Lattice Exchange AMA with Alkimi Exchange: A Recap
Lattice Launchpad, powered by Constellation Network, is launching on August 4, 2021 with Alkimi Exchange, the world’s first digital advertising exchange, as its first listed project. In preparation for the launch, the Constellation and Alkimi teams participated in an AMA session where community questions about both projects as well as the Launchpad itself were answered. The AMA was hosted by Constellation CEO Benjamin Jorgensen, who also answered questions along with Ben Putley (CEO, Alkimi Exchange), Adam Chorley (COO, Alkimi Exchange), Neil Bruce (CCO, Alkimi Exchange), and Chandru Narayana (CTO, Alkimi Exchange).
Below are some key takeaways from the AMA:
- The total value of the advertisement industry is $340 billion. Alkimi’s goal is to capture $50 million of that in the short term.
- Alkimi makes it possible to save 90% of ad cost compared to legacy solutions, while providing a real time auctioning of ads in a decentralized and transparent way.
- $ADS token is needed to buy and sell ad space on Alkimi Exchange.
- $ADS token holders can stake the token on Lattice Exchange in return for an allocation in the sale.
- Alkimi is using Constellations Hypergraph because no other network offers the needed scalability, speed and low transaction fees.
- $DAG nodes can provide bandwidth on the Alkimi State Channel and earn $ADS.
Important Information
- Lattice LaunchPad Release: August 4th
- Alkimi Allocation Staking: August 11th
- Total funding: $75,000
- $ADS token amount: 937,500
- $ADS token price: $0.08
Learn more about Alkimi below:
Full AMA
criptix | I WILL NEVER PM FIRST, [28.07.21 17:04]
Welcome everyone to the Lattice x Alkimi AMA!
I hope everyone is ready and on fire for the release of our LaunchPad and the introduction of our first LaunchPad Project:
Alkimi — the first decentralized Ad Exchange! 🔥
The AMA will be hosted by Ben Jorgensen and the Alkimi team will tell us everything!
Community questions will be answered in the last part of the AMA.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:05]
Thanks Criptix! You are a legend — really appreciate you coordinating this and holding down the Lattice Exchange community.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:05]
Let’s kick this off — I hate when AMA’s just drag their feet.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:05]
Yes mate! Thanks so much!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:06]
Do I have all of the Alkimi guys?
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:06]
Thanks Cryptix!
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:06]
Present and correct
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:06]
Yes sir
Chandru, [28.07.21 17:06]
Yes
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:06]
Yep
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:06]
ALKIMI ASSEMBLED
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:06]
Excellent. Well, I feel like this is Alkimi Day! I already started my morning at 5am for a live stream with an advertising publication with Ben P.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:07]
By the end of this AMA we will have a great understanding of Alkimi and a clear roadmap on how people can back Alkimi through the lattice LaunchPad.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:07]
Gents — please introduce yourself and one of you tell us all why you are the team to take digital advertising to the new frontier
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:08]
We’re a founding team of digital marketers with over 50 years’ combined experience working for publishers, advertising technology companies and media agencies. We’re also crypto enthusiasts, and have been aware of the many potential benefits of applying blockchain technology to the digital advertising ecosystem.
I’m the CEO of Alkimi and have sold software to global publishers like CNN, Vice, Forbes, Daily Mail to name but a few for the last 10 years or so.
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:09]
I’m Chorley, Chief Operating Officer. I’ve been Working in the advertising industry for 10 years. Always on the sell side, at publishers and networks to help them monetise their inventory. At Evolve Media, Conde Nast and most recently a start up called SmartFrame. As far as crypto goes, I’ve also been involved in crypto for around 5 years now. I’m a massive advocate of blockchain becoming the de facto technology for all data and monetary transactions. So we’ve now got the chance to bring a whole industry onto the blockchain. So I’m finally merging my passion for crypto with my day job which is incredible!
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:09]
I’m Neil, Chief Commercial Officer, and I’ve spent 15 years working predominantly on the buy side of the ad ecosystem at global media agencies. Recently, I spent 5 years as the head of mobile and digital innovation at Mindshare, the world’s second largest media agency, where I controlled a nine-figure annual media budget for clients including Nike, Unilever, Rolex and Ford. I’m really excited about the prospect of putting the digital ad industry on the blockchain. It’s a huge industry ($340bn) hiding in plain sight, but at present, 49% of an advertiser’s budget is wasted on an “ad tax” in the non-transparent ecosystem, before it even reaches a publisher!
