Interview with Jacques Whales

I have recently had the opportunity to chat with Jacques Whales aka @Bluabaleno, Head of Product development at Novusphere, who is behind the newly launched discussions.app a reddit style discussion forum on the EOS chain. We had an indepth talk about their native EOS token ATMOS and their future plans for the platform and the token.

Concept: Let’s start with the hard facts, what about token supply, token circulation and market cap?

Jacques: There is a total token supply of 100 Mio Atmos, of which 90 Mio are in circulation, current token price is at 0.0059$

Concept: Not bad for EOS based token, did you have an airdrop?

Jacques: The projects started its life on another chain, it’s native chain. After we held a vote, the decision was made to switch over, and to start, building on EOS. So when we got started on EOS, we did not conduct an airdrop.

That said, we will be conducting an airgrab that allows users logging in for the very first time to get 10 ATMOS dropped into their account.

Then, for every day they log in until the end of February, they’ll get additional 1 ATMOS per day. To qualify, you just need to sign-in with your EOS account.

We’ll also be dropping to our selected partner’s token holders, so that’ll be EOS Cafe and pixEOS, who has been tremendously supportive of our project. The details of that drop will be announced later in the week.

Concept: Apparently there is a lot still up to come. The drop model is certainly incentivising. So how much of the total supply is in circulation, and how much of it is held by Novusphere?

Jacques: Not all are in circulation, even though we been conducting the swap from the old chain to the new one for almost a year now, there is still around 49% of the token that is on the old chain.
Novusphere currently hold about 9 Million, or about 9% of all the tokens.

Concept: I’ve seen ATMOS is listed on Dexeos, any other Dexes or Exchanges you are listed on? Any listings to be expected soon?

Jacques: Yes, we have made all preparations necessary to list on exchanges. Are in the process of setting up a foundation in Mauritius that would allow us to list on exchanges other DEXes.

Concept: So what’s the purpose of ATMOS?

Jacques: ATMOS exists as the core mechanism of participation in the Novusphere dapp ecosystem. One dapp as you know is eos.discussions.app, and another is a privacy-focused side state. Both will enable ATMOS stakers the ability to earn a variety of tokens fairly passively or by running staking software. eos.discussions.app seeks to be a hub for all discussions EOS related and eventually branch beyond that. The privacy side state seeks to provide privacy/anonymity features to all EOS tokens, including EOS itself.

Concept: Cool features, especially the privacy ones. Are there any ways users get tokens, other than buying them on exchanges?

Jacques: Aside tips that might come from the community, novusphere rewards quality posts as an incentive for our users.

Concept: What would be my incentive as a user to tip?

Jacques: Tipping is entirely optional, so for discussions to operate it’s absolutely not necessary. It’s meant as an explicit award for content you deem valuable.
Aside that we are working on monero style transaction layer, which will allow to tip completely anonymously. This way you will be able to support your favourite users without exposing yourself or your holdings.

Screenshot of discussions.app

Concept: Anonymity seems to be a major focus of you guys. How will that tie in with the discussions.app platform?

Jacques: As you know, we offer a way of posting anonymously, and with this features all your actions on-chain will be privacy protected. It’s built as a kind of layer-2 solution, like plasma on Ethereum or the Lightning network on BTC.

Concept: How do you intend to attract new users?

Jacques: The Anon-feature will also allow for onboarding users, who don’t have an existing EOS account. They can collect tokens by interacting and contributing to the platform, and then redeem their atmos for an EOS account (and the required resources). Once done, they will have accounts with their keys, which they can use at their own discretion.

Concept: Sounds really promising. Any ETA when we might see those features?

Jacques: They should be finished by the end of next month.

Concept: Quite ambitious. What else have you planned for the discussions.app platform?

Jacques: We are constantly adding new features, and improving the usability of the platform. We’ve now opened up a lot of sub-channels, for EOS and other projects. We expect to become an outlet for those projects, and generate tips for content creators. We’ve already a bunch of collaborators onboard like with EOS Cafe and Pixeos. So this will become another source of revenue for our users.

The staking mechanism that I’ve mentioned earlier will distribute tokens, from revenues generated from those actions. The share you’ll receive will be based on holding.

Concept: You got a lot in the pipeline, seems like your team must be super busy. Speaking of which, who is Novusphere?

Jacques: We are a multinational team, and work entirely virtually, team members are based in the US, Canada, Portugal, Poland and many community members contributing from every corner of the world.

We try to be as transparent as possible, you can review our weekly calls here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEHErggJuJJWDuBEoyLiRVQ

Concept: Looks like you have a good bunch of stuff on your agenda. Thanks a lot Jacques for taking the time and explaining those things. Everything else you’d like to bring up?

Jacques: Yes! Make sure you sign in to eos.discussions.app in order to qualify for the airdrop. We’re are going to do a live AMA sometime near the end of the month when we launch the advertising system, which we’ve been working on and we think will completely change the way how ads are done.

We’ll be tipping out ATMOS and various other tokens during the AMA so make sure you’re there!

Try out discussions.app, simply sign in with Scatter
Find out more about Novusphere on their website
Novusphere on Twitter
Jacques Whales on Twitter