On Jun 19, YOYOW’s founder Bai Cai was invited by Gyro Finance to participate in Value100 Studio and shared on some hot topics that people interested in the cryptocurrencies are concerned about. During the inteview, Bai Cai shared his valuable opinion on the relationship between YOYOW and Himself, YOYOW’s present and future, Bitask’s development and his understanding on blockchain.
a. How did you get involved with blockchain?
I first got to know Bitcoin back in 2013 and there was no concept of blockchain at that time. Blockchain became popular probably in 2015. I thought Bitcoin was very interesting and I was fascinated by it from the beginning. I made a dicision immediately that I would put in all my focus on Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the blockchain industry.
And then I did lots of preparations including community establishment on BTS and discussions about blockchain. It was about 2016 when we came up with an idea that we could do some blockchain projects. At that time Antshares had started its blockchain project already, which gave us an inspiration that why didn’t we start our own blockchain project? Blockchain industry had both challenges and opportunities, while we did believe it could solve some problems. So we started preparation from 2016 with a firm belief, although the whole blockchain industry was in a cold period that most of blockchain products kept falling except Bitcoin, and YOYOW project was officially launched on 25 May, 2018.
b. What is YOYOW?
YOYOW is a content infrastructure in the blockchain field. If we compare EOS with Taobao, YOYOW is VIPS, a public chain focused on contents.
YOYOW provides an effective solution for users who create value but cannot get rewarded for doing it. The most common problems with existing content platforms are the “head effect” and top content platforms monopolizing the majority of flow and profits. However, the platform users, as contents creators and flow contributors, haven’t got the equivalent reward at all, which is obviously unreasonable.
Due to the lack of equitable excitation mechanism, content platforms, on one hand, lose power quickly to continue their products; on the other hand, these platforms don’t have good methods to reward their users even if they have the power.
YOYOW would like to provide a complete excitation system for these content platforms to reward their content creators, producers and disseminators.
Some people think that YOYOW cannot compete with EOS. There is no such comparison between the two projects in my opinion because their product positions are different. The most important part of a product is its users and not its complex functions. The simpler the function is, the better the product will be. A product with its user’s need accurately met and its functions simple enough will definitely attract users. Having many functions does not guarantee the number of users.
I’d like to express YOYOW’s attitude about marketing. YOYOW hasn’t been and never will be a company who promote their products by shouting out slogans. Marketing is a long-term and systematic work, including domestic and overseas community development, which we have been groping and improving on from the very beginning. YOYOW is a new team and we are not a big fan of just painting big pictures and talk the talk. We don’t do unprincipled things such as manipulate prices, but we also don’t neglect jobs that should be done.
c. What’s relationship between YOYOW and Bitask?
I’d like to explan this question through a simple logic. If I want to promote YOYOW and I need to prove that YOYOW is really good. Bitask is that perfect proof, a visible and tangible product which can reveal YOYOW’s advantages and increase its acceptance.
Now Bitask only uses primary algorithm and a new reversion of Bitask is under research and development, which use entirely new algorithm and user interface. Bitask is more like a facaed room, which demonstrate YOYOW’s incentive system is feasible to everyone and can attract more attention at the same time. Bitask is certain to be operated independently in the future to ensure its development and growth.
d. Why YOYOW’s cooperation with others is a little slower than expect？
In my opinion, there are two kinds of cooperation. One is intentional cooperation, such as delivering speeches at some schools or training institutions and so on. These cooperations are hollow and just need to release announcements, which are meanlingless and unimplemented.
Another kind of cooperation is real cooperation, for example, the cooperation with Slow Mist. We both need to review the codes and this work costs about two or three months. However, a simple poster and several worlds can show this cooperation but the process isn’t simple at all.
We always prefer some worthwhile cooperation. Assume now that a content platform is willing to connect onto YOYOW, can it be achieved? Yes, my answer is affirmative but the process will be a little long and complex. First, we need to set up a group to track the entire process; and then optimizing the incentive system according to their own requirements; besides, some problems similar to gateway security issues must be solved in advance. The above process is basicly necessary for one cooperation, which is one reason for why content platforms can’t connect onto YOYOW quickly.
