04/04/2025 Uplink Community AMA

Summary of Discord AMA, April 4th, 2025.

Uplink participants:

• Claudia Olah, CMO

• Mike Post, Community Manager

Thank you to all of the community members who attended! [AMA begins] Claudia: Super excited to answer your questions today! First off, let me thank all of you for the awesome work you've been doing! 350,000 router registrations and counting. Let's talk about some general stuff first. We've gotten some questions about best practices for earning points, and how to earn like those at the top of the leaderboard. Of course, the best ways will be through registering routers and accumulating referrals. The most prolific earners for router registrations we've seen so far are people who are not only registering the routers that they own, but are going into cafes, McDonald's locations, and anywhere else you can find public Wi-Fi, and registering those routers. You get 50,000 points for every router you register, plus an additional 1,000 daily points for each 24 hours thereafter that the router remains active and connected to the Uplink network. Referrals are your best way of gaining passive points -- not only do you gain points per referral, but you'll also earn a percentage of the points gained by your referrals, your referrals' referrals, and your referrals' referrals' referrals. That's super passive earning. So those are the best practices that we've seen so far from the top leaderboard, and we wanted to share that information with you guys just in case it hadn't been quite as transparent as we hoped it would be. We're hoping to distribute some extra rewards to people who are at the top of the leaderboard. First, though, we're doing some investigating into the upper reaches of the leaderboard to ensure that there are no exploits in play. We want to ensure the integrity of the points system first, and to ensure that we're weeding out all malicious actors. Rest assured that any bad actors will be removed from the platform upon discovery. We're hoping to conclude that investigation and remove any exploiters within the next couple of weeks. If you've discovered any potential exploits, please be in touch! We've had a few community members reach out, and we're very grateful. Appreciate you! We've rewarded them with a large number of points. Our team does the primary legwork in discovering and closing exploits, but it really takes a whole community to build what we're building. We appreciate all of you! Out of 200,000 users, honestly, the amount of bad actors is very, very small, but it's still a good thing for us to go back through and make sure that everything is sound before we actually distributing rewards. So continue to register routers! If you have problems, please reach out to us on Discord. If you have issues with registration, we'll backdate your daily points. We have been experiencing some ongoing issues with certain Android phone models, though not in large numbers. The tech team has deployed a number of fixes and is working to resolve what remains. We'll update you guys accordingly, right, when the next big update pushes out. Finally, let's talk about upcoming features! If you guys tune into the Avalanche livestream we did yesterday, the demo, we shared a little bit of information about how right now we're really focused on adding the scanning feature, which will give us a lot more information and allow us to test for liveliness and quality of service. We're hard at work on that. We're ultimately hoping to be able to deliver, at some point in the hopefully near future, global free Wi-Fi internet access. We're also simultaneously building our testnet, which will benefit from our membership in the Avalanche9000 program once we launch. Being part of Avalanche9000 is really awesome. We are the first DePIN project that is launching on Avalanche as their own L1. And then we have the ULX token, which we're planning to launch in the second half of 2025, and hopefully no later than that. But, of course, we're watching market conditions there. I don't know if you guys have caught up on token launches this year, but token launches in 2025 have run into some trouble, and a lot of that has to do with investor uncertainty with everything that's going on in the global markets. So we're watching everything and making sure that we're doing everything we can to protect investors, to protect our community, in the context of launching a token. And we're just really focused on product building right now. We're focused on building out the platform, on getting everything on-chain, and the token will come shortly after. So very excited for 2025, and everything that is up ahead for us, for our company, for our community. Mike: First question: what can you tell us about future node operations?

Claudia: Avalanche has their own system for establishing nodes, so if you're interested, I would dive into the Avalanche landscape and learn how they utilize nodes within the blockchain itself, because the way that Avalanche is built is allows us to basically not have to compete for gas fees with other platforms. We will have our own individual nodes that people will be able to participate in and mine on our own blockchain, but they won't need to compete. If there's a memecoin that's going to go out on Avalanche, there's not going to be a surge in gas fees that's going to impact the function of our platform. That's what to know about our blockchain build so far. Once we launch testnet, we plan to be very transparent so that everyone can know more about what we're building and how we're building it. Mike: Next question: what can you tell us about Surge?

