8/20/2024 Uplink Community AMA

Summary of Discord AMA, August 20th, 2024.

Uplink participants:

• Claudia Olah, CMO

• Carlos Lei, CEO

Thank you to all of the community members who attended! [Session begins]

Introduction

Claudia: Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for coming today. Let's get going! My name is Claudia; I'm the CMO of Uplink. . A lot of you know me as CryptoClaudia here on Discord.

As many of you know, Uplink is creating decentralized connectivity with existing infrastructure and by deploying new routes as well. We're excited to announce our Uplink coverage map. The coverage map allows you to pre-register your routers today, which means enlisting to become a provider in the Uplink ecosystem and network once it goes live and earn rewards points immediately upon contributing to the network. So, what does that mean? That means the second that you register your router, you begin earning in the ecosystem. So it's more time-based than anything. Pre-registering your router contributes to the Uplink ecosystem in two ways.

The first of these is that it secures a location where you're intending to provide data and connectivity in the future, and it also allows us to develop the tools and solutions that are already deployed today that better fit the existing infrastructure. So any type of infrastructure that you guys have within our community, you'll be able to help us make a better decision on what should be developed to help onboard more community members into our ecosystem. Eventually, this process is going to be super simplified so that one can easily put in a plugin or just toggle a certain activation or do a simple update to your server, your router itself, to become part of the network. Each router and device has its own mechanisms and protocols, so that's what makes it a little bit tricky at the end of the day. But that's what we're here for and that's what we're here to build.

Coverage Map and Pre-Registration So you can go ahead and go start registering via the coverage map. In this registration, you're going to have to put in your email and verify your email address. This email will be used for the portal where you can manage all of your router devices and on our app, which will be coming in the next few months, and it will allow you to validate your router connection and verify other routers and a few other cool devices that we have for you guys. So going into our coverage map, you can see via the blue dots all the connectivity that is here within the USA, and you can also see the pre-registered routers, which are the green dots. If you want to toggle on and off any of these, you can actually go and see which routers are pre-registered (they're green) and which ones are actually verified (blue). Once you pre-register your router, you can actually see it at the very bottom of the screen. And then you can see the other routers that people of the community have pre-registered as well that aren't already verified to the network.

If you want to register your router, here is the information that we ask of you initially. For the router address, if you have any additional questions, you can open a support ticket via this server that'll link you directly to a team member. Otherwise, if you have multiple routers or devices, you can email us at [e-mail], if you want to register one router and then later on, email us the remaining routers. Because I know a lot of you have businesses or something else where you have multiple devices.

So we're going to give you a template with which you can actually import all of that data and send directly to our team, and it'll allow you to onboard all those devices without having to singly registering every single one of them. A lot of times you have that information already. So for the router MAC address, if you need additional information on what that is, we put a little information in the registration form on why we need this information from you and how it contributes to the ecosystem. Your MAC address helps us to identify and validate that your router is real and can be used the moment the Uplink network goes live. This address can be found on the side or bottom label of your router. I happen to find mine on the bottom of my router. If you have questions, please open a support ticket and we'll make sure to answer all your questions and make sure that you're onboarded properly.

For the router manufacturer, all you have to do is start typing in the applicable section and it'll show you all the different manufacturers that you could possibly have. If by chance you don't have your router manufacturer here, please open a support ticket. But we made sure to make sure that every single manufacturer that's possible is in this list. You should be able to find your router model on the same label on which you found your MAC address. The model number helps determine the necessary software specifically that we've developed for your router. So once the network goes live, we can simply, like I said, update your router and then you can join the Uplink network once it's live. So this information helps us to prioritize the tools and solutions that we need specifically for your device and for the community's devices.

If you have questions, please make sure to ask in the general chat or more specifically in the support channel. Please make sure, though, whatever you do, to protect your router information! Don't put any of the router information that you're using to register into general chat or share it with anyone outside of support tickets. That includes DMs, as Uplink team members will never request your information via DM.

