DEBIO NETWORK AMA WITH AMA LOUNGE RECAP
Let’s have a quick recap on Debio Network and Ama Lounge on telegram on August 3rd. Find what you need by press CTRL + F. Good luck reading.
Pandu:hi everyone!
My name is Pandu — you can find me as Decentricity on Linkedin, Github and Twitter. My website is decentri.city.
I am the CEO of the Decentralized Bio network. Go to debio.network for details. My team includes Ibnu Gamal Al Hadid — our Chief Science Officer — and Kevin Janada — our Chief Engineer. We have 6 developers and 7 biomedical professionals as well.
@gamalhadid and @DannyJakarta can introduce themselves i think 🙂
Lancelot| AMA Lounge admin:Thanks Pandu, I see you got a big team. Solid foundation to build on top of. 💪
I too think that separate introductions would be great!
Ibn G. Alhadid DBIOX: Mine is Ibnu. I’m DeBio’s Chief Science Officer and I manage DeBio’s team of advisors
Danny Myriad.Social: Hello everyone. I’m using my real name as telegram name, but you can call me Danny. A you can see I’m the CEO of Myriad.social (which you should definitely check out #shamelessSelfPlug), and an advisor to DeBio.
I’m a long time friend and colleague of @mbakpandu, we’ve been working together since 2017 and geeking out before dinosaurs has their first cellphones.
I’m a solution’s engineer and consultant by trade -and much more than that. Also very handsome.
Pandu: and finally, here is our team list 🙂 https://www.debio.network/team
Baron | AMA Lounge: So get into the project itself. DeBio Network to my understanding works with biomedical data. Could you please explain to us further regarding the project and it’s mechanics? What sort of things are you solving within biomedical data that other data privacy blockchain-oriented projects couldn’t solve?
Danny Myriad.Social:As an advisor, something that really makes me believe in the project is the team composition. They aren’t just people who are invested in the project, they are qualified practitioners and academics who actively participate in the building the product. We’ve already gathered a slew of key insights from them.
By the way, if you’re from the US, have a similar profile as them and want to join in, just shout!
Pandu: so we have sort of studied a lot of the things that other data privacy / biomedical blockchain projects tried to do, and in our opinion we have the most complete stack.
instead of just focusing on the data monetization, we also initiated a way for labs to get onboarded into the ecosystem, and create a way for users to send in samples anonymously and get data (whole genome sequence, simple biomedical test results) back, sovereign to the user
our big idea is: Allow you to Control and Monetize your biomedical data — anonymously — and do this on a web3 permissionless platform.
Baron | AMA Lounge: Definitely and you have some solid all-around team there with medical experts & blockchain experts on various blockchains, really well thought through.
Pandu:here’s sort of a quick overview on how we do the testing part: We allow users to send in biomedical samples without KYC, via DeBio. DeBio provides instructions for DIY sampling, usually a simple buccal swab (if you’re doing DNA testing) — swabbing the inside of your cheeks 10x. This sample is sent within a sample bottle and an envelope with an anonymous specimen number — like a Swiss bank account, there are no names here.
Labs receive the sample, does wetwork and analysis, and sends the genomic data and reports to encrypted IPFS storage that can only be decrypted by the user.
the way we see it, having the onboarding of data be done on platform in an anonymous way is a key differentiator.
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s something new on blockchain definitely, only perhaps something like Triall comes to my mind working in medical sector as well. Not sure if they work with data such though.
Pandu:for labs, this is also beneficial since we are not competing with them: in fact we provide the possibility for them to onboard and have a storefront on the debio platform 🙂
Baron | AMA Lounge: The “traditional markets” definitely lack some privacy right now, and obviously too centralized as well. . So thinking about blockchain, why do you think that we require to have some blockchain technologies behind these solutions? Is it exactly to create the “anonymous way of running things, to protect the data”?
Pandu: what we want to do is go beyond that, because we also offer data staking. So basically when you already have your sovereign data in your hands, you can do data staking on it for an amount of tokens. we basically offset the expensive costs of the testing by allowing users to stake their data into a privacy preserving data marketplace, which aggregates the data and sells it; users get our $DBIO tokens in return.
