[ENG] Hashed People: Blockchain Trust Ecosystem from Ontology Founder, Li Jun

Li Jun is the Founder of Ontology. Li has a rich academic background, including a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Master’s in Communication Engineering, MBA, and PMP. He is a senior blockchain architect and blockchain solutions professional with 16 years’ work experience in IT and fintech. Li previously provided technical architecture, management, and planning support for top international IT firms and major Chinese financial exchanges. He has taken part in the architecture design and technical management of many major systems and has built up multiple technical teams and systems from scratch. Li also has a profound knowledge of the finance industry, excelling at internal management and external communication.

Today, before Li Jun delivers 'Ontology Tech Vision' on Hashed Lounge, April 19th, Hashed had a chance to learn more about Ontology. All the answer were by Li Jun directly.

How and why did you start Ontology?

Onchain has been working on blockchain solutions for businesses and even has public chain experience. We figured out permissioned/private blockchains are not usable in large scope systems. When you want to build a public platform, public chains are the best choice. However, currently public chains experience performance issues which mean they cannot serve certain scenarios. We therefore saw the need for a new public chain that can be flexible in both performance and applicable scenarios


What are some of core differences from other public blockchains like EOS, Dfinity and etc?
Ontology is more complex public chain platform, it not only provides blockchain infrastructure, but also provides common modules to support people to run different business scenarios on Ontology without the need for a technical background. At the infrastructure level, Ontology’s consensus module will find the balance between decentralization and performance. We want to create a high performance blockchain system that can support large businesses while maintaining a decentralized principle.



How to handle scalability issue compared to that of other 3rd generation blockchain competitors?

Ontology uses chain network architecture to support scalability, which means different blockchains support different scenarios. Apart from this, we also provide a high performance blockchain framework, which will be complimented by other innovations such as parallel processing and sharding in the future



Can you describe your team? how many engineers do you have in your team?

Onchain is the founder company of Ontology, so the core team of Ontology is mostly from Onchain at this moment. The core team is currently around 70 persons and more than 50 of them are technical engineers. However, the core team will continue to grow, and the Ontology team will involve more communities, including external technical communities and institutional technical partners, to support the development of Ontology.

Li Jun, Founder of Ontology

Since Ontology deals with various industries, broad partnerships with centralized industry(ex. finance, medical institution) seems very important. Are there updates on business partnerships?

We have a business development team working on these partnerships. One part is service providers like identity verification, where we will link several identity verification services in China and globally. Companies are also discussing with us to build decentralized services on Ontology. We will announce these partnerships after our MainNet is released.

The other group are co-builders which include famous VCs and important enterprises. They will connect their broad portfolios with the Ontology platform. Another group of partners are service providers such as those who provide identity verification and data services.

What is an exact function of ONT token? Is it utility token or security token which gives rewards?

Ontology has a dual token model. ONT and ONG are bound together but ONG will be released periodically. ONG is for utility, for example for running smart contracts and storage in Ontology. ONG used on the platform will not be returned to the holder, so it not a security. You can use ONT to join the PoS process (by becoming a validator) and be rewarded in ONG for validating transactions.



What is ONT ID and how does it work?

ONT ID is a distributed identity framework, that means every entity can link their identity information from different sources and with verify them different verification services. This allows you to build your own digital identity and verify it, and means identity verification does not have to depend on one or a select few centralized organizations to provide identification services.

Ontology entities transfer verifiable claims to prove attributes of an entity. What if some entities collide and transfer wrong information?

You can submit verifiable claims by yourself, but if you want others to believe in those claims you need to find enough trust sources to prove your claim. When others check claim information they can choose to trust the claim or not depending on how many trust sources have verified this claim or the quality of them. If you transfer incorrect information, trust sources will not give you a signature.



Which node will be a permissioned node? Also, people are worrying about BFT based consensus might get down like NEO did. Do you have solutions for Ontology?

Ontology has multiple blockchains, which can each use different consensus mechanisms for different scenarios. The main consensus mechanism will be VBFT, a combination of PoS, VRF, and BFT that is a considered balance of performance and decentralization. It means thousands of nodes can be involved with a transparent policy and give individuals a fair chance to be a validator. If you are interested in VBFT, you can read more in this article.



Are there any dApps that are planning to develop on Ontology?

Yes, there are currently several dApps that are planning to work with Ontology. Some even want to build their own business chain with Ontology.



Many people are often confused on this: what is Ontology’s relationship to NEO?

Ontology and NEO are both public chains. In their systems there is no direct relationship or connection, but we have a strategic partnership for technical research, innovation, and business cooperation in some scenarios.



Then do you also see the possibilities for NEO based projects to use Ontology’s identity system?

Yes, the Ontology identity system is open and can be used by NEO, other blockchains, and traditional IT systems.



What do you think about Chinese regulation on blockchain? And how do you think it will affect Ontology?

In China regulation is necessary to protect individual investors since it is difficult to recognize what are good projects and how to avoid scam projects. Ontology did not take any funding from individual investors and we do everything to meet regulation in China and different regions globally.



Finally, what do you think about Korea market to Ontology?

Korea is currently an important market not only for Ontology but the whole blockchain industry. Korea has important investors in the digital assets market and has a flexible policy to support the blockchain industry, so there is opportunity for a lot of business innovation trials.

Thank you!




*Hashed Lounge "Ontology Tech Vision" : https://youtu.be/8egDtwf6eFA
*Ontology Official Hompage : https://ont.io
*Ontology Official Telegram(EN) : https://t.me/OntologyNetwork
*Ontology Official Korea Telegram : https://t.me/OntologyNetworkKO
*HASHED LOUNGE Telegram : https://t.me/hashedlounge

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