We’d like to thank those who joined the AMA between Kambria CEO and co-founder, Thuc Vu, and Binance DEX on August 21st, 2019! Your enthusiasm to join our AMA was refreshing! Thank you for showing your support for us. It motivates our team to deliver our ultimate vision and goals.
In case you missed it, we are providing a recap of the event so you can catch up! If you were unable to attend, we highly recommend reading through this, as it contains a lot of great information about Kambria, and the plans we have for the future of the project. There’s even some hints to our next major event. 🔥
Segment 1 of AMA with Thuc Vu and Binance DEX
Darc (Binance):
Good morning, good afternoon & good evening ladies and gentlemen! Welcome back to another Binance DEX AMA. Our guest for today is none other than Kambria CEO, Thuc Vu!
Thuc Vu:
Hello Darc and the Binance DEX community! Great pleasure and honor to be here today.
How are you all doing? hope all is well for everyone!
Darc:
Before I kick off with the questions, may you kindly intro both yourself & Kambria for us, please?
Thuc Vu:
Yeah definitely! My name is Thuc Vu, and I’m a geek & an entrepreneur at heart. I have been doing computer programming for more than 25 years, and AI for more than 15 years. I did my undergraduate program at Carnegie Mellon University, and later a PhD at Stanford, both in Computer Science, focusing on Artificial Intelligence.
Right after Stanford, I started a company called Katango which provided social analytics for users on Facebook. Katango got acquired by Google less than 2 years later. I stayed at Google for 3 years, and then left to start OhmniLabs/Kambria in July 2015.
We are super excited about Kambria as it is the first blockchain project with open innovation protocols that aim to build an open robotics and AI platform to develop real world applications with meaningful impacts. We are based in the Silicon Valley and has launched our MVP platform on mainnet. We aim to build an ecosystem that will bring the next wave of robotics and AI to provide value to billions of people around the world.
Kambria is one of the very few projects that have existing commercial products, a passionate user base, and partnerships with top universities and large corporations. Our founding team is composed of experienced entrepreneurs with previous exits (including one acquisition by Google) and deep-tech experts from Google, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon University.
We have made a lot of good progress so far in building out our platform as well as the community. Recently we successfully hosted the Vietnam AI Grand Challenge in conjunction with the Vietnamese government’s Ministry of Science & Technology and the Ministry of Planning & Investment. We worked alongside of McKinsey & Company, VietAI, and the Vietnam Innovation Network to deliver a series of hackathons and educational workshops focused on AI and Robotics and got hundred plus teams participated.
what really exciting coming out of this Grand Challenge are several really cool AI virtual assistant applications with HUGE commercial implications. We already got several large corporations in Vietnam started to mentor these teams, and willing to invest and apply these innovative technologies/applications in their businesses. These projects will be uploaded and made public on Kambria platform so that our Kambria community can contribute and continue to further develop them. You can check out a recap our preliminary rounds here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyhW_2lq8xU
Last but not least, we would like to invite you to check out our official twitter, where you’ll find more photos and official announcements + videos of our updates and cool stuff 😊
https://twitter.com/KambriaNetwork
Darc:
Thank you Thuc! On to the questions, Why did your team decide to create Kambria?
Thuc Vu:
To revolutionize how AI and Robotics have been developed and commercialized in the world!
It might sound a bit lofty but at OhmniLabs we had successfully brought a low-cost high-value robot to market by practicing our philosophy of ultra-lean, fast and agile manufacturing. We have been able to enhance the entire process, overcome existing shortfalls encountered in the industry. And we want to share this with other people, to jump-start a revolution in robotics, and hence, Kambria was born.
Being able to foster an open collaborative ecosystem, where every contribution can easily be shared, manufactured, and implemented, is revolutionary. Companies can benefit from the collective contribution from the community to build custom applications without having to employ teams of PhDs. End users can enjoy a higher quality of life potentially afforded by more available robot products and services. We believe that for the next decade or two, we will see a Kambrian explosion of robots with very specific use cases.
Even though we are still far from the general AI/robotics, Kambria will help to significantly reduce this gap! And this is super exciting to us.
Darc:
What is the use case of KAT (Kambria Token)?