This is where we collaborate with Ocean Protocol btw… that data marketplace carries the aggregated dataset
so here’s what i think. the traditional markets / traditional data ecosystem is way too centralized, and what’s super dangerous is the linkage between your KYC and genetic/medical data that is kept by a central party
Baron | AMA Lounge: Data staking, that sounds something new 👀
Exactly! Considering though that you operate on a public blockchain, how can we be sure that our details wouldn’t leak around? You mentioned about the records being anonymous — can’t they be tracked backwards by some more “authorized” or resourceful entities besides the user oneself?
Danny Myriad.Social: Triall is… a distant cousin? They are oriented towards clinical trials, which is a splendid idea. And DeBio is turned towards the general public, labs and practitioners for more day-to-day activities -testing, second opinions, EMR management and such.
Pandu:
so on data staking:
- once you receive your data from the dapp, anonymously and sovereign to you, you can stake it on our privacy preserving data marketplace — diagram 1. The data marketplace (Ocean Marketplace) mints “datatokens” based on the aggregated dataset. for example, genetic data can be $GENE.
this is ERC20, and connects back to the aggregated dataset through a compute-to-data proxy
on diagram 2, you can see that we have a privacy computing mechanism, where buyers of the data can execute algorithms on the dataset they buy, but without gaining access to the data themselves
so they can propose algorithms (incidents of gene ABC in the female Asian population for example) and send to us, to run and send back the results
what we are trying to do is actually super simple 🙂 we want to flow value back to the hands of the users.
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s really decent.
Pandu: a lot of money is in this field — with computer aided drug design and other medical research, just the genetic testing market is going to reach 18 billion USD by 2025
but the money doesn’t flow back to the people who own the genes
Ibn G. Alhadid DBIOX: buyers here could be biopharma companies, research universities, independent researchers, basically everyone that needs access to population genetic dataset
Baron | AMA Lounge: You’re targeting the whole market pie then optimistically, or do you concentrate on some specific data services (like digital medical records, DNA samples or so)?
Pandu: specific marketplaces, focusing on three things:
- personal genetic testing (human only)
- medical test results (imagine getting a test for COVID-19, or HIV, or Syphillis, at home, privately, without giving your name)
- Personal Health Records (basically EMR, but from the patient side) to be able to get a second opinion from a real doctor by giving bounties
Baron | AMA Lounge: Actually one of my questions as well, so you’re targeting some institutional players here mostly? Anyone could monetize their data though, right?
Pandu: so there’s a left hand side and a right hand side of this marketplace 🙂
left hand side is all individual users
Danny Myriad.Social: Well, no, not in theory and not without a tedious amount of social engineering.
We’ve run all sorts of scenario when we came up with the anonymization method we’re using, and short of using a literal spy there’s little that can be done.
Now, keeping that in mind, nothing is completely, totally 1000% secure, but whatever attempt to unveil the identity of a specific user won’t be worth the effort. You would have to know the person is ordering, physically follow the samples and then either bribe a lab employee or steal the target’s phone AND credentials… Lots of work to know whether someone’s diet fits their DNA XD
Pandu: you and me and danny, just regular people wanting to get their health / DNA / etc checked
and the right hand side, the data buyers, we *are* targeting institutional buyers who will be using the dataset, but since the marketplace on the right is permissionless too, anyone can actually participate in the market activity
one thing that people ask us though, if everything is anonymous, how do we ensure that our sample is being sequenced or analyzed by a real lab or clinic 🙂
which is why another part of the ecosystem is our collaboration with KILT
so it uses the KILT Token Curated Attester model
Baron | AMA Lounge: Yeah was wondering why e.g. me as an individual player would like to buy someone’s medical data, but that makes sense.
individual player can actually still speculate on the datatokens 🙂
but yeah you probably don’t have any utility for it
Baron | AMA Lounge: For sure, Danny! Would need something else to connect the dots there. Which blockchain(s) will you be using by the way for the ecosystem?
and stake them! :)
Pandu: yes that data staking is clearly for the individual players
we use IPFS to keep the biomedical data files — encrypted with the user’s public key
Baron | AMA Lounge: KILT is a huge upcoming player as well. Loving both them and Ocean, you’ve got some seriously great partnerships lined up there and definitely building a well-functioning ecosystem with these.