Claudia: We were planning on launching a new version of Surge end of this month. We decided to put a pause on that in order to develop that feature more beforehand. We want to update the entire app so that you guys can see not only the current surge, but when the next surges are going to be out, and have that mapped out, so you'll know exactly when you'll be able to participate in a surge event in your area. You could even find referrals in that area ahead of time, and have them sign up during the surge event. So this update will give you guys a little more transparency on Surge going forward, and when that pushes out, we'll open our next surge event. We'll let you know as soon as we have any information on a release date for the update. We always tell our Discord community first.

And this actually shouldn't take too much time, but I don't want to put a date out there in the universe right now because if we don't hit that date, then I don't want to put that type of pressure on the team right now. So let me find a little more information on when we're going to have this available for you guys, and we will release it into the Discord server. So you guys are updated. We usually tell the Discord server first about new surge events or opportunities to earn, and then we go externally to the public. So you guys get all the alpha first.

Mike: Next question: is there a goal number of routers Uplink hopes to have on the network?

Claudia: Yeah, about a billion! Joking, of course. There's a lot of other platforms out there. A lot are using routers as a node for connectivity, but for different reasons. And a lot of them have about a million or less. If you look at someone like a company like Helium, there are only about 300,000 active nodes that you're able to tap into on their network. We have about three million through the alliance that we have with WBA (Wireless Broadband Alliance) OpenRoaming, which we can participate in because we are IDP and ANP certified. A lot of you might not know what that means -- if so, check out the website for a blog that talks about what all of that means.

Basically, there are three million access points where you can connect to wifi seamlessly. You just make a profile and you can connect anywhere in the world, which is essentially what we're building. So we partnered with them because that helps us give everyone the most Wi-Fi access and ready systems within the Uplink platform as quickly as possible. The verified routers you see on the Explorer are some of the existing OpenRoaming routers. The remainder of the three million aren't mapped. This is where the upcoming scanning feature on the app is going to be super helpful, in terms of mapping these routers, and it's also why we're able to deliver free internet access around the world with these three million access points, because that's initially what we're going to tap into. And then it's an extension of everyone else's routers, building those solutions and onboarding them onto the network. It's going to be a community effort and a company effort, and it's going to be a process. What we're doing has never been done before, and we're really excited to do it, and the team is really prepared and ready for building all the solutions that we need to onboard every router onto the system. So yeah, it's only going to grow from here! So really the absolute bare minimum we're shooting for is three million. But the real question is how many routers are in the world, because that's how many we want on the Uplink network! Mike: Equal to or greater than that number, ideally! [laughs] Claudia: Yeah, big goals, big goals! But honestly, the 350,000 that we've already hit in such a time is fantastic. We honestly didn't expect to grow quite this fast, and it's very rewarding to see the growth that we've had so far. But our goal goal is to get every router on the Uplink platform. So that number is quite large. Mike: Yes, absolutely. And that number will continue to rise. Next is a question about the ambassador program. BeforeI answer, I want to give a bit shout out and thank you to our current ambassadors. You're doing a great job at getting the word out about the platform. We love the content.

Claudia: Absolutely.

Mike: And also a big thank you to the moderators: Edgar, Akasik, Azureblue, tranminhdat, and Lelouch. All of our moderators are also current ambassadors. You guys do a great deal to help keep the lights on around here. We're very grateful!

Claudia: So grateful! Thank you guys so much. Honestly, from the bottom of our heart, our whole team absolutely loves the content and how much you guys have been helping us, so thank you, thank you, thank you.