Thuc Vu:
I'm glad that you asked! Kambria’s core offering, the Open Innovation Platform, has been built to accelerate the development of frontier technologies such as robotics, AI, and other disruptive tech. To ensure the success of the platform, we must provide not only attractive incentives, but a strong token economy. KAT tokens are used to facilitate the transfer of value for every aspect of the platform. By requiring KAT as payment for all products and services on the platform, we will increase KAT utility and reduce token velocity.
Here are couple of services on Kambria platform that will require KAT:
- Membership to the platform
- Additive manufacturing (3D printing)
- Prototyping services
- Manufacturing Alliance
- Acquiring developers
- Hackathon participation
- Access to KDNA codebase
- Access to resource library
- Robotics “Appstore”
- Use of licenses
- Backing your favorite projects
- Voting for your favorite hackathon teams
- Bounty creation
- Bounty participation
And several more features are coming!
Here is an overview picture of our token use cases. Just so everyone can visualize a bit better.
Darc:
What are you working on at the moment?
Thuc Vu:
Many exciting stuff! First, we are fine-tuning the Open Innovation Platform which we released earlier this year. Our bounty and hackathon platform is already complete, so now we are working on bringing additional functionality to our codebase and platform so we can offer a full-featured development platform that includes both hardware and software.
But more importantly, we are also enriching our ecosystem by launching a series of open innovation services as well as strengthening our strong token economy.
1. The Kambria Global Innovation Fund facilitates collaboration between researchers and companies worldwide.
2.The Kambria Open Innovation Hub is a global network of physical R&D labs that provides organizations with world-class solutions to accelerate their AI and robotics innovations.
3. Hackathons and K-prize Challenges bring together companies and innovators to create advanced technology solutions through K-prize bounty challenges on our platform and in-person hackathons.
4. Kambria eduKATion will offer expert-led courses with cutting-edge training in AI, Robotics, and blockchain development.
As I already mentioned, recently we launched our first multi-city AI hackathon with the goal to build the ultimate AI virtual assistant. With over 180 teams and about 700 participants, the hackathon is a huge success. The preliminary rounds completed, and 12 teams competed for $40,000 in prizes in the grand finale. One can expect a lot of commercial applications coming out of this soon!
Darc:
Who do you view as your current competitors?
Thuc Vu:
Interesting question. To be honest, with unique platform we are building, we don’t have quite a direct competitor. Even though there are several other AI projects in blockchain, most of them focus on creating a medium for entities to exchange certain things such as ideas, data, services for token and are, therefore, dependent on third parties to develop new and useful services.
Kambria is different because we are creating a comprehensive innovation engine that supercharges both the development and adoption of new technology, starting with AI and Robotics. Our platform is uniquely designed to take robotics development all the way from ideation to manufacturing to assembly and distribution.
Furthermore, we are the only project in the cryptocurrency space with a real physical product that can bring concrete value to our users. How cool is that!!! In short, what sets us apart is that we can jumpstart the AI and Robotics ecosystem with a valuable product from the beginning instead of waiting for people to contribute.
We are also working on building out an alliance on AI & Robotics with other projects in the space. For example, we have partnered with DAIA, an arm of Singularity.NET. The Decentralized AI Alliance vision is quite aligned with ours, so we are very excited about the opportunities to collaborate with them.
We also have a fantastic existing partner list (you can get more details from our website), and additional interest growing all the time. For example we have great relationships with several universities, including Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, both of whom you know already have the best AI and robotics programs in world
Here, just to show you some of our selective partners!
Darc:
Could you introduce more about Kambria’s sister company OhmniLabs? Since I knew it is found by the same founding team and it also has physical robots, so what is the relationship between OhmniLabs and Kambria?
Thuc Vu:
Great question! I'm glad you asked. OhmniLabs and Kambria are two separate entities founded by the same core team. However, you can think of them as two arms of an organization, one for-profit and one non-profit, similarly to Linux Foundation and Ubuntu. Kambria Foundation will build out the ecosystems in which OhmniLabs will play an important role in bootstrapping and facilitating each pillar of the Kambria platform.
