Interview with Sergey Vakula: “I don’t believe that blockchain and cryptocurrency will become massive”
Today I want to tell you about Sergei Vakula. He has been with us for three years, taking part in almost all projects of Emercoin. With its help, such projects as the E1 mobile wallet-exchange , the Web-wallet of Emercoin were created and wallet assemblies for Ubuntu , RedHat , Debian , Emercoin Microsoft Azure wallet are constantly supported.
As well as Blockchainizer (a service that allows you to store and process data on Emer blockchain without using cryptocurrency) and Authorizer (there is an article about him on Geektimes).
And EmerDPO and EmerVPN (an extension for a web wallet that allows you to use it as a VPN server).
Sergey Vakula, Head of Aspanta Limited
To talk about it in more detail, I decided to resort to the question-answer format and asked the journalists of the best news site in the world of cryptocurrencies - CoinFox , to interview Sergei.
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CoinFox: How did you get to know blockchain technology? How did she attract you?
Sergey : At the end of 2015, Technical Director of Emercoin, Oleg Hovayko, read my article on Habré about solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Emercoin needed such a solution. Oleg found me, we talked and found points of contact. Up to this point, I knew about the existence of cryptocurrency, but it all seemed to me insignificant. Oleg convinced me of the opposite. We started to cooperate, I plunged into the topic and realized how important it is to use the blockchain, that technology is a breakthrough in the field of IT, that it can change the scope of public services and many others.
In parallel with Emercoin, I began to study Bitcoin and Ether, and Emer was the easiest to use. If we consider the use of Emer from a technological point of view, it becomes immediately clear that it benefits compared to Bitcoin and Aether, despite the fact that it does not occupy the leading lines according to the CoinMarketCap rating. The Emer system is built so simply that the appearance of vulnerabilities is practically impossible compared to the same Ether. A smart contract in Ethereum, by and large, is a cool thing, but using it in every case is not as practical as Emer would be. If you just need to save something in the blockchain, read from the blockchain, then the smart contract as such is not needed, just save the information. This is how Emercoin works. Yes, in some way, Emercoin is inferior to Ether, but most of the tasks not related to ICO, Emercoin may well take over, moreover, without executing the Turing code.
CoinFox: How do you feel about ICO?
Sergey: I still do not understand how to relate. A lot of projects have attracted a lot of money on ICO, how they will behave further - time will tell. But it seems to me, in any case, such things, in which potentially we can talk about fraud, should be regulated by the state, no matter how cool.
CoinFox: As far as we know, a large number of your developments are made together with Emercoin. What development do you consider most successful?
Sergey : I consider the most successful technology DPO (EmerDPO) - technology to prove ownership of something through the blockchain. How it works: for example, when you come to the store and want to buy expensive goods, you cannot be 100% sure that this is not a fake, especially in the countries of the former USSR. If you have already purchased a product and are disappointed in its quality, you will not always be able to return it back. When we use DPO technology, we come to the store, scan the QR code on the product, and then a special web page opens that shows whether this product was previously purchased. Further, you come home, unpack the goods, inside there is another QR code (inaccessible until the goods are unpacked after purchase), by scanning which you activate this product. Of course, we are talking about expensive goods, it makes no sense to hang QR codes for cheap goods. Or another example: wine producers, for example, can put in the blockchain information about how many bottles of wine were produced from each specific crop in a particular territory, and when you buy wine in the store, you can also scan the QR code to understand whether you have fake wine in your hands or not, wasn’t the wine producer cheating, claiming that all of it was produced from the declared harvest and territory. That is how our development protects customers from fakes.
In addition to EmerDPO, we still have successful joint projects. For example, the script for the web server protection blockchain - EmcProxy ( GitHub ). This is a program that is installed on its own server, it requires an Emercoin wallet to work. Imagine that we want to create an application, and this application requires information from the blockchain, which is publicly available. For example, the history of operations is not only in my wallet billing address, but also in any other one that is stored in the blockchain. How can we make the application get public records from the wallet, without having access to the wallet itself in terms of sending coins, private keys and other personalized functions. EmcProxy is a service that allows you to pass requests from outside to the blockchain, while passing only those requests that are listed in the list of allowed commands. To gain access to the blockchain, you need to install an Emercoin wallet, which contains both private and public information. With the help of EmcProxy, we delimit this information. In EmcProxy, we can only write commands for the blockchain that relate to public information and do not belong to private information. When any software is connected to the wallet through EmcProxy, it turns out that the public information will be transferred, and private information will not be. When an application wants to access the blockchain, it can go along the path of opening the blockchain API via EmcProxy, which, in turn, has access to the wallet, then public and private information will be distinguished.
