Crypto Is Coming had the pleasure of speaking with Eric “Eijah” Anderson of Promether, a decentralized privacy network that implements networking, security, and anonymity code solutions for apps and platforms.
Eijah is a hacker with 20 years of software development and security experience. He’s the creator of Demonsaw comms platform and was the lead developer at Rockstar Games and Activision. Eijah and Operations and Marketing Officer Elton Brauer took the time to discuss the Promether project and the space in general.
Why build Promether?
Promether was created to provide alternative solutions to the traditional centralized, surveillance-driven networking model, as well as to combat the scalability and privacy issues that most blockchains and decentralized networks face. Due to a variety of problems with both proposed models, we saw the need for a new solution that merges innovative blockchain technology, efficient decentralized networks, and state-of-the-art encryption protocols to provide more security, privacy, and scalability, while also giving power and control back to the users.
How would you describe the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries in terms of pain points and potential? (Elton)
Honestly, there is a lot of great innovation happening in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space (we are on the verge of potentially redefining how literally everything works digitally), but it is often overshadowed by the even greater amount of scams, manipulation, thefts, and fraud. For those reasons, it is very difficult to stand out as a legitimate project in the space, because legitimate projects can’t (or shouldn’t at least) subject themselves to the same empty promises that the scam projects keep throwing around.
This creates unrealistic expectations in terms of development timelines as well as to how a real company is built from scratch – paradigm shifting technology is not created in 1-2 years. The real pain point is not with the technology (as that will always continue improving and be eventually figured out), but with the stain this space has due to all the unethical practices going on.
What is one fact you think would surprise the average internet user or tech consumer regarding surveillance? (Eijah)
In my opinion, the most surprising things about surveillance that most people don’t know is that it can be avoided with relative ease. Most of surveillance is accomplished by the use of a handful of extremely convenient products. The lie that we’ve been told is that this convenience requires the loss of control – this isn’t true. In fact, convenience can be increased beyond our current expectation without any further lost or degradation of control, and definitely without continued surveillance.
What is Promether going to change? (Eijah)
By creating layers of security, anonymity, and privacy on top of a decentralized incentivized system, we can redefine how people engage online, while solving the problems associated with the centralization of control. It is also extremely important to address the issues of privacy when it comes to our activity on transparent blockchain systems.
Is Promether an Enterprise level solution? (Elton)
Promether is developing cyber-security software for both businesses and consumers. We also aim to provide custom digital security solutions for enterprises based on their unique needs, helping with securing their networks/communications/files, adopting privacy-based solutions for operational needs, and much more.
They are the ones under constant attacks where one misstep can mean a destroyed reputation and diminished user-base. To get customers to adopt privacy and security by default it is often smarter to not spend countless hours trying to educate them, but to make companies adopt our solutions so their clients get those features passed on as part of a standard practice.
How do you view the POS vs POW debate? and why did you choose POS?
The POS vs POW debate is a long one, in the end, one is not superior to the other with both having their benefits and drawbacks – it all depends on what kind of purpose the consensus mechanism serves. There is a difference between effectiveness and efficiency however, and the goal for Promether is to find a perfect balance. POS just offers more practicality as we want people to actually allocate their computing resources to service and provide utility to the network, not to focus on work with the sole purpose of winning the block validation lottery. We believe those resources can be put to a lot better use, which means that the network can also run with a lot lower “empty” energy consumption. Bitcoin can make POW work because the goal is to be a store of value, but if you are trying to run a performance and scalable network that focuses on speed and efficiency, POS services the needs a lot better. For dapps, PoS could mean lower gas fees as there are more transactions being made, as well as being able to harness excess computing resources to make dapps run smoother.
The centralization and rich get richer in POS argument is also not only applicable to POS, but also to POW. People think PoW is more decentralized because ownership is in constant fluctuation – when somebody owns 51% someone can always buy more computing power and force re-evaluation of ownership. In PoS, there is not much that can be done when someone owns 51%, as the percentage always represents a fraction of the total supply. However, practice has shown that while this argument is theoretically true, reality is completely different. The goal of decentralization in PoW has failed with only big players being able to compete, giant mining pools controlling large % of the entire network, etc. Entities have invested billions of dollars into ensuring their mining operations enable them to mine more coins and maintain control. All in all, POW rewards doing hard work correctly, while POS punishes doing easy work incorrectly. The outcome is similar in a lot of ways.
Could you foresee people running nodes for POW coins like Bitcoin or Monero on this? (Eijah)
Absolutely. We’re just now at the forefront of the next wave of decentralized revolution. Mesh nets require that nodes to both be lightweight and agile, hence the ability to be run on almost any platform/environment and by anyone.
Promether is many things, but at its core it always has been and always will be a business. Yes, we build privacy-centric software. Yes, we are changing the world. But we are first a business and are committed to that end goal. The investors have put their faith in me, my team, our vision, and the ability to deliver a positive return on their investment. Therefore, the investors understand and appreciate that the most important thing the company can do right now is build out value in everything we do. Our vision, products, and roadmap are all important parts of the puzzle, delivering both short term and long term returns to those who put their faith in us from the beginning. Everything we do, whether its establishing a burn rate or planning product launches adheres to these core principles.
You’ve mentioned Promether can bypass the great Chinese firewall, can you elaborate on that? (Eijah)
It’s funny, because most people are shocked to learn that accomplishing great features of technology, sometimes things that were once deemed impossible, is much easier than most think. Every day, more and more traffic flows across the World Wide Web. And the majority of this traffic is in one of just a handful of protocols.