OhmniLabs was built upon the premise that to really accelerate adoption of robotics in the homes, a new type of company was needed. Being far away from home ourselves, we could relate to the needs for affordable robots that bring families closer. So we set out to design robots with modular components, and utilize lean, toolless manufacture. To close the cost gap, we were ultra-focused on iteration speed. Reusability and integration were the cornerstones of our fabrication process, allowing for orders of magnitude less capital spent and a fraction of the development time.
In the short span of just two years, we were able to prototype ten generations of a telepresence robot, deployed almost a thousand robots in many use cases such as senior care, education, retail, real estate. We even saved 1 life with our robots 🙂
Armed with the technology, knowledge, and experience from OhmniLabs, we launch Kambria to share these with the community. OhmniLabs will help jumpstart the technology development in different areas on Kambria. And also will help commercialize technology coming from Kambria with existing clients (large enterprises such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, just to name a few), and of course, share the profits back to the Kambrian community.
Here is a quick overview of OhmniLabs to give you guys more information.
Ah that reminded me btw, recently through Kambria’s Global Innovation Fund and the use of our licensed OhmniLabs’ robot, Lehigh University is able to develop and test newly built functions, such as facial recognition, without the need to create their own robot from scratch.
Here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/niDGVBxUJnk
Segment 2 of AMA
So after the first part, we had a blast questionnaire for Kambria, We got a total of over 1500+ responses for all 5 questions, here are the questions and answers, thanks again for your awesome answers!
Q1: Where is Kambria headquartered?
Correct answer: Our headquarters is in Silicon Valley.
Q2: Why does Kambria believe open collaboration is important?
Correct answer: Everyone has touched on various aspects of why we believe open innovation is important. In short we want to foster a collaborative ecosystem, to change the way we innovate and to accelerate advanced technology development and industry adoption. But yeah many correct answers here.
Q3: What is the name of the national activity that Kambria was working with the Vietnamese government’s Ministry of Science & Technology and the Ministry of Planning & Investment?
Correct answer: Vietnam AI Grand Challenge
Q4: What are Kambria Token's (KAT) use cases? (please name at least 3-5 use cases)
Correct answer:
- Membership to the platform
- Additive manufacturing (3D printing)
- Prototyping services
- Manufacturing Alliance
- Acquiring developers
- Hackathon participation
- Access to KDNA codebase
- Access to resource library
- Robotics “Appstore”
- Use of licenses
- Backing your favorite projects
- Voting for your favorite hackathon teams
- Bounty creation
- Bounty participation
Q4: What percentage bonus are we offering to everyone who swaps their ERC20 KAT over to KAT-7BB (BEP2)?
Correct answer: 10%!
Segment 3 of AMA
In the final segment with the Binance DEX community, we selected some of the best questions to receive rewards! Here are the results:
What plans do you have to help drive demand and scarcity for the token?
Great question that I'm sure a lot of people in Kambrian community would want to know as well. We have several initiatives to promote the usage and liquidity of KAT. Getting listed on Binance Dex is one, for example. Another initiative is coming up. We will burn a significant amount of our token supply. This is unprecedented. Please stay tuned for the details which will be released in a month's time.
In terms of demand, we have relationships with governments, universities, and many corporations to focus on adoption for our platform. With the success of our Vietnam AI Grand Challenge, this was the litmus test for Kambria to demonstrate the capabilities of the platform. Because we require KAT to access all of these features, all of these partners will be required to purchase KAT as well. And we already got HUGE interests from large corporations to commercialize some of the projects coming out of the VAIGC. This will help start generating additional revenue for Kambria platform, which will ultimately benefit our token values and our community as a whole.
What are your biggest challenges and your biggest strength to overcome those challenges?
The biggest challenge is that we are right at the intersection of AI/Robotics and Blockchain. Both are relatively nascent fields that will need a lot of innovations and courages to help push the status quo forward. Our biggest strengths to help with this are deep technical expertise and a very strong connection with large enterprises and governments. The first strength will help us continue to develop cutting edge technology with meaningful impact. And the second strength will help us get the governments and large corporations to adopt and apply these technologies. This, we believe, is the best and fastest way to build out a strong and sustainable ecosystem.
Why do you think your idea need blockchain?