Chandru, [28.07.21 17:10]
I am Chandru, the Chief Technology Officer and I have 20+ years of experience in various disciplines of software development, architecture, management and delivery of complex programmes.
I completed my MSc in Information Security and Data Privacy. As part of this programme, I submitted a paper on the challenges involved in implementing GDPR on the blockchain.
I have worked with clients such as British Telecom, Cisco, Virgin Media and Vodafone in various capacities. My primary focus has been in overcoming technical, strategic and regulatory challenges in the field of digital advertising.
Recently, I was involved in building and operationalising Virgin Media’s targeted advertising platform. I have a keen interest in the blockchain technology and believe that it can revolutionise the way in which we look at real-world problems.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:10]
These are THE names in digital advertising. You all come in with every perspective of the entire industry. AND we have a CTO that brings data privacy experience to the table. This is a huge shift for blockchain development.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:11]
Absolutely
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:12]
What a team! This is why I fell for you guys! You have the right vigor and energy to take on this industry… and industry that has been torn apart by Facebook and Google and is at a key turning point — ripe for innovation
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:12]
So exciting.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:12]
So, let’s give everyone a bit more information on what an ad exchange is and how does it relate to a crypto exchange (or how are they different). There is a lot of overlap!
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:14]
So we’ve been keeping this under wraps but it feels like the perfect time to release our video explaining the opportunity and issues Alkimi Exchange is solving for the digital advertising industry
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:14]
Let’s see it! First time release!
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:16]
We’re so excited to show you guys this, and a massive shout out to Max from the Constellation community who helped us with this (built it all!)
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:16]
This video is awesome! That will circulate throughout the communities nicely.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:16]
Super talented guy!
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:16]
Also to build on the video — there’s many similarities between an Ad exchange and a crypto exchange when it comes to executing transactions, it’s just a different digital asset being bought and sold.
You could think of a pair on a crypto exchange like an advertiser and publisher, for example Nike/Vice. Obviously each page on that publisher, different creatives or the audience on site may affect the price. But it’s a similar deal engine, it’s just the digital entity is different, in advertising like crypto exchanges data interacts with other data and creates a transaction. So it’s just a different industry using similar tools for similar ends.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:18]
Great job on taking the time to educate people on a completely new industry that can be transformed by decentralized solutions. You all are leading a charge to educate people to new use cases that will bring more capital into cryptocurrency ecosystems — I am just happy that is coming into Constellation and lattice.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:19]
How did we say it on the interview today? Ad Exchange is like a crypto exchange but trading different data types (where a cryptocurrency is a data type) and the exchange occurs on every website on the internet.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:19]
Yes we’re passionate about bringing an industry that spends so much FIAT onto the blockchain — and in so doing making it so much better.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:19]
Thats powerful.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:20]
Being passionate about ad tech and the converge of crypto and decentralization takes special people. You all ready for the next question?
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:21]
Yes let’s do it!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:21]
Why haven’t we seen anyone take this apporach to build ad exchange?
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:22]
Speed and cost have historically been the largest blockers. The IAB created a blockchain task force in 2017, they concluded that Bitcoin was too slow and ETH was too expensive. That scope might have been slightly limited, but there weren’t many scaleable and low cost networks in 2017.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:22]
We have seen a few new mainnets launched since then which have the potential to host an auction on a blockchain. But we’re still waiting on parachains and sharding which would make this a reality.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:22]
Well all until Constellation invented the Hypergraph that is!!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:23]
When we first started talking, I immediately thought “Well, Constellation is in the business of taking real world data standards and tokenizing them on our network… digital advertising has the most widely used (and monetized) data standard in the world with the IAB…. put in on the Hypergraph.
I might be answering my question, but why did you choose Constellation’s Hypergraph to build on?
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:26]
Our mission is to bring the advertising auction on the blockchain, and to do this, we needed to find a technology that worked differently from legacy blockchains.
We needed it to be extremely fast, feeless and infinitely scalable — and when we found the Hypergraph, we knew that we’d found the technology that was going to disrupt our industry.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:26]
— — and because our community is incredible.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:27]
This too!