Mike: Absolutely. Now, to answer the question. We're progressively adding to the ambassador program. It was something that we decided to start pretty slow so that we could build sustainably, and improve the program over time until we were ready to launch it to a larger number of participants. We're still working on that, and we're hoping that in the not so distant future, we'll begin adding more members and then start then adding them at a greater rate. So if you've been interested in joining, please check out the application, check out the information we posted here, and if you have any questions or just want to get a little bit out ahead of things, feel free to open a ticket. I would be very happy to speak to you about the program. Claudia: And Mike literally combs through the thousands of applications we get in all the time. So a little appreciation for Mike here for going through everyone's applications and seeing who's out there. Obviously, a good way to stand out to an ambassador program is just by making content yourself. Mike or Kayla, or social media manager, will notice, and we will put you ahead in consideration. It will also help if you're engaging with the community. Standing out will help you kind of get your foot in the door. There are thousands of applications, and Mike really does go through them all, and it'll help your chances if you stand out.

Mike: And if you've applied and haven't heard from us yet, it doesn't mean that your application wasn't accepted -- if you've applied, you'll continue to be in consideration for the future. So another one we've received -- and I'm not sure if I one hundred percent understand this one -- is how does the team manage all the registered routers for one access? Is there any daily maintenance for the server? The second part I can answer. We're dedicated, of course, to a hundred percent uptime. That's a necessity. So no, we don't ever plan to have the network down for maintenance. Never.

Claudia: Downtime is definitely not in the cards. That's not what we intend. If we ever have to just push out an update or something and it takes a few minutes, then we will do that and we let you guys know accordingly, and it will be a very short time. But we don't need downtime to maintain the platform. The downtime that we did experience when we first launched was the result of a surge of users coming to the platform. We had prepared for quite a lot of users, but it ended up surpassing all our expectations. As far as reasons for downtime go, that's got to be among the best. But we don't plan to ever have downtime like that again. We're taking steps to ensure that it won't. Mike: Here's another question that we're seeing fairly often: does one need to keep a computer attached to the router or keep the app open in order to gain daily points? The answer is no to both. Once you register the router, as long as it remains online and connected to the network, you'll get the daily points. We make it as easy as we possibly can. So just register it, you get the points, and you'll continue to receive the daily points just as long as it stays on and as long as it's still connected to the network.

Claudia: It's always a good idea to keep the app open for convenience, though, so that when a router comes into range, you can register it quickly!

Mike: The next question concerns best practices to earn points. We spoke about this earlier, but we'll go over it again. Your best way to gain points right now is to just go out there and register as many routers as you can and and to refer your friends. You get 50,000 points for each router you register. They don't need to necessarily be your home routers. You can go out and find any public routers and register those as well. The goal here isn't just add your networks. It's also to map Wi-Fi networks worldwide. You get daily points from those as well, a thousand per 24 hours. Referrals are an amazing way -- the best way -- to gain passive points. You'll get a percentage of the points earned by your referrals. Your referrals, your referrals' referrals, and your referrals' referrals' referrals. Your earnings can really compound there. So those are going to be your two best ways.

Claudia: And we tried to make this process as simple as possible. Even my dad, who is almost 70 right now, has registered five routers. It's easy! We try to make it that simple so that everyone in our community, not just those with technical know-how can participate and map and earn.