Pandu: We are a Substrate blockchain
we use the pallets seen in here
we are interoperable with Ethereum
so we have that ethereum liquidity and access to their stablecoins
and our relay chain is oct.network
which is a Substrate compatible relay chain on the NEAR Protocol
to simplify, we are an Octopus Network appchain
Baron | AMA Lounge: Substrate as well, damn! Again need a sec going through that.
Oh didn’t actually notice that but a huge project that I’m looking forward to as well. Crazy partnerships as said.
Pandu: yeah, we think we need to go the full application specific blockchain route
not just dApp
since we are really building a biomed infrastructure on web3
Danny Myriad.Social: And then again, what’s interesting is that KYC being deduplicated from test results, even if, say I want to sneak around a lab and illegally buy their data… well what will that tell me? Even if I buy a huge heap of data and aggregate it myself (which, let’s be honest, will be a weird little package if it comes from a single lab), even if I go through all the tests one by one, if a test is addressed to a public key, then I won’t be able to breach the recipient’s privacy.
And that’s the thing, users on DeBio can stake their data voluntarily, and still those data KYC independent, and passed a certain volume the aggregate will be way more useful than just getting a random pen-drive under a table somewhere :D
Pandu: there might be future solutions built on top of this as well
Baron | AMA Lounge: Where does the actual “data monetazion” occur then? You’ll be using Ocean Protocol’s data market (or Ocean Market) or launching an own one?
Pandu: we are using their data marketplace
the token model is interesting — all the datatokens on the right side provide access to the data that is staked by the users, right
and activities on the ocean marketplace happen with OCEAN tokens
you basically buy specific ERC20 datatokens with OCEAN
now what we do is, all the accumulated OCEAN tokens are swapped for ETH in a permissionless smart contract, the ETH is then used by the smart contract to buy back DBIO
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s something else, users could still feel safe despite monetizing their data — kind of incentivizing to do that actually.
Pandu: and remember, at the beginning of this i mentioned that if you stake your data, you get DBIO tokens in return
so activities on the right side (the marketplace) props up the DBIO value on the left side
DBIO is also used for LP and validator rewards btw
Baron | AMA Lounge: Yeah actually wanted to drop in a question regarding your tokens. You had quite a few of them, six if I’m not mistaken? $DBIO is the main one, right? For the transactions etc?
That sounds extremely complicated at first glance to be absolutely honest. What’s the advantages of sharing the ecosystem into so many pies? Could you explain it open — what are the utilities of these tokens? They’re all ERC-20?
Pandu: it’s 5, but:
main token is DBIO and all the data tokens value in the marketplace flow back to DBIO with the mechanism above
GBIO is something different — it is a kilt-side token for their token curated attester model. Thus, it is not publicly traded, and you only get access to it if you are a lab, a medical professional, or a clinic
so there seems to be a lot of tokens because the three tokens on the right are just aggregations of data for the OCEAN marketplace
Baron | AMA Lounge: Where does DeBio Network get its revenue by the way if the data monetization occurs on Ocean Market?
Pandu:
we take a cut of the transaction fees here:
we also assist in labs getting certified on our platform, and that is through that Kilt TCA model
basically, if you’re a lab, you have to prove it to the TCA (attesters) to get yourself onboarded
i don’t want to make it seem that it’s overly complicated 🙂 from the user perspective it’s actually a simple experience
you use the dApp, sample yourself with the help of instructions on the dApp (sourcing your own materials such as swabs), and then send over via envelope, the envelope has a code which refers back to your public key.
labs take the envelope and sequence the sample inside
results get sent back to user, first encrypting with the user’s public key so no one else can see it (this is thru IPFS as well)
then user is given an option to stake
Baron | AMA Lounge: Really enthusiastic answers, loving the vibes here!