Classic question and also one of my favorite to answer! One of the most important reasons for Kambria to adopt blockchain is to build our own tokenomics, which allows us to build a community much faster and stronger than any other traditional open source projects. If you think about it, traditional projects either need a lot of financial backing from a big company (like Android and Google) or are at the mercy of developers willing to donate their free time (like Linux). With our blockchain-based KAT token, Kambria can actively acquire technology that is locked away in patents and research labs, as well as, reward developers who contribute to Kambria.
The second benefit using blockchain technology is to break down the process of innovation from being designed to production and manufacturing, and then on to commercialization. It allows different parties to address each piece separately while maintaining transparency and trust and then being able to distribute all of the upside through using tokenomics. This way the best engineers can focus on making the best robots, while the best entrepreneurs can focus on finding the best markets and use cases, and get fairly compensated.
The third factor is that blockchain technology allows Kambria to operate in an open system. Users can maintain and develop on top of it, and the technology is owned by the community. AI and robotics are way too important to be owned by just a few big corporations. You can already see some of the abuses and privacy violations coming out of the largest social network. We want to make sure that Kambria will better serve society as a whole.
How does KAMBRIA thinks of educating masses about AI, ROBOTICS? Will the users have to pay for such services?
Really like this question because personally I am very passionate about education. We believe building a strong developer community is the key to a successful Kambrian ecosystem. This is why we are pushing on initiative such as Kambria's eduKATion working with top universities such as Stanford, Lehigh and other educational projects such as VietAI to offer expert-led courses with cutting-edge training in AI, Robotics to our community. It will be structured as freemium model, in which some of the courses will be free, whereas the more advanced ones will have a fee.
What is the advantage for a token holder in the short and long term and will it have any reward structure for active members ?
Excellent question! For short term advantage, recently we launched a voting initiative for the VAIGC in which token holders can vote for projects on Kambria to win prizes (which is in a sense similar to staking mechanism).
Right now we are currently offering a 10% bonus for token holders who want to convert their ERC20 KAT to BEP2 KAT. You can find more information here.
We will also have a massive burn coming up, which we will give out more details very soon.
For longer term advantages, token holders will be able to receive KARMA, which is another really interesting mechanism that Kambria has. I don't have time to go into details here, but basically Karma holders will gain certain benefits including potential revenue sharing from the commercialization of technologies coming out of Kambria.
🏆Without further adieu, we present to you the winners from the AMA. We hope you enjoy those rewards. Here are our lucky winners!
🔹Segment 2
720,000 KAT per question has been distributed to everyone who answered correctly and signed up for our platform at app.kambria.io (per the rules)! So, if you participated in this event, now is a great time to go check your Trust Wallet. In total, we gave away 3,600,000 KAT. We will have more events in the near future, so use them wisely! 🔥
👉Question 1: 244 winners from 295 responders
👉Question 2: 150 winners from 170 responders
👉Question 3: 153 winners from 176 responders
👉Question 4: 266 winners from 302 responders
👉Question 5: 318 winners from 349 responders
🔹Segment 3
You asked. We answered. We chose five lucky winners to receive 45,000 KAT-7BB each for asking the best questions!
👉Li Luong
👉John Snow
👉Blockchain Enthusiast
👉Change is Now
👉Deepthich
🎊Congratulations to all the winners!
🎁Don't forget to Join our channels to stay informed in all things Kambria, including our next events.
Thank you for reading the recap! We hope you learned a thing or two about our project. Look forward to more events like this in the future, as we will be hosting additional AMAs and promotions soon. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, and join our Telegram community to be the first to hear about our next events!
Don't forget, we are offering a 10% bonus to swap your ERC20 KAT over to KAT-7BB all the way through October 15th! We encourage you to swap your KAT to take advantage of the many benefits that Binance Chain offers, including access to fair and open trading on the world's best decentralized exchange, Binance DEX.
ABOUT Dr. Thuc Vu — Co-Founder & CEO
Dr. Thuc Vu is a serial entrepreneur, with multiple company acquisitions, the last one by Google. He has deep expertise in game theory, tournament design and multi-agent systems. He earned his PhD from Stanford and BS from Carnegie Mellon, both in computer science. Dr. Vu is a social entrepreneur in Vietnam, involved in several community projects.
