn PLANETS until we find out. When we find out, we ban your sensors. However, you could create a new email address and essentially start all over again. Now with KYC, if we find that someone is cheating, we are able to ban the person, not just the sensors. 

PlanetWatch is about trust between people, if you breach our trust relationship, you get banned as a person.

2. How does it work? 

Our KYC process uses a third-party service provider which specialises in the processing of personal data. It is a French company called Synaps. They work for a number of companies, in particular for several crypto entities, such as Bitfinex and Polkadot. 

• They are responsible for storing securely KYC personal data on their servers located in Europe. 

• They are also responsible for implementing modifications asked by users. Under European privacy regulations (GDPR), you have the possibility to seek modifications or erasal of your personal data. In compliance with this, Synaps would do that upon demand.

Please note that on the blockchain we only store non-sensitive information, e.g. approximate position (for outdoor sensors – no way to extract exact installation address), and scientific data. 

Obviously, no personal data is written on the blockchain. It would be crazy and illegal to do that, as you cannot modify or erase blockchain data. 

Also, obviously, our data products will NOT include personal data. In other words, we will never sell personal data without your consent.

People who had a tech issue with liveness, etc and cannot try again – We are talking to Synaps and they will re-enable the process for all the people who are blocked. This takes a bit of time.

Here you can find PlanetWatchers’ questions to Claudio

Bitmart has so few planets on their exchange. The price can triple based on a few thousand dollars. If the coin is at .3 when I need to buy sensors, it can go up to .7 by the time I buy all the coins I need. This would in return mean I am paying a lot more for the sensors. How can we solve this issue? As always, you are the man Claudio! 

Liquidity will increase over time. It is an organic process, just be patient and look at PlanetWatch as a project which is moving steadily ahead. We aim at long-term performance.

Can we get a technical roadmap channel added to discord for referencing?

I will discuss internally with the Tech Team.

Hello Claudio, does PlanetWatch have any future plans going into the sustainable energy industry, deploying or helping to deploy solar farms and/or windmills for electricity (power) production? Does PlanetWatch have any connections or even work with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) to help design better, more sustainable buildings and infrastructures therefore leading to “healthier” cities? Does PlaneWatch have any future plans to deploy or build CO2 Capture structures (plants) or to partner with research centres to develop and deploy that kind of structures?

These are all interesting things, but not in the short term. Currently we need to focus on delivering our sensing network.

When do you expect to announce a new T2 sensor?

First of all, Type 2 means outdoor, consumer-grade sensor. Just in case people get confused. In the coming weeks we might be able to share some design features, but I cannot promise sales before the end of the year.

It is the 3rd of November and the October Airqino batch is not delivered yet, but also there is no payment link. What happened? 

Airqino production is going according to plan globally, with the usual challenges about procuring components, but I think I will be able to give you a good update on this next week.

T3 sensors cost so much more and only produce 30 tokens. It seems T4 is more valuable for the planetwatcher. Will this increase? 700 for T3 and 300 for T4 – two T4 will bring 46 at less cost than one T3. I am going to get one anyways but I am not seeing the logic.

As you know, we have decided to top up (out of PlanetWatch’s own pockets) Type 3 rewards until the end of 2021 by an additional 50%. In parallel, we will soon organise a community vote with a proposal to make this increase permanent and funded by the Type 3 rewards budget.  

Will license pricing remain the same for the foreseeable future? If pricing does change, what catalysts would lead to that decision?

The commitment I can take and renew is that we will never change prices overnight. We will always announce in advance such decisions. License pricing is obviously a sensitive parameter in the network construction phase. If we think in purely financial terms, one could argue that pricing should be fixed in Planets and float in fiat terms according to Planets price fluctuations, in order to keep a constant ROI, etc, etc. As you should have learned by now, this is not the logic that we are implementing at PlanetWatch. This is not an investment scheme, it is a science and business project with incentives for data providers. So we want to keep joining PlanetWatch as affordable as possible for the people, while obviously we need to cover costs in order to be able to build long-term value.

Would it possibly help (scientifically) in the future to know more about the sensors i. e. where they are located (bedroom, workshop, next to a street, office etc.). Could that info be implemented through today’s infrastructure? 

Yes, of course this info adds value to the dataset, we just need to be very careful to handle sensitive information, and we will be. 

Do you plan to have more places where we can pay with Planets in the future, are there discussions which you can disclose already?

It is a tricky regulatory issue. There are a number of entities which would be keen to accept Planets payments, but I understand that this is tricky in terms of compliance with utility token definition, at least in some countries. We will seek legal advice.

Do you think it would be interesting to have sensors that can be attached to a car and cover a big area outside (i. E. Couriers)?

It is interesting in principle (cars, buses, bikes, etc), in practice there can be some complications related to the air flow around a moving object (if we talk about outdoor monitoring). It needs time for testing. On the other hand, indoor air quality monitoring in public transports and other vehicles is very relevant and interesting.

When will you plan to Audit the project and who will be the Auditor? That will add remarkable value to the project all together.

Not sure what kind of audit you are suggesting. We are regulated as a French company, submitting annual accounts, etc. We could at some stage seek ISO certification for some of our internal processes, etc. Sure enough, if we move in this direction somebody will say we are not decentralised, etc. I guess you cannot make everybody happy!

A crypto winter is to be expected after such an impressive run and that will likely impact the price of Planets. Are the project operations dependent on the token price in any way? Will the project be sustainable if the token price falls down and stays there for a long period, which is a typical behaviour for a crypto token, regardless of the fundamentals?

Of course everything can happen, but I think we have adequate fiat resources. 

Can the App on the 2nd of November support the Kaiterra getting the tokens without having one’s phone constantly on? Can the app work in the background?

Apart from Atmotube PRO, which needs its own app PlanetWatch Wearable, all other sensors after the initial configuration do not need your phone on. 

Does PlanetWatch have any plans to organise environmental events? 

We surely will.

I did advanced KYC and still cannot buy more than 5 licences.

We are processing requests as we speak that need to be processed manually for the time being. Remember, you must open a ticket for that and select the correct option.

Hi Claudio, I have purchased two licenses on two different email addresses and I want to combine them under one address. What do I need to do to merge the emails together?

You need to open a ticket and choose the “Merge Accounts” option in the dropdown menu, providing us the requested information.

Hi Claudio, what will be the use case for the Planet Token to make people hold it instead of just selling their rewards immediately? I see potentially lots of sensor managers selling their Planets on a monthly basis, where the buyers will come from. Your project to stake tokens for forests is a great example of a use case! I am asking so I can understand the longer term sustainability of the project as without a viable, valuable token, the ecosystem is not sustainable.

All our products and services will either be payable directly in Planets, or for some corporate/governmental customers we will bill in fiat but then convert a large fraction in Planets. Value of data is the key. That is why we insist so much on data quality

Do we create another account under Explorer even if we have one with PlanetWatch when purchasing the license?

Yes. This is written in our blog post. When you purchase a license, you get an account which is only used for E-commerce purposes. Your REAL PlanetWatch account is the one that you create on the Explorer.

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