Pandu: thank you 🙂loving your questions too
hard hitting 😉
Baron | AMA Lounge: The 5% transaction fees would be for which transactions exactly btw? The monetization of data?
Pandu: 5% for both services and data
Baron | AMA Lounge: So $GENE, $MED and $EMR are simply linked to the respectable type of data, correct? As you mentioned briefly before?
Hope you’re not in a hurry 😂
Ibn G. Alhadid DBIOX: and users don’t have to worry about the quality of the DNA yield even though they source their own collection kit because:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215016118300128
Pandu: ah wait this is an important point
a lot of the personal genetic companies are selling their own kits
that is actually not necessary
there is no difference in DNA yield between medical grade / kit buccal swabs vs standard / store bought cotton swab
Baron | AMA Lounge: Let me just quote a part from the abstract there: “- — Cotton swabs also display the greatest consistency of DNA yield, as indicated by the lowest coefficient of variation among the four tested swab types. These findings suggest that the use of standard cotton swabs for buccal cell collection offers not only a significant cost savings, but a more consistent method compared to the use of medical-grade swabs.”
In case the community didnt open the link yet
Pandu: you can use a kit if you want to, but if you want to stay absolutely untraceable you can just buy a regular cotton swab
yes thanks so much Baron
Baron | AMA Lounge: So kind of worthless to spend time, money and effort for these costly and ineffective methods. Really glad to see how deeply you’ve researched this. =)
But you surely have the knowledge there behind the project
How about the tokenomics of $DBIO itself? On which stage are you regarding the launch of the token? When/where could we expect an IDO or ICO?
Pandu: our statement of direction is to do an IDO mid September 🙂
and we are discussing with the Skyward Finance platform to do it
our relay chain, oct.network, will do an IDO there this month
so we are following suit
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s NEAR-powered, right?
Danny Myriad.Social: Another thing, is that we’re providing online infrastructure, as opposed to offline infrastructure. We don’t want to solve problems that don’t need solving.
One could think that branding on kits would be a good idea in the immediate and in some cases it might be, but for DeBio it’s an additional problem and we don’t want to reinvent the wheel when there are readily available alternatives that support anonymity better. Not producing kits also allows us to focus our resources on the solutions we want to deliver for the problems we identified.
Pandu: ah this is key, in context of kits
sorry for having several threads at the same time guys lol
we already finished several rounds of funding
angel
Seed (250k for 2.5 mill DBIO)
Strategic is ongoing
total supply is 100 million DBIO
Baron | AMA Lounge: Yeah and what quickly came to my mind is that not branding the kits would add another layer of privacy protection itself to. At least makes it more “vast” not mentioning where the kit is from. Might be off here though haha.
No no, absolutely loving it such!
Pandu: yes, reduction of privacy is our worry
Baron | AMA Lounge: Lots to be shared for participants of the ecosystem there I see seeing the pies for community, marketing, bounty and DAO there :)
But yeah that’s quite soon then! Really looking forward to it and I’m sure we’ve some AMA Loungers waiting for the launch as well!
Danny Myriad.Social: Yes!
And it’s got another, corollary advantage: more budget and more focus on more immediately important things
Baron | AMA Lounge: Definitely, focus on the right things. :)
Before going into our community’s questions, let’s focus on the future of DeBio Network.
Besides the IDO/TGE, what sort of other things have you planned for the remainder of 2021? When could we expect to finally monetize our medical data? Would you have a roadmap to share with us today?
Pandu:
so… just a year in review, plus the rest of the year 🙂
we started to codify the concept in December, although i have talked about the concept for years
Baron | AMA Lounge: So you’re currently on the test net phase, correct?
Pandu: you guys can check out demo.debio.network
Baron | AMA Lounge: Will register there for sure to check out :)
Pandu: i have a background in bio as well as blockchain
Baron | AMA Lounge: You won some awards too by the way, I read something about those?