Mike: Yeah. And a question about the referrals: how does one refer? Whether it's on the app or the portal, you have a referral link. Just to clarify that lingo, the portal is the desktop version of the points platform.Just take that referral link, send it out to your friends and your family, or post it on Twitter, and anybody who signs up through that becomes one of your referrals. And once they register a router, they become an approved referral. That's when you start burning points from them. You earn a flat amount of points and then a percentage of all the points that they earn. Claudia: Right. You can grab your referral code from the app under the referrals tab, which has quick access to your link. It's simple to use and to get people to sign up. And if you go into the portal, you can see analysis and breakdown on how much you're earning from referrals. You can see them sorted by tier -- because we have three tiers of referrals -- how much you've been earning from your direct referrals, their referrals, and the referrals of their referrals, from the referrals of their referrals' referrals. And you can also see how much you've earned on bonuses, which you'll receive for reaching certain milestones. I think the biggest bonus is a million. So yeah, you can earn a lot from referrals alone. Mike: Yeah, for sure. Another question: are we bullish on Trump? Well, we don't really discuss politics. We're bullish on crypto, bullish on Web3. Claudia: Bullish on crypto, and bullish on Uplink for sure! Mike: Absolutely. Next question: how do I scan networks with the app? You don't need to actively scan. Just open up your wireless settings on your phone and look for networks. Once you connect, it'll be reflected on the app and you can easily register the network. I should note that you can't reregister a network. So if you are in an area where somebody has already come through and registered a number of networks, then those networks will be ineligible to register. However, with how early we are -- and there's another reason to get out there and get out there and register as many networks as you can right now -- it's likely that in your areanobody has gone through and registered the local public networks yet. But that may not always be the case. So take advantage of being early to the project. Another question: do I need to connect to a network to register it? Yes, you do need to be connected to a network in order to register it. And make sure you don't have a VPN active, because that can prevent the app from displaying the network. You'll also need to have location services active in order to register networks. Claudia: We're working on a feature that'll notify you when you're attempting to register a router that has already been registered. Note that if you register a router and then choose to delete that router, you'll actually delete all points associated with it, but it can be re-registered. So that was the only point I wanted to make off of that: yes, you can only register a router once, but if it happens to be deleted, it can be re-registered and you can earn the points from that, but the previous points will go away. So it's not advantageous at any point to delete a router that's already registered, but you can, if it happens by mistake or something happens. But points associated with it will be deleted along with the router. Mike: And just to clarify how registering networks works: just connect to a network, open the app, refresh it either by changing tabs or just by pulling down, the network will show up, and then you register it. It's super easy. Claudia: Yeah, I mean the easiest way, really, is to go to McDonald's, Starbucks, places where they actively give you their Wi-Fi, and you just connect and then you go from there. Mike: Yeah! Next question: are daily points claimed automatically or manually? They're awarded automatically. The first daily points will be awarded at exactly 24 hours after you register the router, and then exactly 24 hours after that for as long as the router is active and connected to the network. Claudia: We did this on purpose. We wanted people to be able to come back to the platform at any time and see that their points were growing. So this was a way for us to do passive points in a way that really matters to the ecosystem and the platform that we're building. Mike: Next question: what should I do if I need help registering a router? Claudia: Like we said, just open a support ticket on this Discord server so we can help! As soon as you're able to register, we'll award any daily points that you would've earned in the meantime. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. We are still in the early days of the app. The open launch on social media was only 11 days ago. We're still working out the early issues that of course come up with any app, and from there we're going to continue improving it on the basis of our roadmap and community feedback. If you have any feedback you'd like to give us about things you think we could add to the app -- for example, this would be a great feature, or this would make our experience a little bit smoother - please let us know. Open a ticket. Or feel free to DM me personally. We're building this to your specifications. We want this to be the best possible experience for you guys. That's what the app is for! Claudia: Another question: how do we distinguish a genuine router from mobile tethering? We've noticed that some users have been attempting to register hotspots, possibly in efforts to exploit the points system. Hotspots are not eligible for registration. Only routers can be registered. Our system makes sure that any registered network is actually its own router. Any hotspots that end up on the network will be automatically removed. Mike: Just to follow up on something Claudia said earlier: this is Web3, and we all know how it is when it comes to bad actors trying to find exploits. It's kind of whack-a-mole in terms of always being making sure that we're fixing any exploits that have shown up. That's always an ongoing process on every platform. We are absolutely 100% dedicated to maintaining the integrity of the points system. That is one of our absolute top priorities, to make sure that the points systemis ironclad and that nobody is able to get out ahead in ways that they should not be able to. We really, really respect and appreciate the hard work all of you guys are doing, and we want to make sure that that is 100% reflected properly in