Another of our development is EmerVPN ( GitHub ). Physically, this is not an application, but an add-on in the form of configuration files and certificates over OpenVPN. When we install EmerVPN, the standard OpenVPN server is installed and then configured so that users can be authorized via the blockchain. The EmerVPN server is almost immediately ready for operation after installation, it only takes time to load the Emercoin blockchain. When we give the server a command to install EmerVPN, it pulls OpenVPN and a bunch of dependencies, among which is the Emercoin wallet. Once the Emercoin wallet is installed in the system, the Emerk blockchain download begins. After the completion of this process, everything is ready to go. You do not need to customize anything. How to manage users who have access to VPN through the blockchain? You need to create an entry in NVS that will contain user IDs (ID EmcSSL certificates) that are allowed to access the VPN. Once we have registered the name of this NVS entry in the EmerVPN configuration file, we will be able to control the list of users allowed to connect to the VPN by editing this entry in NVS. No editing of configs on the server is required anymore.
As for another of our development - web wallets. Initially, there was a web wallet installed on the server in order to ensure the most efficient operation through the web interface. There was the first version of this wallet, written by our Estonian colleagues, which included only the basic functionality. Taking this version as a basis, we have 95% reworked the entire internal device of the application, taking into account the latest technologies, frameworks. Over the past 1.5 - 2 years, we have already made about 5 versions of the wallet. At the moment, a web wallet can do all the same things that a regular wallet can do, which we set up under Windows or Mac and much more. For example, the latest version of the wallet already includes support for EmerSSL , EmerVPN, EmcLNX, EmerDNS . In other words, functionally, it is much more advanced than the standard wallet application for Windows or Mac.
CoinFox: You started with Microsoft Azure, do you use it now? Or come to other technologies?
Sergey : Yes, of course we use. Our company Aspanta is a partner of Microsoft, all of our online technologies are built entirely on Azure, our employees are certified specialists, for this reason we can provide very serious expertise in this area.
CoinFox: What are your future plans? What projects are you working on at the moment?
Sergey : At the moment, we are completely reorienting on the development of blockchain projects, we consider them the most interesting and promising.
oinFox: How do you see the future of the blockchain?
Sergey : I do not believe that the technology itself and cryptocurrency in particular will become widespread. Rather, some projects will be implemented on the blockchain, which will be delivered in a more familiar form to the general public. For example, cryptocurrency is not easy to pay due to its volatility, it is not a secret to anyone. In addition, it takes a long time to confirm the transaction, which is also inconvenient. It is quite another thing to make a decision on the blockchain, for example, to enter some information through some kind of User-friendly application, which can always be checked by anyone using raw records in the blockchain. This is comparable to open-source technologies: if you want to know how, say, Chrome works, you go to GitHub and see. Or use ready-made binary builds, if you trust the one who collected it. Similarly, it should be with the blockchain: everyone can use simple and accessible tools (applications, websites, etc.), and if desired, check the accuracy of the data on their own by requesting data directly from the blockchain. This should be the main thing - the availability of technology to everyone, with the ability to verify the data used.
References:
→ Aspanta Limited Website
→ Emercoin website
As well as Blockchainizer (a service that allows you to store and process data on Emer blockchain without using cryptocurrency) and Authorizer (there is an article about him on Geektimes).
And EmerDPO and EmerVPN (an extension for a web wallet that allows you to use it as a VPN server).
Sergey Vakula, Head of Aspanta Limited
To talk about it in more detail, I decided to resort to the question-answer format and asked the journalists of the best news site in the world of cryptocurrencies - CoinFox , to interview Sergei.
')
CoinFox: How did you get to know blockchain technology? How did she attract you?
Sergey : At the end of 2015, Technical Director of Emercoin, Oleg Hovayko, read my article on Habré about solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Emercoin needed such a solution. Oleg found me, we talked and found points of contact. Up to this point, I knew about the existence of cryptocurrency, but it all seemed to me insignificant. Oleg convinced me of the opposite. We started to cooperate, I plunged into the topic and realized how important it is to use the blockchain, that technology is a breakthrough in the field of IT, that it can change the scope of public services and many others.
In parallel with Emercoin, I began to study Bitcoin and Ether, and Emer was the easiest to use. If we consider the use of Emer from a technological point of view, it becomes immediately clear that it benefits compared to Bitcoin and Aether, despite the fact that it does not occupy the leading lines according to the CoinMarketCap rating. The Emer system is built so simply that the appearance of vulnerabilities is practically impossible compared to the same Ether. A smart contract in Ethereum, by and large, is a cool thing, but using it in every case is not as practical as Emer would be. If you just need to save something in the blockchain, read from the blockchain, then the smart contract as such is not needed, just save the information. This is how Emercoin works. Yes, in some way, Emercoin is inferior to Ether, but most of the tasks not related to ICO, Emercoin may well take over, moreover, without executing the Turing code.
CoinFox: How do you feel about ICO?
Sergey: I still do not understand how to relate. A lot of projects have attracted a lot of money on ICO, how they will behave further - time will tell. But it seems to me, in any case, such things, in which potentially we can talk about fraud, should be regulated by the state, no matter how cool.
CoinFox: As far as we know, a large number of your developments are made together with Emercoin. What development do you consider most successful?