Pandu: i started 6 organizations in the blockchain space — including two listed in Gartner
all on my website, decentri.city
we started in Ethereum and won at ETHDenver
for United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
and IPFS bounty https://lincolncitizen.com/decentralized-bio-networks-degenics-wins-at-ethdenver-with-an-anonymous-at-home-dna-testing-platform/
ah yeah we used to be called Degenics
but it sounded “too degen” :D
Baron | AMA Lounge: Those are quite large competitions if I’m not mistaken, so congrats for those! Just tells to me that you’ve things running on solid grounds :)
the time has flown by so fast, didn’t even realise that an hour has already gone past. so interesting stuff you have here..
Let’s move onto the Google Form questions, shall we?
Pandu: yes please
Baron | AMA Lounge: We’ve prepared three for you today. We’ll have the live round right after those.
@purtport asks: “Given the medical industry that DeBio targets, do you have team members or advisors that are medical professionals that can give you insights from the client perspective and provide you industry crucial knowledge? Also, what do you see being the next additions to your team?”
Pandu:
Here are all of our advisors, also visible on our website:
Dr. rer. Nat Marselina Irasonia Tan
Researcher specializing in molecular and cellular biology in the biomedical science field. Experienced in cancer biology, immunology, and whole genome sequencing research.
dr. Agus Mutamakin, M.Sc
CIO of a major govt-owned hospital in Indonesia and a member of the healthcare informatics technical committee of the National Standards Bureau along with the National Telemedical Program with 15 years of experience.
dr. Hendy Wijaya, M.Biomed
Researcher with a scientific specialty in biochemistry, nutrition, genetics, and metabolic disease.
Popi Septiani, PhD
Researcher specializing in genomics and bioinformatics. Experienced in genomic data analysis and transcriptomics in the medical and agriculture fields.
Karlia Meitha, Ph.D
Researcher in the molecular biology field with interest in genome editing and the small RNAs application to support sustainable living. Writes scientific articles regarding plants, within the molecular and physiology field.
dr. Theza Pellondo’u, Sp.KF
Experienced in medical forensics, medicolegal, and bioethical fields, including assisting to solve criminal cases and ethical problems within the medical field. Previously the Chairman of Law and Ethics for a private hospital in Jakarta.
dr. Kresna Sucandra, MD
An anesthesiologist, intensivist, lecturer at medical school, and medical clinics co-founder. On the tech side, works as a blockchain development engineer and startup co-founder. Actively contribute to the blockchain ecosystem in Polkadot, Bit.Country and Covalent Ambassador program.
We are also set up, fully legally and with govt permission to issue tokens, as DAOGenics, Ltd, in Singapore. You can go ahead and search for us at http://uen.gov.sg
sorry for the wall of text, i copied from our advisor bios
next additions to the team — we are looking for people of the same caliber, internationally
most of our advisors, admittedly, are from one country, Indonesia
although they are full fledged academics
we are open for any academic in the biomedical field / or people who have contact with labs to join in
Baron | AMA Lounge: You’re targeting pretty much world-wide I’d expect?
Pandu: yes
the data industry is worldwide
the idea is that it’s an open platform for labs to sign up
and smaller labs can sign up too
ah btw we are part of diybio.org
so small labs can have digital storefronts to sell their services
we do need to expand our advisors to other countries, but the procedure for the sampling / data monetization is the same throughout the world
https://sphere.diybio.org/networks/degenics/
Baron | AMA Lounge: Have you had some decent response from that perspective even prior to launch?
meanwhile I had a quick look at your demo
Looks simplistic to use, love the UI there.
Pandu: for any interested investor prior to launch, we can send a list of the labs we are approaching currently
Danny Myriad.Social: That’s dedication right here!
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s fair
While amidst discussion, let me drop a second Q from the Google Forms here
@opotatoo asks: “Poor keeping of medical records has cost many their lives, most especially in developing countries, storage and transfer of medical records should be done in a secured manner. What are the solution proposed by DeBio to bring decentralized data storage solution to Medical and Bioinformatics?”