So we open source to let other platforms be able to connect onto YOYOW by themselves. However, the amount of talents in the blockchain field is still small at present, almost no one can finish connecting by himself and requires our team to do it by ourselves. It is another influencing factor of connecting speed.
We are preparing for account system cooperation with BKBT. The user amount of BKBT will increase definitely with its development and account system should be equipped at that time. We will add YOYOW’s function to BKBT and YOYOW’s account can login on BKBT directly after authorization. When this project is finished, it’s very convenient for YOYOW’s users to transfer to BKBT through a simple registration. On the other hand, BKBT can also give YOYOW users a diversion. Such cooperation is actually a process of mutual diversion.
e. YOYOW’s current situation and programme.
At present, YOYOW mainly provides a content value realization system for content creators and content platforms mining function will be launched for the forthcoming period. All content platforms connected onto YOYOW work as EOS block producer, which will share the rest of YOYOW token. The distribution of YOYOW token includes 300 million for ICO, 300 million for team incentives , 100 million for investors and 300 million for foundation to support project for its long-term development. There is another one billion tokens for content platforms.
There were challenges with connecting content platforms. It is less significant for us if the content platforms only has a few thousands of users, which are too small to fulfill YOYOW’s merits. In that case, we would have to have a group for their connecting but the rewards we get would have very limited value. However, some large platforms are not willing to contect onto YOYOW because they are not sure if YOYOW can guarantee their interest. So we will add a content mining function to achieve close cooperation with them. The cooperation relationship between YOYOW and the content platforms isn’t upstream and downstream, but a partnership relationship. Each of them is one precious part of YOYOW ecosystem because more than a half of YOYOW mainnet is for these content platforms.
How to make YOYOW token more valuable? On one hand, we will give it some application scenarios; and on the other hand, we welcome more and more platforms to conntect onto YOYOW system and bring more application scenarios.
YOYOW technical team has about 20 people. I’d like to introduce what they have done in the past years by comparing with EOS. EOS mainnet has been officially launched after more than one year of development. However, actually EOS doesn’t even have a wallet with voting functions because they have been focusing mostly on the mainnet. Even for most of the domestic underlying blockchain, you can see that few of them has their own wallet APP.
YOYOW
At the very beginning, YOYOW released its desktop-version wallet with voting functions, and then we continued to improve and perfect it to perfessional version with complete function now. Secondly we released YOYOW wallet APP for android phone, which was equiped with functions of scaning QR code for login, authorization login and tipping function.
In addition, we complete the YOYOW intermediate key, which makes content platforms connecting much more convenient. The existing APPs don’t have to adjust their usage mode and they can be connected onto YOYOW as long as they assemble the intermediate key. Bitask is the first content platform based on YOYOW, our group almost build its entire blockchain system alone. We finished PC-end browser, mobile APP and content platform within one year. I am very proud of my group.
f. What’s YOYOW’s future development?
First of all, the APP will be updated to its second version with token function, and allowing content platforms to be connected onto it.
In terms of long-term plans, we will roll out something like a content sales function. Celebrity tokens, for instance, those celebrities can reply with some special content such as their own photos, blogs or links through token transactions.
Blockchain is currently in an unsure area. The big players are only testing the water and they don’t dare to all in. I don’t think we can compete with the big players right now but in two or three years we won’t be afraid of competing with them anymore.
The total amount of YOYO is 2 billion, 300 million for the development team and 300 million for the foundation.
What kind of position is YOYOW currently placed in? Last year there were more than 10 different groups accounced to do content infrastructure, and now they are all dieappered. Maybe some of them just wanted to make one-time money and get out, which is totally different from how we do things.
I’m not boasting about how good we do, it is just they didn’t do anything at all. YOYOW mainnet has been officially launched, we completed YOYOW PC-end version and mobile wallet, YOYO also was listed on some exchanges. YOYOW is still the first echelon in content field.
There is an old saying in China that everything’s hard in the beginning. The starting stage is always the hardest one and the accumulating first batch of users isn’t an simple thing. However, I have confidence that YOYOW will pass this threshold and attract more and more good projects in the future.
g. Is there any chance for Bitask to be financed independently? Or seeking investment from its own kind?