terms of your points earnings. So rest assured we are always paying attention to that. Claudia: Some vulnerabilities have actually been brought up by our community, and we really appreciate the people who have reached out about them. Our team has caught a lot of them. And we have amazing set of advisors who have been through a lot of points system launches and have been able to advise us on what not to do and how to counteract bad actors. So yeah, we are really, really laser focused on making sure that the integrity of the platform is fully sound, and that's why we're also not giving any rewards until we can absolutely confirm that the top people on the leaderboard are actually contributing the platform. Once we've gotten everything squared away, we plan to begin distributing some rewards. We're really excited about that time. And again, thank you guys ahead of time for helping us by reporting any vulnerabilities you encounter. We might already be aware of them, but you never know! Mike: I want to shout out MrPath in particular. He's a community member who reported a couple of potential exploits to us. Claudia: For sure! Highly appreciated! Mike: Absolutely. We gave out a large number of points as a thanks. So if any of you are aware of any current issues, any potential exploits, again, we're still very, very early on here, so it's possible things that come up here and there. Our tech team works very diligently to fix them. And like I said, if you just have thoughts about what we can do better on the app, that feedback is extremely valuable to us to hear about and we always appreciate it. I know I'm repeating myself, but we tailor this app for you. This app is entirely for the community. We want it to be the best community experience it can be. Claudia: Yeah, I second what Mike said. Mike: Another question: do I need to put my real name on my Uplink profile? Will we need to go through KYC? To answer the first question: you are not required to do so! You can be as anonymous as you wish to be. Claudia: It's helpful when we're communicating with you if you enter your first name, but it's not required. But there's no disadvantage to doing so. That information is not public. That actually goes deep, deep into our server that has over 18 months of due diligence from the Fortune 500 company that we work with. It's very secure. But the only name that people see outwardly is your nickname, and we're working on where people can edit that. Mike: Yeah. The second part of that question is about KYC. Claudia, would you elabarate a bit about this? Claudia: Yeah. We will have additional steps later on down the line to just make sure that you own the router that you're going to be getting token rewards for. Once we start with token rewards and everything, there will be a KYC process. But until we have the platform fully launched and a token launched, there's no need for KYC. So right now, we're keeping it as simple as we can. Mike: Yeah. Another question: what's the difference between indoor and coverage when registering a router? Which one should I choose? That is exactly what it sounds like: the router is either indoors or outdoors. Outdoors could be at a concert venue, for example. There's not really any technical aspect of that. That's just purely for our information. Claudia: Yeah, it's purely for our own information. It also helps understand the amount of the coverage that you're able to provide. We just need that basic information in order to understand your connection a lot better. So that's why those questions are there. Mike: Next question: when will wallet connection be available? Claudia: We're planning on launching wallet connection at the same time as testnet. Our team is actively working on this as we speak. As soon as we have an estimated date for testnet, we'll update all our materials and we'll let you guys know. Mike: And speaking of development -- because I feel like this we don't say this enough in general -- I want to shout out our tech team, who are the unsung heroes here who get to work behind the scenes and provide the product and deal with our constant questions about when things are going to be ready, but never really get to come out here and interact with the community. We have an awesome tech team. They're super hardworking and yeah, just want to shout them out. Definitely good people building a great product. Claudia: We're actively growing our tech team, so we should be able to soon, in the next few months, deliver even better quality and faster work. Mike: Another question: can one register routers across different countries? Absolutely. You can register routers wherever you'd like. If you find a science station in Antarctica that has routers, you can feel absolutely free to register those. It would look awesome on the Explorer. Claudia: We want people to register routers not only in their community so they can expand the connection in their community, but also anywhere else they connect. Anywhere and everywhere, it's all game. I will say, though, that the Singapore airport is no longer available. I was there recently, and a community member had already registered all of the routers! Mike: Yeah, definitely. Okay, so we're a little bit over time here. We can take maybe a couple more questions if anybody wants to put them in the chat. Thank you so much for everybody who has come and attended and participated, whether you've been asking questions or just chatting. But know that this isn't the only time you can ask questions! Ping me anytime or open a ticket. Claudia: As soon as we have information, you guys are the first to know! Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll answer this one final question here: Is testnet open to the public or is it private? So there's been a little bit of confusion. What we're in right now is not testnet; this is app launch. Testnet will come in the future, and we will update you guys as soon as we can. Whenever we know anything, we'll let you know. And that'll do it for our time today! I'd like to again say thanks so much to everybody who attended. Thanks so much for your interest and your participation with Uplink. Thank you for being part of the community! We got an awesome community. I love it. Claudia: Yeah, and thank you, Mike for organizing, and to everybody for showing up today with all your great questions. Stay connected -- we'll talk again soon! Mike: Happy Friday, everyone. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend! [Session Ends]