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:27]
hear hear
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:27]
When you all talk about Alkimi, you talk about real business terms — like cost savings.. This is rare in the blockchain world as gas fees are variable and high — thus we see people talk about efficiencies when using distributed ledger technology vs. cost basis value propositions.
How much money can Users save by using Alkimi exchange vs a legacy solution?
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:27]
Best community in crypto
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:27]
We’re long term Chads
Chandru, [28.07.21 17:27]
Absolutely !!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:27]
Oh you all are definitely chads! Hahah. I got to experience that in Spain with Ben P a couple of weeks ago.
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:28]
[In reply to Benjamin J Jorgensen]
In crypto we all love a 10x, at Alkimi we often make the joke we’ve already 10X’d, our fees on the exchange will be 1.5% which is over 10X cheaper than the existing infrastructure offered by Google and the top 6 exchanges.
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:28]
which is bonkers when you think about it
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:29]
That’s a whole lotta cash that publishers and advertisers can put back into their businesses
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:29]
Scalable business on a blockchain. Can you give us an idea of who your target customers are and what is the market size you are going after?
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:30]
Alkmi will have two sets of customers:
Publishers — owners of media inventory that needs to be monetized via digital advertising.
Advertisers — brands and agencies who want to purchase advertising space to promote a product or service.
Publishers and advertisers will need to own or rent $ADS tokens in order to gain access to, and bandwidth to trade on, Alkimi Exchange.
Owners of $ADS tokens will have the ability to stake their tokens to facilitate this.
Neil Bruce, [28.07.21 17:30]
Our target for Alkimi MVP is to capture 1% of the share of the advertising spend captured by the top 6 centralised advertising exchanges. These exchanges bring in $5bn in revenue per annum, (making our target $50m).
But this is just the starting point. Alkimi is being designed to be an entirely new advertising ecosystem, and as a result we can play in a significantly bigger pool.
Last year, $100bn in advertising spend was delivered programmatically (in an automated fashion), and the total digital ad spend is forecast to be $420bn in 2022.
This is our Total Addressable market.
Our product costs significantly less, and has considerably more features than competitors and we have the ability to connect state channels to build a suite of products that can build a large market share.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:32]
One of the things that I have enjoyed about a revolutionary industry like decentralization is the ability to think big. Crypto offers an alternative reality from traditional modes of business (operationally and technically).
Alkimi, you all are thinking BIG! Who are your competitors? Or should I say, who are you going after in the space and how do you plan to do that? Give us some strategic insight to show us that you all are the team.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:32]
[In reply to Neil Bruce]
Cost savings is a great strategy to take a chunk out of your competitors
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:33]
In the first instance we are taking on the smaller legacy ad exchanges, the independents, like OpenX and Pubmatic. Then beyond that there’s large independents such as The Trade Desk with a market cap of $40bn and revenue of $500m annually.
We think these are achievable goals in the medium term, beyond that we obviously have our sights set on the Duopoly of Google and Facebook. But we understand we have a lot of work to do to get there.
In the crypto space it’s a little less obvious who our competitors are. We are looking to decentralise the whole auction and put it onto a blockchain. This is really not something thats been done before. There are a few advertising applications of blockchain but they normally only solve one problem in the ecosystem such as fraud. Or they just bolt a token onto the side of an application or product. Without much thought for the utility of that token in the ecosystem.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:36]
Let’s make you all rebels in digital advertising. Shake things up in this antiquated world.
Can you provide some simplistic examples of why your exchange will be more attractive to publishers versus all the commonly used centralized exchanges today?
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:37]
[In reply to Chorley]
And ironically — fraud has been a feature that has been embraced and accepted in digital advertising. You all are disrupting this in showing that preventing fraud has cost savings implications.
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:40]
We have designed Alkimi with ease of adoption in mind. We have also had input from a wide range of advisors from across the industry — in particular publishers.
The headline for publishers is the cost of using Alkimi. The existing advertising exchanges charge publishers about 15.5% of advertiser spend in order to use their software. Because we’re moving the computation to the edge, we don’t have the infrastructure costs that these exchanges have, and as a result, our fees are 10x less.
At the moment, 50% of the advertising spend earmarked for publishers is gone before it reaches them. This is called the ”ad tax”. The immutable nature of the blockchain state channel logic has enabled us to build features into Alkimi that are designed to cut this out.