My anwser is Yes. I definitely hope that Bitask can be operated independently, it is currently occupying a lot of our energy because we want to make it good, after all we are not an experienced internet company. It’s been a little challanging but we have made a lot of progresses and it’s starting to be decent. For example, we after have smoothend the technical roadmap, we hope that they can independently operate and grow big so that their will have more motivation and initiative. We are still going to work on the underlying public blockchain, servicing these content plaforms on a scale and not just servicing one platform.
h. YOYOW’s APP development status
First of all , we are adding functions in YOYOW’s APP with adding token function being the first step.The next step is adding the function of content sales and the third step will add the voting function. It’s not just normal voting, but voting for the content’s supernodes, kind of like a locked-in feature. We have been doing all this. We have been focusing a lot on building a content incentive system and setting rules.
We doing the exploration work after all, so it’s not easy and it’s inevitable that we may take some detours sometimes. There are so many kinds of cryptocurrencis out there but only a few of them are actually doing things. It’s important for us to recognize that “air tokens” probably takes up over 95%, this in a fact wipes out many of our competitors.
Secondly, YOYOW has a technical support team at the back and we are prepared for a long run. To be fun, you can call it “the desire for survival”, meaning the team has a strong desire to bring its projects to success.
These two points mentioned above will ensure a bright future for YOYOW.
More over, we have built a good foundation by listing on Binance, OKex and other exchanges, which cost a lot just to be listed.
i. Does EOS deserve the name “Blockchain 3.0”? Dose YOYOW have the potential to be a 3.0 product?
EOS has lots of innovations, a unique way of crowd funding, its way of lauching mainnet and electing block producers. These are all very interesting and can be used by YOYOW as a reference. YOYOW is a public chain product in a specific field, which has done a lot of optimization and subdivision in the content field. Everyone is doing new explorations. Although a lot of areas are not perfect, we are aiming towards the same goal.
When we launched YOYOW mainnet on Sept. 9th last year, we added vote decay function, which means decay will gradually happen after voting. Coincidentally, we found EOS has the similar vote decay function with the same market parameters. Although we started from different directions, after exploration, the final results may not be much different.
j. Will YOYOW start its financing process?
We never really liked the financing function aspect of it. Even during our ICO, we only raised 30M CNY, and then we were left with 20M CNY after the token refund. I think taking money from investors is kind of scary. We are prepared for a long battle and might consider financing at the right time. The 300M YOYO reserved at foundation is indeed for the preparation financing.
k. Will Bitask introduce token-holding based voting weight?
One of the groups is the pure creators, our head users. They are the heart and soul of this content platform, forms a really small part of the whole user base, maybe only 10 percent or even 5 percent. Probably only the top 20 percent of the users are very active. Most of uesrs actually don’t have a feeling of participation and which makes them don’t feel good. It’s not like they don’t want to participate, but there is no good ways for them to participate. That’s why we will have a token model, which will let them have a say based on their token holding, so that the weight of their say is balanced by the amount of tokens they hold. This is an exploration that never have been tried before.
l. How to work on copyright protection?
YOYOW does not focus on copyrights. It’s a tool for converting content value into cash. We should leave the copyright stuff to the professional copyright protection companies. Actually we do have some cooperations with copyright protection companies. Later we may continue with these cooperations using our brand.
m. In this big current environment of token-price focused, which one do you think is more important between the price of YOYO or implemented applications?
First, let me talk about my attitude, holding investors’ money means responsibility and pressure, that’s why we care about investors’ returns so much. We also hope to see our token price maintain at a good level and everyone’s can have a guarantee on their return on investment. This is something we need to do for sure.
To be honest, from to my personally, I don’t really care about the token price because I hold a lot of our tokens as well. I’m not sensitive to its price at all, I often go without following its price for a long time.
I have been in this industry many years so money isn’t the first concern. I prefer to really make a product, which can solve tricky problems, so that we can say it was made by the YOYOW team under the leadership of Bai Cai. That is my cherished desire.