Danny Myriad.Social: THANK YOU.
I’m saying that in big caps because I did have a hand in that.
Adam | AMA Lounge: oh , and I even received 2 $DBIOs when registering , haha, great one.
Danny Myriad.Social: But to be a little more constructive: UI/Ux is a big focus from our team, we develop it together with our advisors, too. We aim at reducing possible friction between parties to a minimum, and we really want the whole thing to be non-disruptive.
Pandu: we are using IPFS for the per-person data storage of the medical / bioinformatics files that are on the user side. since IPFS is a public network, we encrypt the data first with the user’s public key. thus, only the user will be able to decrypt that data.
we don’t require KYC to come on to the system and that solves yet another problem: the problem of linking KYC and biomedical data (imagine if data leaks and insurance companies get their hands on that dataset, will it affect your premium?)
in terms of the aggregated data sold via the OCEAN marketplace — these types of data are more valuable when they are aggregated in this way since researchers can do analysis on that data set. when a researcher wants to run an algorithm on the data (for example: what is the prevalence of positive SARS-CoV2 tests in India?) we are using a kubernetes cluster to run operations on the data, without letting the researcher download the entire dataset. The researcher just gets the result of the algorithm running on Kubernetes
@DannyJakarta will be talking about the developing countries context
@gamalhadid will help discuss about the data TYPE that we are using, particularly for genetics
Baron | AMA Lounge: Thanks for putting it shortly & simply. Actually the last forms question is a bit related so let me drop it here as well. =)
@dudinhcryps asks: “Buccal Swabs, Nasal Swab, Test Kits, Protective equipments and other related accessories were majorly in use during the Covid-19 Pandemic. How did your platform handle the demand and supply for high quality test and Protective materials during the pandemic? Was Debio influential in the availablity of Medical grade analytical materials at the height of the Covid-19 ?”
Danny Myriad.Social: Developing countries -that’s a case that’s pretty close to my heart for many reasons, and I think there’s a real potential for DeBio to make things better in some cases. DeBio is online infrastructure, it helps connecting labs, practitioners and patients not just as consumers and providers, but also as a network where data is portable.
It means that one patient can access a test in lab A, ask for a diagnosis with practitioner B, a second opinion with practitioner C, and all that anonymously. If enough labs of lab-like structures are registered, then patients don’t have to move.
So what can happen in a poorly covered area?
With the help of online infrastructure, every actor -from a family doctor to a small city lab, will gain in visibility. Actors that might not know each other existed will be able to collaborate, and the needs for implantation of new actors will be measurable with better precision.
That’s without counting reactive measures, some lab equipment is cheap, and for some test you can implement a lab quickly in a strategic area.
So in short, you can have more labs, with better ground infrastructure, and patients will need to move less often.
Pandu: we decentralize the supply and demand by:
- not creating our own kits
- allowing users to source their own tools to test (see the swab discussion and paper above where it shows that medical grade swabs and regular cotton swabs have the same DNA yield)
- allowing all labs to participate by collecting the samples and doing the wetwork on it on their end.
- using a “hyperlocal” system where you can only send physical samples to labs in your area
- using an international system where *digital* data can be sent cross borders
- from the last two points, you can see that sampling can be done locally, while analysis can be done internationally. E.g., i can swab myself in Indonesia and get a whole genome sequencing in Jakarta, but then i can check for biomarkers etc via the marketplace and have a Netherlands lab do the analyss
Danny Myriad.Social: There’s also a lot to say about cost, EMR for everyone, synergies with health-focused organisations (yes I did say synergies)… but I don’t want to write a book about it right here right now. Let’s say that it’s very hopeful.
BY THE WAY.
-> If you’re an NGO and are interested in exploring possibilities brought by DeBio, give us a shout or a DM
Baron | AMA Lounge: That’s definitely something that could help the less-developed countries to grow in this essential field in an effective & privacy-protective manner. =)
Job opportunities for the Loungers here, perhaps :)
Make sure to tune in on DeBio’s Telegram Chat (https://t.me/debionetwork)by the way, lot’s of alpha coming up there for sure!
