The Ukrainian project REMME is engaged in the development of solutions in the field of computer security, in particular, password-less authentication of users and devices on blockchain. In February 2018, the startup team managed to raise over $18 million through tokensale. Today we visited the REMME office in order to communicate with the team and the project’s-founder about the future of the project.

Alex Momot, Founder REMME

— It is known that in 2015 there was the idea to develop a password-less authentication solution. So when did you get your own project called REMME?

— Yes, the idea appeared in 2015, and the name in a few months later. It means Remember Me. Instead of typing a password, you can go just in one click. This appeared after the final vision of how the product will look like when it already been formed. Initially, there were several options, for example, to remember additional data with the help of geography, IP, and this already stored on the block, but then we realized that this is not effective as the main method and there must be something unambiguous. So we created such a digital passport in the form of a certificate, which is shown by the person and accordingly there is a login in one click. For the average user, this is magic, because nothing needs to be done. You just need to press the button.

— Tell me whether you can go now to the top markets: Middle East, Europe, USA? As far as these markets are open to REMME and that success?

— The first market we went to was the US market, because after the publication in Forbes, we received many applications for a pilot program. It was the fall of 2017. It was very unexpected for us, because very well-known companies entered the pilot program. We immediately realized that there is potential in these markets, there is a demand for our product and our purpose is to finish development and start selling. Accordingly, we will need offices in these regions. It is logical that Americans, for example, want to work with American representatives, at least because of the imperfection of our jurisdiction. Although this attitude is gradually improving, but if we talk about stable business activities, they would like their partner to be at the same location. Therefore, we decided that we will open a sales office in America, and we have almost completed this process, we have a person who is on the east coast, who will be responsible for sales at the initial stage around the world and after the United States it will be Europe and the Middle East, because they share the second place in terms of the number of requests for the pilot program and then Southeast Asia.

The person who is in America got absolutely relevant experience in the company that was engaged in the certification authority and he will give us the necessary knowledge and expertise to form the final look of the product. When we already have a protocol, we understand what and how it should work conceptually, but there are other nuances that companies want to see: automatic renewal of the certificate, additional opportunities for checking the status of the certificate. Some of these problems solved by design in our system: it can be seen that he is either withdrawn or active on blockchain. There is no such thing that the head of the certification authority sends the usual unprotected letter lists of certificates that need to be withdrawn. but nevertheless there are some points that should be taken into account in each market: in America, the Middle East, and Asia. There is a very large Asian company that came to us. They have a completely different case. Plus there are different directions: if it is a company of critical infrastructure in America, then there small number workstations and employees, but the value of cyberattacks and the consequences is much higher. There is a playground in China, for example, in which you are not ready to pay even $ 1 for a certificate, so the public network will receive a snapshot reward. Now it turns out that we have some more time to finish our product for different use cases that on the basis of the protocol it was possible to create different possibilities. For each market will be determined special strategy, and will be opened office. We have already passed the most important stage. We made the product to the richest and most interesting market in North America and sales will begin in the third quarter.

— The first version of the product REMME was on the blockchain Emercoin, and the second on the Bitcoin. Do you currently design your own blockchain? And if so, then what is the solution to this?

—  Yes, the first decision was on the blockchain Emercoin, but here the block closure time is 10 minutes and there is a complexity in forecasting the transaction price. Offered to solve this problem with constant hardwares, but for me, this is not a very effective way. Therefore, we decided to go to the Bitcoin Blockchain for especially big customers. But when it comes to millions of customers, you still need to create a specially designed blockchain and Bitcoin-based system also completely did not meet our requirements. Therefore, we decided to make a custom blockchain, in which may be public and private level. All the wishes of dozens of companies we took into account in the development that we will bring to the market. Now we understand that in this form it will satisfy any wishes: the ability to pay in fiat, the ability to convert fiat payment into tokens (and as soon as they appear on the balance of the company, it will be possible to issue certificates for its employees and users). It is also an opportunity to clearly plan the costs of fiat. And we are targeting 10,000 transactions per second.

For companies with more than 100 million users, even this scheme with transactions on Bitcoin did not work. Plus, the price of the transaction should have been tied to the fictitious value, so that the client could pay for the service with a simple swift payment to our account. Also, we would like the developers to be able to create their own solutions based on our protocol. This significantly reduces our costs in terms of business. This will keep a fairly light structure and thus compete with Amazon, which entered the market recently.Therefore, we decided to make a custom blockchain, in which may be public and private level. There will be a lot of new chips that have never been before: virtual proof of stake. Nodes receive actual compensation for the work done, but this is not mining. This is a separate consensus algorithm that allows you to stimulate for a particular job, but without using unnecessary energy.

— After a successful tokensale you have a lot of fans among cryptocentrists and in general on the Internet. How do you choose people who will work with you in a team? Are there any criteria?

