Dave Mancini on GeoCoin’s geocaching blockchain app

0:00i'm ashlyn addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Dave Mancini the GIS technologists from geocoin Dave thanks so much for coming on the show it's a pleasure to have you here today thanks for having me Ashton you're very welcome I'm excited to learn a little bit about the geocoin

0:19project and the geo cryptocurrency if you could just start by giving us a better understanding on you know why did you guys start the project and what is it all about okay great the project started back in 2015 the original developer was a developer named Tobler and I helped to launch the original token on a proof-of-work network using the qubit mining algorithm

0:42so the main goal for a Geo coin was to create kind of a fun blockchain gaming experience where people can drag and drop cryptocurrency right onto the map for others to collect so it creates this fun blockchain gaming experience that's very cool and I'm familiar myself with geocaching you know I had experienced it many years back now but it sort of reminds me of

1:10that but more technological version and you know much more futuristic have you guys based the application off of some of how original geocaching started and is it easy for people that aren't technical to jump on and even though it's using cryptocurrency be able to actually use the application yeah definitely that's always been one of my goals with the geocoin project is to

1:37help more people get into the blockchain space so what about what better way than to use a game to get people to start using blockchain so you know the onboarding process is fairly simple you would simply log in to our sign up at our website geocoding cache and then we're currently doing beta testing right now so you contact us we can add you in as beta testers and then once you're in

2:04you can basically turn on collect mode which uses the GPS navigate to the nearest location where there's a geo coin and you'll pick up the coin right from that so in terms of barriers to entry you know you could basically just sign up walk down the street and all of a sudden you're you're into crypto that's awesome sounds simple enough and have you guys

2:29ended up actually partnering with geocaching or integrating in that whole platform because I know they had tens of thousands of people that were playing that at one point yes so I've actually done a lot of geocaching myself I think I found over 200 finds around the local Vancouver area so the idea of geocaching is definitely close to heart for me but

2:53yeah it's a very big community and we have made a few promotional items that are called trackables and the way that those work there are physical coins and then they actually have a little code on the coin and when you enter it in geocaching comm the people who find it can tag it as it goes from cash to cash and then you can actually see spatially where they've traveled around the world

3:20so we have done a few of those promotional items but it's it's just in terms of trying to get some of the attention of geocachers who are in that community to let them know about our project see if they'd be interested very cool that's super interesting Dave and is the platform available you know can people put geocoins all around the world or are there restrictions so yeah you

3:46can basically drop it at any location on map there is no restrictions on that in terms of the way that we drop geocoins for for increasing our circulating supply we've used a little bit of GIS and automation one of the things that we are worried about is we don't want people to be near roadways and looking at their phones in dangerous areas so

4:14part of the automation is to try to identify parks and green spaces and then drop them in in those types of areas as best as we can very smart and I'd like to learn little bit more about the cryptocurrency integration part and you know how the blockchain works it's possible to make an app like this you know with just tokens and besides the fact that you

4:38know you can have cryptocurrency and you know trade it for other cryptocurrencies and it's sort of like a more real form of monetary value compared to tokens is there any other advantages to having it an actual cryptocurrency back on the blockchain well the benefit of the blockchain is it does a lot of things really well for us like storing user balances sending tokens from one wallet

5:05to the next that type of thing and so that's basically how we utilize the blockchain with geocoin but you know originally we did start as a proof-of-work blockchain so it could be mined through just the use of like GPUs and mining hardware but a few years ago we actually migrated over to the Ubik network and became a token at that time so but actually that process actually

5:34alleviated us from having to maintain our own blockchain so we didn't have to have our own block explorers we benefited from a lot of the community tools the chain was more secure because we we got on to a larger pool of miners by becoming part of the Ubik network so you know we started off using just a proof-of-work chain and then once it was

6:02a token we actually started off this idea which kind of makes geocoin a novelty which is our proof of location so at that point we still had all of this remaining coin supply to just distribute so we thought the best way to do it would be for people to place magnets on the world pan and zoom into their local area drop a magnet and then it'll use that

6:29automation I was I was mentioning before to try to find nearby green spaces and parks and you know that's our plan for distributing the remainder of our circulating supply that's very interesting because a lot of projects build on top of aetherium and you guys had your own chain people that aren't familiar you know with the intricacies of blockchain