Ibn G. Alhadid DBIOX: We’re using VCF (Variant Call Format) for storage and bioinformatics analysis. This format allows bioinformaticians to catalog variants of a genome without recording those variants’ genetic data entirely so that they could quickly review and analyze without sifting through redundant data.
Danny Myriad.Social: Yes. And developed or less developed countries, there’s also a case to be made for anonymous yet social clinical/medical initiatives. Getting screened for some types of conditions or afflictions is still stigmatized in many places, and this ‘taboo’ is detrimental to both disease prevention and research. There too, I do believe DeBio can help.
Adam, Baron | AMA Lounge: Thanks for the explanation, sounds rather effective overall.
If something’s important enough, and as health is, you should try. Even IF the outcome would ever be a failure. But I consider your project to have awesome values and you have really done the research.. 👍
Ibn G. Alhadid DBIOX: Simply put, VCF files are smaller compared to other type of data format so that they’ll be easier to store and analyze.
Pandu: yes, thank you
many of us *are* researchers 😄
Adam, Baron | AMA Lounge: Yeah was wondering at some point how much of space all this data would take to store, glad to hear there are some decent technologies behind to make it function more efficiently.
Seeing few ladies tuning into your chat after I dropped this. Perhaps these were for you Danny.
Ok, I think we’re rather ready for the community live round here.
Chatted for a while here and absolutely loved the interaction here.
Would you be ready to face the AMA Loungers live?
Pandu: yes, go ahead
Adam, Baron | AMA Lounge: haha hope you’re prepared for it ;)
The chat will be open for roughly 30 seconds, then you can pick as many questions as you like to answer and in the end choose three best one’s for the rewards afterwards. DeBio Network has dropped in $150 to be shared among the best one’s from the forms & the live section.
You can answer as many as you would like, but in the end please select three best ones for the rewards. =)
Q: As the crypto market is expanding, we are seeing the hot topic is NFT. Do you guys have any plan to jump into one of the most competitive segments of the crypto market right now?
Pandu: I am personally also part of the uniqueone.network of NFT marketplaces btw. 🙂 I am their NFT curator. I am also NFT advisor for marspanda.world and (VERY recently) polkaparty.io
anyway, NFTs can be a key feature in DeBio for *personal* (not aggregated) genomic data monetization. basically minting your own genes in a way that is provably owned by you.
“Mint your genome” would be the rallying cry — ensure that you own it and can provably have it traced, even up to the physical-to-digital bridge, the lab that did the testing, etc
Q: What is the idea in DeBio? Id like to know things such as, how are the costs of the medical services going to be paid. And, what do you think, will the labs carrying out the medical services accept DeBio token or would users still have to pay using FIAT?
Pandu:The costs of medical testing services are paid via stablecoins. This of course necessitates that the participating labs generate their own wallets / use an exchange wallet.
in terms of what we are doing, in full:
- We allow users to send in biomedical samples without KYC, via DeBio. DeBio provides instructions for DIY sampling, usually a simple buccal swab — swabbing the inside of your cheeks 10x. This sample is sent within a sample bottle and an envelope with an anonymous specimen number — like a Swiss bank account, there are no names here.
Labs receive the sample, does wetwork and analysis, and sends the genomic data and reports to encrypted IPFS storage that can only be decrypted by the user.
-We provide a way for smaller labs to work together in order to provide genetic testing or biomedical testing services, thus even the labs are decentralized and can be competitive against large labs such as ancestry.org and 23andme because skillsets of several labs can integrate with each other.
- Since we offset the testing services with data staking, there is a possibility for each user to get testing for free! (since the data marketplace activities for that aggregated group of tokens connect back to the DBIO tokens that they hold.)
- No other platform provides anonymous-first testing at this scale.
Q: I notice DeBio releasing 6 tokens for a system. Even staking is divide into 3 tokens. How did you end up with this many tokens? @DannyJakarta @mbakpandu @gamalhadid
Pandu:
It might seem like a lot of tokens, but there’s actually only one mainnet token, which is $DBIO.
the rest are datatokens or the Kilt KYCed tokens, $GBIO.