— The primary criteria are the same for all — there are professionalism and understanding of modern technology. It is valuable to have experience with the blockchain. There are some areas where you do not really need such experience — this is a front-end, for example. A very important and probably unusual criterion is that a person has to adapt to our personal qualities, because we want to build a friendly team. I was in the offices of some of the companies that managed it, I liked the atmosphere there, and I decided for myself that REMME should have a friendly team with whom communication would be open. If there is such an atmosphere in the company — it helps to develop normally, this gives openness and normal interaction, I can say there easier to find a staff for developers department than for other departments because developers at least understand what is blockchain and work in the startup.

You need to quickly change and adapt, but not everyone is ready to do it, so one more factor is the ability to learn quickly!

We are gradually growing, but in general, we have about 25 people working. We regularly publish information in our social networks about vacancies. Now, I think, the main priority is marketing specialists.

Iryna Slobodyanyuk, Legal & Community Management REMME

— REMME is now gaining, it is very well known in the Internet and among the crypto-enthusiasts. What does a community manager do? How do you communicate with the community and what countries do they usually come from?

— In general, communication with the community is a process which passes 24/7. When we started, we did not know how it would be, who these people are, but now it’s already a big family. I know our permanent users, with us from the beginning, what they prefer. I’m in charge of the community, we still have a few people who are constantly in the group and able to give answer at any question.

— Community — it’s not always positive, sometimes it’s negative feedbacks. How do you cope with this?

— I believe that the main forces in the crypt are strong team and community. Community can both raise the project, and neglect. And of course our community have people who understand that REMME is for a long time. And there are people who have invested money and want to get a quick profit. Today, there are already less. People understand that there will not be a fast HYIP and we do not want to achieve it. 10 minutes ago posted a picture of how the carrots grow. The leaves may not be very large, but many are underground. We try to tell everything that happens in the team, we have a REMME daily channel for news, but we can not tell absolutely everything. A lot off are outside public space.

The second carrot can have large leaves, and the fruit will be small. Here we are carrot, with a huge part in the ground. We are definitely a long-term project and very much appreciate people with us from the beginning, who believe in us and support. Of course, there are skeptics. We have even an idea to make a battle between skeptics and those who support. We did not aim to ban skeptics. We are trying to prove them that we are a strong team, we are working, we are moving forward and developing.

— Which markets are you going now? Where the community is the most active: Ukraine, Europe, America?

— Crypto — this is such a thing, where you can not trace right away where a person from. But we communicate with our initial users even personally. I can say that Europe is very active: Holland, Great Britain, Germany. What is surprising, Americans are also active, although we do not have the same time. It seems to me that the eastern markets were more attuned to the fast HYIP, that’s why they were a little bit fell away. But we have informal groups of followers — German and Chinese. They communicate there separately and we even posted links to them in our group. We have a HODL group. A name speaks for itself, because these are people who believe in tokens and the product.

— Can you tell about the nearest plans for the community? What markets would you like to attract?

— We announced this plan in advance. In the near future will be launch a technical community. We want to divide a few purely technical issues and want to attract developers. And we plan to work with a technical team, with our developers, who will be able to give an answer on questions. It is planned that this community will participate in the further testing of our product.

Roman Kravchenko, CTO REMME

— Please tell us how the REMME product works. Because even for those who are “participate” in the technological sphere it is difficult to imagine at once the functioning of certificates for blockchain and their using in large companies.

— REMME is quite complicated technologically, so it’s not always possible to convey what we are doing. Actually for the user, this is simply a more convenient way to authenticate mobile services and applications. In corporate systems – this development is quite common. But is a fairly complex algorithm inside that uses blockchain technology as a distributed registry that stores data about certificates. A certificate is a small digital container  which save information about user. This certificate is stored locally by the user, so the maximum protection from external attacks on this data is achieved. If we deal with corporate systems where it is necessary to provide secure access, then the system under certificates will remove 70-80% of possible attacks.

— And what exactly you do?

— I’m on position of the CTO — the technical director at REMME and organize the process of developing a protocol and platform directly to provide the keys to access various services. I can show you the demo version of our product. We saved the certificate to the local store and able to use it for authentication on the web service. Instead of entering the password, I show the certificate and the blockchain system checks whether it exists and thus its validity is decentrally checked. That’s all, we logged in and now we’re safe in the system without having to remember passwords, without the risk of stealing.

— Tell us about the architecture of the blockchain and how to become the owner of the masternodes?

— This is a topical issue. The REMME protocol is done using softuz – this is a framework for developing blockchains. We initially analyzed various approaches up to the use of ready-made blockchains, but we came to the fact that we are developing our own. We have specific requirements for blockchain. We build communication in the network of the blockchain, which consists of masternodes (nodes) that issue certificates and verify them. We were inspired by the master-plan concept in Dash and applied it to our solution. For creating a masternode, you need to freeze 250,000 tokens. For the 3rd quarter of 2018 we plan to launch the test network publicly and investors will be able to raise the masternode and return their investments due to the fact that the masternode will provide network operation and receive compensation. And already anyone who is interested in REMME technology can come to the official GitHub and deploy a test network.