For example:
- Disclosing margins that supplier are hiding from publishers and advertisers
- Filtering out fraudulent inventory before it’s surfaced in the auction
- Infinitely scalable transactions
No other technologies exist at the moment that provide these services to publishers and advertisers.
Infact, we’ve had three tech companies reach out to us expressing interest in integrating with Alkimi Exchange.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:43]
Excellent! I am going to shift our attention to the token. You are creating multiple purchasers of your token — publishers, advertisers, crypto holders.
I like how much time and attention you have given to the $ADS token — you are evolving the concept of tokenomics to show how a token creates cash flow and real world utility. Not as easy task… HOWEVER, this ensures that $ADS token is required and is an essential piece to your platform (which is arguably hard to do with ERC-20 tokens which succumb to high gas fees — and are thus more marketing and fundraising tokens).
Let’s break it down — How can advertisers get $ADS tokens? We all know they won’t be going to a CEX? How are you making it easier for your customers to acquire ADS and use it?
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 17:46]
Advertisers generally contract with a preferred Demand Side Platform (for example: The Trade Desk) to deliver ads programmatically. As we mentioned, we’ve designed Alkimi to be interoperable with these technologies, so the advertiser would access us in exactly the same way as the existing advertising exchanges they work with.
Their ads will be visible in Apps and Websites (and later on connected TVs and in Digital Out of Home formats), and could be Video, Banners, Audio, Mini-games — depending on what the publisher wants to offer and the advertiser wants to buy.
We’ve also built Alkimi in the knowledge that publishers and advertisers might be reluctant to deal in crypto — so they can work with Alkimi in FIAT currency via a SAAS model if they choose.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:47]
Now let’s dissect how the $ADS token will be used in the Alkimi ecosystem. Make it easy for everyone!
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:50]
We are really excited about the real world utility of the $ADS token. We are using the principles of Defi to port a massive industry that spends $340bn a year FIAT money onto the Hypergraph.
Alkimi exchange provides publishers and advertisers with the opportunity to trade digital advertising inventory in a much more efficient manner than current centralised exchanges, for a fraction of the cost.
This makes our offering extremely appealing to publishers and advertisers — and there is no correlation between advertising spend and the prevailing crypto market.
If the price of Bitcoin drops to $10k, Nike still needs to sell trainers and CNN still needs to sell advertising space.
$ADS token holders will have the opportunity to stake their tokens to these publishers and advertisers, in return for staking rewards.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:51]
What about the regular user and the crypto community what is my role with the $ADS token? How do I get rewarded in $ADS tokens and how do I buy $ADS tokens?
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:53]
We often talk about changing the intended value exchange on the internet. Which sounds like a lofty vision but it’s eminently achievable using the speed and scalability of the Hypergraph. Currently the simplest way to be rewarded for your browsing habits is to buy and stake your $ADS tokens. These are then borrowed by advertisers and publishers to access and trade on the Alkimi Exchange. The fees we collect are then distributed as rewards in $ADS tokens to stakers.
The view from the future is also really exciting. We hope to usher in a new paradigm where internet users are rewarded for the attention they give to adverts. With rewards offered directly by advertisers and publishers to them for their attention. As we move to an attention based economy we see this being a key change in internet usage that is not possible with current legacy infrastructure.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:54]
Smart. Really smart! Beyond buying and earning $ADS, there are other ways to participate in Alkimi… Let’s say I have a node on the Hypergraph (receiving $DAG for maintaining the network) — how do node operators play an essential role in maintaining your platform?
Chorley, [28.07.21 17:55]
Our exchange is going to need a fair amount of bandwidth to process and action real time bidding. Which means we need help and support from everyone in the community, especially node operators. They’ll help us validate everything on the network and provide the bandwidth needed to get the number of TPS needed to host an auction on the Hypergraph. We’ll be rewarding node operators with $ADS tokens for pointing their nodes at Alkimi. The exact mechanics are an ongoing development, but we’ll be sure to let everyone know what they look like in our Announcements Channel on Telegram.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:57]
Such an amazing use case and a way to get node operators involved. You might want to think about creating an application process for people to be a fractional node operator to the Alkimi Exchange! Maybe a future product teaser.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 17:59]
Alright — I got a few more questions — let’s knock these out and then get to community questions for a few minutes:
- When will $ADS tokens be launched?
- What is the technical update and roadmap?