6:51to be running your own blockchain and running your own nodes can be a whole nother project in itself right it's a lot of work but moving over to the Ubik blockchain I believe Ubik has a lot of similarities to aetherium as well and not very many people are familiar with the Ubik project but it's sort of like you know a dumbed down version of aetherium but it's much more scalable

7:13did did you guys ever consider just staying on aetherium but not running your own chain and just having a token there it was that possible and was it the right move to do it how you did it now with moving to Ubik to be honest we actually directly decided to migrate to the youbut chain instead of eutherian and it's been a great network to be on the community is very strong in the UVic

7:40network so that's been a huge benefit to us we've formed different partnerships with different people the other community members have helped us solve different parts of our issues along the way so I've really benefited from the community itself but also you know you BIC as a it is a different fork of the etherium virtual machine so offers 100% compatibility but they have made some

8:09thoughtful consensus level changes to their blockchain particularly they use a longer block time of 88 seconds and they also have a flux difficulty algorithm which helps maintain the the block times and the stability of the chain over time so I think there was a group called I think it was white block or something like that but they did a benchmark what

8:37basically showed that you become cos compared to the etherium maintenance limits at certain parameters and what not so you know Ubik is essentially a hundred percent compatible EDM but they a few other things that make it a bit different than the etherium main net terms of like governance and community input and that type of thing mm-hmm

9:06interesting and now that you don't have a chain on aetherium people used to be mining geo by pallet helping validate the network it's a little bit different now are there other ways to acquire geocoins besides looking for them in the application and not being able to mine them in terms of mining it through the through the geocaching interface is the

9:30only way but you can get it through proof of location the only other method would be to buy it through one of the marketplaces just using Bitcoin okay and did you guys have see any downsides from moving away from etherium and although you but has a strong community you know aetherium has one of the largest communities overall and um well I think the Ubik community

9:56is it's always been trying to be a partner with etherium we're not trying to be a competitor so you know everything everybody views it more as like a competitive partnership where we can improve and make the best EVMS possible mm-hmm with with some of the other geolocation games like ingress and Pokemon go which got very popular there

10:24was talk about people being able to spoof their locations is that possible with the geocoin app and does the blockchain help with that security at all we do use GIS to analyze if people are trying to spoof their GPS location because the nature with any game is that people are going to try to cheat and when the reward is cryptocurrency people are gonna try to cheat even more so we

10:54definitely do use some GIS analysis and certain members of the beta testing community have been hit by the banhammer basically and then we have to discuss and see you know sometimes people are on VPNs some people are trying to mess around right so so far the results have been pretty positive but we're not using the blockchain in any sort of security sense

11:21okay so and you guys mentioned that you're in beta testing right now what does the development roadmap look like coming up and are you guys launching a full application sometime soon yes so while I'm working on the front end adding different base map choreographies and a few other fun things that we've been working on we also have worked with some partners who are helping us with

11:45the wallet back-end so these both sides are being developed simultaneously right now and then once the wallet back end is up and running fully we'll be pushing for the launch so I don't have any set dates yet but we're pushing for the finish to start as we can that's great and as you continue to grow are you guys looking for further developers or team

12:08members or more strategic partners or just more beta testers you know we're always happy to meet with people and discuss the geocoin project and whatnot as I said I've actually gained a lot of support from different members of the Ubik community so different people contribute in different ways but yeah you know we're always interested if people are willing to help us out and

12:33also we're also looking for more beta testers people wanted truck and collecting geo themselves and as you guys continue to move towards releasing the full application what kind of challenges or obstacles are the biggest that you have to face as you continue to grow I think just getting the wallet back end will be the biggest technical feat in terms of us getting to launch so

12:59as I said we we've formed some partnerships the people in the EBIT community and then you know security is also a big concern so we want to make sure things are done secure so I think the people that were we're discussing these things with are the right people to be talking with so if I have confidence that we will get there it's only a matter of time

13:22and I'm glad you guys are prioritizing security now if there are beta testers that want to try out the application or more people that are interested in learning more about geocoin what's the best way for them to reach out contact you or follow the project the best way to contact me would be through the Ubik community discord so if you sign up there there's a geocoin channel where I

13:47like to hang out so I can definitely provide a link to that discord for you guys if you need but otherwise you could follow us via social media on Twitter or Facebook and that type of thing great I'll leave those links in the description box below thank you so much Dave for the time that's all the time we have for this interview but all the best with the geocoin project and let's

14:11follow up in the near future all right thanks very much Ashton