The first OPUS AMA

We had our first AMA on our Telegram a few days ago with our community manager, Philipp, and our CEO, Mateusz, with many great questions from our community. This AMA was a great success, and we hope to have another one soon. Below are the questions that were asked in the AMA.

What is your plan with 0chain?

Good question! This is one of the reasons our platform was unfortunately delayed. The team at IPFS were somewhat too optimistic about its efficiency. Our extensive tests for small amounts of stress were successful, but when we increased the stress, we were disappointed. Since then, we have been looking for alternatives to IPFS, and one of the possibilities for file storage is 0chain. Our talks with the guys at 0chain have been going on for a long time, we will soon have access to their beta. Mateusz, our CEO, has met with Atif from 0chain several times during his time in New York, and we hope that this alternative to IPFS will be successful. Blockchain as an entire industry is still in its early phases, so some solutions are always bound to fail while others succeed, and we are constantly on the lookout for the best options for Opus.

What is the strategy with listing on exchanges?

Presently, we are working on all the bugs and issues that our community has pointed out and that we ourselves have spotted in our tests. Once the product is fully functional and we are certain that it can succeed on the mainnet, we will launch on the mainnet. Following this, we will begin our outreach to exchanges. The reason for this is that we have discussed this in depth with a range of legal firms and lawyers, who have suggested this kind of approach. For us, as the team, we have the best interests of the project at heart and want the project to succeed in the long term in this ever-changing industry. We are also ready for compromises, which can also include this delay with exchanges.

When does the team plan to hire more people?

When it comes to developers, our team is highly capable and we also hired several interns recently. At this time, we have 8 people in our office. As the project grows, we will need to hire more people to our sales team, which will most likely occur in Q4 this year.

Does the team feel like they need to push to get ahead of the other music tokens?

We are certain that from a technological standpoint, we are ahead of our competition. There are no other working players based on the blockchain on the market right now, with a web player and two mobile apps (even though there are still things to iron out). On the other hand, we are aware that there are projects that are ahead of us in the music industry, and as such we will be looking to expand our sales team in the coming months.

When do you plan on pushing the marketing campaign?

We are constantly pushing ahead with the marketing campaign, we make appearances on a range of conferences worldwide, including some that we sponsor. We also take part in various business meetings, whether that’s in New York, Europe, and now also in Australia. We are constantly growing our network. The marketing campaign is a long process that is definitely being done, but will become more aggressive and visible following the mainnet release.

Were options other than 0chain considered?

Yes, definitely, but we are convinced that 0chain has the technology that will benefit us the most.

How does the combination of 0chain and the Ethereum main network solve the problem of high transaction fees?

The problem 0chain solves is related to storage fees, not high transaction fees. High transaction fees are an entirely different topic which is a challenge that both our team at Opus and the rest of the blockchain world needs to tackle.

How is onboarding new artists going? What are the plans to grow the database? Which week do you expect or hope to release the full version of the app?

Before the beta release, it was mostly us who contacted artists, but now that artists can sign up by themselves, we have decreased our efforts of onboarding artists somewhat. We will ramp up those efforts again just before the mainnet release so that the library can grow significantly. As for the release date, we don’t have an exact one yet, it all depends on how quickly we fix all the bugs and problems.

When will either the web or app versions contain a ‘genre’ selection to sort by music genre?

We will evaluate all sorts of features and how long it will take to include them. Right now, it is difficult to judge precisely when all these features will be released.

Will there be a way to query / re-pay the monthly cost for streaming using the mobile apps?

Not right now. We are not planning this feature for the moment as there are other very pressing issues, but we will consider this for the future.

Are there other partnerships in the works to assist in accelerating the brand and the technology?

0chain was the most significant one for us. We are having talks with various other companies but cannot, for the time being, guarantee their outcome.

How will you handle monthly payments?

Smart contracts will automatically handle all the distribution of the revenue. In the first phase, all payments will be made with OPT, and other forms of payment will not be possible.