Chorley, [28.07.21 18:02]
I’m really excited about the launch, it’s so close I can almost taste it! We will be launching the token on the Lattice Launchpad on 11th August. Allowing for people to sign up and get all their KYC done the week before from 4th August.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:03]
Give us the details on what you are offering on the LaunchPad and How people use $LTX to get a stake!
Chandru, [28.07.21 18:03]
We have formed a core development team and have brought in two very experienced members — Kali and VJ.
Kali has over 20 years of experience working with clients such as Cisco, Sky and Toshiba. Kali has a very strong software development experience having worked in various roles such as Developer, Principal Engineer and Architect. He was one of the key engineers who worked on the Sky AdSmart project, which was aimed at delivering advertisements catered to each user. Sky is a subsidiary of Comcast and is headquartered in London. He has also been involved in various blockchain projects.
Chandru, [28.07.21 18:03]
VJ also has over 20 years of experience in the software industry. He started his career as a software developer and has served in various senior level roles helping to build and mentor software development teams. He is not only able to architect solutions but also loves to take on a hands-on role. He has very strong experience in the advertising industry, having worked with companies such as BT, Sky and Cisco. He has also been involved in several Blockchain projects, one of which was exhibited at the Blockchain Symposium held at Dubai.
Chandru, [28.07.21 18:04]
We are also looking to take on additional engineering resources as we progress building the product.
Chandru, [28.07.21 18:04]
Our immediate focus is split into two work-streams. The first is to build the MVP for Alkimi Exchange. We have already commenced the work involved in building the end-points for the Alkimi Exchange to ensure interoperability with the existing technical infrastructure.
Chandru, [28.07.21 18:05]
The second area of focus is for us to enhance our understanding of Constellation’s HyperGraph Network, with a view to building our state channel on HyperGraph. We are working closely with Wyatt to gain a detailed understanding of HyperGraph and the steps involved in building our state channel. We also intend to use our understanding to contribute to the Star Dust collective.
Chorley, [28.07.21 18:07]
[In reply to Benjamin J Jorgensen]
Yeah sure! So LTX holders will be able to stake their tokens in order to earn an allocation in $ADS. The size of their stake and the time it’s staked for will determine the size of that allocation they can then purchase in LTX.
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:07]
Lattice LaunchPad!
August 4th announcing Alkimi (you were the first to hear) and opportunity to register (KYC)
August 11th — staking commences for allocation in the private sale!
Excellent! How much backing are you looking for from the launchpad? And will US users be able to participate?
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:07]
(or can you not say at this point)
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 18:08]
There will be $75,000 or 937,500 $ADS tokens available for Lattice holders to stake their LTX to gain an allocation of $ADS
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:09]
Well — you know you have my support on this! This is the perfect project in my book. you all are incredible — I can’t thank you enough for the thoughtful answers! You all have been a blast to work with and I see a very positive and successful future for you all!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:10]
Thank you! I am going to let @criptix open the channel for questions at this point!
Chorley, [28.07.21 18:10]
We have loved working with everyone in and affiliated with Constellation
Chorley, [28.07.21 18:10]
its been unreal
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:10]
This has been an awesome hour! I went a bit over and now have to go run a couple of companies!
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:11]
I will stay and help @criptix for a bit! Really impressed by the progress and momentum you all have. You are evolving the entire crypto space with your vision of converging crypto and real world business.
Ben Putley, [28.07.21 18:11]
If anyone has an idea for a business that could be built on the Hypergraph — I cannot stress enough how much of an amazing learning experience it’s been working with Constellation. It truly is the best community in crypto!
criptix | I WILL NEVER PM FIRST, [28.07.21 18:11]
What an amazing and insightful AMA today!!!
Big thumbs up to Ben Jorgensen for hosting the AMA and to Ben, Adam, Chandrashekar and Neil from the Alkimi team for giving us such a detailed overview of the project! 🔥🔥🔥
We will now use the last part of the AMA for community questions — so please feel free to ask your question and the Alkimi team will answer them 😉
Benjamin J Jorgensen, [28.07.21 18:11]
[In reply to Ben Putley]
Thank you!
Stay tuned for more content around Lattice Launchpad and Alkimi Exchange in the coming weeks. In the meantime, stay up to date via our official channels:
Website: https://lattice.exchange/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LatticeExchange
Telegram Group: https://t.me/Lattice_exchange
Telegram ANN: https://t.me/latticeexchange
