When on the 24th October 2017 the WAX gamer sale started, Fabian and I were attending a computer science lecture at the university in our hometown Munich. We however were focused on something else than the lecture: Buying more Ether to participate in the WAX sale. At 14:06 we sent our first transaction and officially were WAX token holders.
Since then, we have seen the WAX blockchain develop from an ambitious idea to the reality that it is today. When two months ago the #BuildOnWax competition was started as part of the Mainnet launch, we immediately realized that we wanted to take part. Not just because of the $25,000 prize pool, but because we truly believe in the WAX vision and because we want to be a part of it. Of the 14 final contestants, we took the first place.
Today, we are excited to announce the next step in becoming a valuable part of the WAX ecosystem: Our guild candidacy
The most direct way we can propel the WAX blockchain is by providing a reliable producer node and taking an active role in shaping the future of the WAX blockchain. We are ready to take this responsibility.
Our team:
All three of us first met each other more than 10 years ago in school. We’re based in Munich, Germany and have worked on previous projects together for ~5 years already.
Jona Wilmsmann
Founder, Blockchain Developer
Computer Science student at the Technical University Munich.
Experience with both Ethereum and EOS smart contract development.
Main Responsibilities:
- Smart Contract Development
- Content Creation/ Content Writing
- Marketing
Fabian Emilius
Founder, Fullstack Developer
Computer Science student at the Technical University Munich.
Over 8 years experience in website development.
Extensive experience creating both CSGO item based websites and VGO/ vIRL based websites, implementing WAX ExpressTrade.
Main Responsibilities:
- Website Development
- Backend Development
- DevOps
Why choose us?
We get it. Compared to some other guild candidates, we are a pretty small team. And we most likely also have the lowest average age of team members. But we think that’s a good thing.
WAX is our #1 priority
We aren’t an EOS guild. Our business model isn’t to become a guild on as many eosio chains as possible. WAX is our only priority, and for the foreseeable future, that won’t change. That alone makes up for the relatively small team size, because it allows us to focus 100% of our time and resources on WAX instead of sharing it with countless other blockchains.
We understand the target demographic
The WAX blockchain is aimed to cater towards two main markets: Item trading and Gaming (which go hand in hand). We understand the target demographic, because we are the target demographic.
For a start, all three of us are passionate gamers. We also were heavily involved in CSGO item trading, often spending whole days looking for good deals on csgolounge. And when crpyto games started popping up, we were among the first to attempt to decipher the Crypto Kitty genetics.
This is where our young age gives us a huge advantage over other guild candidates. A guild’s main responsibility is not just to provide a reliable block producer node, but to represent the users of the blockchain. And with the biggest demographic of video gamers being <36 years old (source), we believe that as relatively young gamers ourselves, we have a very good idea of what is important for the potential users of the WAX blockchain. And in the role of a guild, we strive to take the necessary steps to make the WAX ecosystem more appealing for those users.
The tools we already created help other developers build WAX apps
From first hand experience we know that the most important, but often overlooked factor that leads to mass adoption of a new technology is how simple it is for independent developers to build new features and applications. Even the greatest new technology will struggle with adoption if no applications are built for the end users, and the best way to get more applications created is to make it easy for developers to build them.
Fitting in to the suite of official microservices available to both end users and developers, we have built a WAX account bound chat service and are currently in the development process of a decentralized WAX account photo service.
We build these because we believe that they will ultimately result in more applications being built by other developers, and therefore grow the WAX ecosystem and user base in the long run.
Future Goals
Building a community & Creating user friendly services
The leading force behind any blockchain is the community. We know that if we want to help WAX succeed, we need to actively engage with the WAX community and create the conditions necessary for new users to join. We will therefore be working hard to create an environment in which the community can grow and evolve.
An account creation service
The first service planned to tackle this goal will give users the ability to create new accounts and pay for it using other cryptocurrencies. While we see the benefits that WAX All Access will bring to the ecosystem, we also understand that some potential users either can’t or don’t want to link a phone number to their blockchain account. Our service will give those users the ability to create WAX accounts cheaply and anonymously.
Sneak Peak: A NFT-based browser game with proper gameplay
More than one year ago, we created the concept for a Non Fungible Token based game. We didn’t want to create just another game where it was obvious that the gameplay was just an excuse to sell more NFTs. What we wanted to create was a real game, that would be fun and engaging even if there weren’t any NFTs to trade with.
We however had to halt the development process when we realized that the Ethereum blockchain, that we wanted to build this game on, simply couldn’t provide us with what we needed. The block times were too long, and most importantly, the transaction fees were too high. The WAX blockchain solves all of these problems.
In fact, with the WAX blockchain being heavily focused on Non Fungible Tokens, we feel like our game will be a perfect fit and are even considering adding more features that would’ve been unthinkable on the Ethereum blockchain. We genuinely believe that this game would be a major step forward for crypto games and could get hundreds of interested players on the WAX blockchain, and we are excited to move forward with the development.
Our thoughts on
Governance
The ability of block producers to become active in shaping the future of a network is one of the biggest strengths of the eosio protocol underlying the WAX blockchain. We are ready to take the responsibility of governing the WAX network in the best interest of the community.
As an active guild, we want to push to create a WAX specific constitution, orienting ourselves to the EOS constitution while keeping in mind the specific features and use cases that make the WAX blockchain unique. This constitution should be viewed as the baseline for all future changes and improvements.
Transparency and accountability
As a guild, we act as representatives of the WAX community that votes for us. We take this responsibility very seriously, and in our opinion part of this responsibility is to be as transparent as possible about our decision making process. On top of that, we will always take the time to respond to all questions that might arise. You can contact is directly @pinknetwork on Telegram or @pinknetworkx on Twitter.
Security and Infrastructure
As an active block producer, it is of the upmost importance to reliably produce blocks with as little delay and downtime as possible. This goes hand in hand with the security of our nodes, because any attacks on our nodes are attacks on the WAX blockchain as a whole.
We are currently utilizing a system that runs 3 separate WAX nodes:
- A full history node, accessible to the public
- A seed node, acting as a gateway between the producer node and the rest of the network
- A producer node, which can only directly interact with our own nodes and blocks any incoming traffic from other sources
We also have an automatic warning system in place, that notifies our team if no new blocks are detected at our producer node for more than 20 seconds. This system, together with our distributed node setup, guarantees very high security and reliability.
Technical Specifications
Our bare metal servers run on the following Hardware:
- AMD Epyc 7351P
- 128GB DDR4 ECC 2400MHz
- 2x SSD NVMe 1.92TB - Soft RAID
We currently utilize only one datacenter in Limburg, Germany.
In the future we plan to move parts of our nodes to a different datacenter in France.
Ownership Disclosure
Jona Wilmsmann - 50%
Fabian Emilius - 50%
Entirely self funded, no outside investors
Summarized Information:
- Website URL: https://pink.network
- Social Media Account: https://twitter.com/pinknetworkx
- Official WAX Guild candidate name: pink.network
- Location of company headquarters: Munich, Germany
- Location of servers: Limburg, Germany. Second location in France planned
- Type of servers: Bare Metal
- Current employee list:
Jona Wilmsmann
Fabian Emilius
Raphael Roman - Telegram name: @pinknetwork
- Block producer account: pink.gg