The $DBIO token accumulates value from all OCEAN marketplace activities of our datatokens (initially $GENE, $MED, $EMR). It does so through a permissionless smart contract that swaps OCEAN for ETH and buys back DBIO. This props up and increases the value of DBIO constantly through all marketplace activities.
We actually only have 1 mainnet token, DBIO, which is provided as data staking rewards, validator rewards, and LP rewards.
We have three *data tokens* at launch, which will be put on the Ocean Marketplace to provide access to each aggregated set of data — thus, these are tokens that allow users to buy access to the data (whether genetics, medical, or EMR data).
Using a permissionless smart contract, we swap the proceeds of the marketplace activities into ETH and then buy back $DBIO tokens. This is done automatically, and props the value of $DBIO.
We are also using $GBIO tokens, which is based on Kilt’s decentralized token curated attester model, to attest the labs. Our platform is anonymous to the users, but the labs need to be attested. (Otherwise you will have fake labs in the ecosystem.) Thus GBIO is not an openly tradable token, and you can only get it if you are a lab, a hospital, or a subject matter expert within the biomedical field.
Q:You have partnered with KILT Protocol which is a huge upcoming project on the substrate as well. How will you intend to utilize their technologies?
Pandu: On Kilt:
Kilt allows us to have smaller labs participate while still maintaining trust by being attested via the Token Curated Attester Model that Kilt has. About Kilt TCA: https://medium.com/kilt-protocol/rethinking-tcrs-kilts-concept-of-the-token-curated-attester-tca-acc7a5974dbe
On Substrate itself:
Utilizing a dApp for our business model and platform is not the best strategy for DeBio Network, since we have to be able to optimize the entire solution stack and we have a lot of interoperability requirements. Coding just the App Logic without doing anything to the runtime, consensus, and governance, is terrible for both the dApp and the ecosystem, in our opinion. The better way is to create an application specific blockchain that is optimized for your needs.
Substrate has this promise.
However, costs are prohibitive for many entrepreneurs and ideators out there.
This is where the Octopus Network (our relay chain) comes in.
It has flexible security, per appchain needs, through Leased PoS
Hence the cost barrier is lower by a factor of 100.
It is built on NEAR, which is highly performance-driven.
Project tokens can be bridged to NEAR, stablecoins can be bridged from NEAR, and ETH trustless bridge is available via the rainbow bridge.
Appchains can disconnect any time and be independent or connect to Polkadot/Kusama.
Appchain community can fork its blockchain in case of hostile takeover.
Q: I heard you are anonymous , for what reason? ALSO, will users be able to test your demo for free? What is decentralized sovereign biomed?
Pandu: our team isn’t anonymous, just to be clear 🙂
the users are anonymous, and can keep their anonymity on our system, while being able to access genetic testing / biomedical testing services and monetizing data. This is not possible previously.
users would be able to test our demo for free, in fact they can already do so at demo.debio.network.
Decentralized -> owned by the community (of users) and consortium (of labs)
Sovereign -> every piece of data is user-owned and keeps privacy
Biomed -> Bioinformatics, medical, EMR data
i think that’s all 🙂
Baron | AMA Lounge: Was a HUGE pleasure hosting you here today. Absolutely great vibes thoroughly!
Pandu: alright
thanks so much
this was amazing, guys
i love the questions
Baron | AMA Lounge: Thankyou @DannyJakarta & @gamalhadid as well, was a pleasure to have you here today. =)
That the end of the AMA! What impress you guys the most? Comments down below.
Debio Network on social media:
Website https://www.debio.network/
Whitepaper https://bit.ly/DeBioWhitepaper
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/decentralized-bio-network/
Github https://github.com/debionetwork
Twitter https://twitter.com/debio_network
Medium https://medium.com/@debionetwork.blog
Discord https://discord.com/invite/J2nWEB4Vn2
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/debio_network/