Sergey : I consider the most successful technology DPO (EmerDPO) - technology to prove ownership of something through the blockchain. How it works: for example, when you come to the store and want to buy expensive goods, you cannot be 100% sure that this is not a fake, especially in the countries of the former USSR. If you have already purchased a product and are disappointed in its quality, you will not always be able to return it back. When we use DPO technology, we come to the store, scan the QR code on the product, and then a special web page opens that shows whether this product was previously purchased. Further, you come home, unpack the goods, inside there is another QR code (inaccessible until the goods are unpacked after purchase), by scanning which you activate this product. Of course, we are talking about expensive goods, it makes no sense to hang QR codes for cheap goods. Or another example: wine producers, for example, can put in the blockchain information about how many bottles of wine were produced from each specific crop in a particular territory, and when you buy wine in the store, you can also scan the QR code to understand whether you have fake wine in your hands or not, wasn’t the wine producer cheating, claiming that all of it was produced from the declared harvest and territory. That is how our development protects customers from fakes.
In addition to EmerDPO, we still have successful joint projects. For example, the script for the web server protection blockchain - EmcProxy ( GitHub ). This is a program that is installed on its own server, it requires an Emercoin wallet to work. Imagine that we want to create an application, and this application requires information from the blockchain, which is publicly available. For example, the history of operations is not only in my wallet billing address, but also in any other one that is stored in the blockchain. How can we make the application get public records from the wallet, without having access to the wallet itself in terms of sending coins, private keys and other personalized functions. EmcProxy is a service that allows you to pass requests from outside to the blockchain, while passing only those requests that are listed in the list of allowed commands. To gain access to the blockchain, you need to install an Emercoin wallet, which contains both private and public information. With the help of EmcProxy, we delimit this information. In EmcProxy, we can only write commands for the blockchain that relate to public information and do not belong to private information. When any software is connected to the wallet through EmcProxy, it turns out that the public information will be transferred, and private information will not be. When an application wants to access the blockchain, it can go along the path of opening the blockchain API via EmcProxy, which, in turn, has access to the wallet, then public and private information will be distinguished.
Another of our development is EmerVPN ( GitHub ). Physically, this is not an application, but an add-on in the form of configuration files and certificates over OpenVPN. When we install EmerVPN, the standard OpenVPN server is installed and then configured so that users can be authorized via the blockchain. The EmerVPN server is almost immediately ready for operation after installation, it only takes time to load the Emercoin blockchain. When we give the server a command to install EmerVPN, it pulls OpenVPN and a bunch of dependencies, among which is the Emercoin wallet. Once the Emercoin wallet is installed in the system, the Emerk blockchain download begins. After the completion of this process, everything is ready to go. You do not need to customize anything. How to manage users who have access to VPN through the blockchain? You need to create an entry in NVS that will contain user IDs (ID EmcSSL certificates) that are allowed to access the VPN. Once we have registered the name of this NVS entry in the EmerVPN configuration file, we will be able to control the list of users allowed to connect to the VPN by editing this entry in NVS. No editing of configs on the server is required anymore.
As for another of our development - web wallets. Initially, there was a web wallet installed on the server in order to ensure the most efficient operation through the web interface. There was the first version of this wallet, written by our Estonian colleagues, which included only the basic functionality. Taking this version as a basis, we have 95% reworked the entire internal device of the application, taking into account the latest technologies, frameworks. Over the past 1.5 - 2 years, we have already made about 5 versions of the wallet. At the moment, a web wallet can do all the same things that a regular wallet can do, which we set up under Windows or Mac and much more. For example, the latest version of the wallet already includes support for EmerSSL , EmerVPN, EmcLNX, EmerDNS . In other words, functionally, it is much more advanced than the standard wallet application for Windows or Mac.
CoinFox: You started with Microsoft Azure, do you use it now? Or come to other technologies?
Sergey : Yes, of course we use. Our company Aspanta is a partner of Microsoft, all of our online technologies are built entirely on Azure, our employees are certified specialists, for this reason we can provide very serious expertise in this area.
CoinFox: What are your future plans? What projects are you working on at the moment?
Sergey : At the moment, we are completely reorienting on the development of blockchain projects, we consider them the most interesting and promising.
oinFox: How do you see the future of the blockchain?
Sergey : I do not believe that the technology itself and cryptocurrency in particular will become widespread. Rather, some projects will be implemented on the blockchain, which will be delivered in a more familiar form to the general public. For example, cryptocurrency is not easy to pay due to its volatility, it is not a secret to anyone. In addition, it takes a long time to confirm the transaction, which is also inconvenient. It is quite another thing to make a decision on the blockchain, for example, to enter some information through some kind of User-friendly application, which can always be checked by anyone using raw records in the blockchain. This is comparable to open-source technologies: if you want to know how, say, Chrome works, you go to GitHub and see. Or use ready-made binary builds, if you trust the one who collected it. Similarly, it should be with the blockchain: everyone can use simple and accessible tools (applications, websites, etc.), and if desired, check the accuracy of the data on their own by requesting data directly from the blockchain. This should be the main thing - the availability of technology to everyone, with the ability to verify the data used.
References:
→ Aspanta Limited Website
→ Emercoin website
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/336626/
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