Additional information that we've asked for is what venue your router is in. So if you're at home, it's a residential building. If you have a router in a hotel, hospital, park, transportation hub, university campus, et cetera, choose those options. This helps us identify your router better. The same if it's indoor or outdoor. And then you go to next, and the next phase is a confirmation email that send you additional information in case you need to reach out to us and allows you to go back and register another router if you wish. But like I said, all of the routers that you register within our platform are here in your control under the "My Pre-Registered Router" area. And just for reference, if you do register your router and you want to check and make sure the location is legit, you can go and search for your location and it'll show you the exact location that you're at and what router is nearby.

When it comes to the points system, we're going to be giving people points in the following ways. One of the ways that you're going to be earning points is by registering your router. The sooner you register your router, the sooner you'll start earning points within the Uplink ecosystem. You cannot see it just yet because we're still working on the coverage map -- this is the beta version. We wanted to give people in our community access to start earning rewards right now as opposed to having everything finished first. So you will start immediately earning rewards, but you won't be able to see those rewards until we release the points system, at which point that information will be available directly into our platform.

In the near future, we're going to have that points system integrated into this platform, and you'll be able to come back and see how many points that you've earned. And you're going to be earning not only from the pre-registered routers, but from each additional router you bring it to the ecosystem. So you'll be added points as a bonus for each additional router that you bring in. To say a bit more about the points system, I have a list of ways that you can actually earn. We're also going to have a way for you to validate your router and then go around and verify routers. So with our app, which will be released in the coming months, you're going to be able to download our app, which is directly linked to the email that you've associated with this account, you'll see your routers there, and you can validate your router's connection.

And then you can go around and let's say you're at a cafe or at a hotel or something and you're connected to that Wi-Fi, you can actually verify other networks and get rewarded for verifying those networks. We're also going to have a surge multiplier that's going to start pretty soon. So we're going to target specific areas where people can actually earn multipliers for contributing to the ecosystem. So if you register a router within this certain area or deploy new routers, you'll earn extra rewards because it is a surge area, which is an area that's needed for additional connectivity. Usually this is either a company request or an enterprise related request, and it could also, later on, be a community request.

Apart from that, there are actually ways that you can contribute to the ecosystem without actually having to register a router. We wanted to give people a way to benefit from the points system without needing to register a router. And the way that we're going to do this is through a referral system, which is going to be deeply embedded in the points system that you'll see here. And we'll also have additional awards for social engagement. If you're going and resharing our content, or if you're creating a really cool meme, I've seen a lot of you on Twitter creating really cool memes, and that's just make us really, really happy to see people contributing in such a unique way. So we want to encourage that and we want to reward you guys for doing that. We're also going to have collaborations with other companies so we'll be able to bring them on board and reward people for the contributions of their community as well as our community. All that said, let's get to some questions!

AMA What's the importance of pre-registration? Carlos: We take a lot of pride in what we've built so far and how secure this is. The reason why we're asking for the community to pre-register their routers -- and I know you explained this on the coverage map, Claudia -- but it's the following: it really helps us in building the Uplink network. Firstly, it allows us to know where people will be willing to provide connectivity from day one from the moment we launch the network. But it also allows us to understand what routers are being used, what are the manufacturers, what's the firmware. And this goes to the other question, which is will it work on any router? So the way we're building this is we're trying to be as hardware agnostic as possible. We've joined the right alliances, we've worked on really cool software, but there's always outliers. And the reason why we're asking for this info is it allows us to understand if there's any trends and if there's specific software for specific firmware that we should develop to.

So it tells us where will you provide connectivity and what hardware you'll be using We want to make this as hardware agnostic as we can, so that you can use what you already have. We've already got it working in the vast majority of cases. I think this is a win-win: we want to start building this, and we want to also start giving rewards to the community, to you guys. And what we get in return is, okay, now we know to what hardware we should be building, in which areas we should be focusing. We have companies literally worldwide telling us that they want to use the network, but we also need to choose when it comes to business development, where should we start? So guiding that really starts from you guys here, and that's why we want to give you rewards from literally today. So even before we launch the points system, the clock is ticking right now. So, win-win: that's the way we see it. What will community rewards points translate into? Claudia: The rewards that we have today are through swag, through exclusive offers. We're also going to do in-person events. We're actually going to have our first in-person event for our community in October. And we're also going to have additional awards. Our team will continually be evaluating what the points system has brought to our ecosystem and what we can contribute back to the community that's helping build the ecosystem. We'll continue updating and evaluating and giving you more opportunities to earn. So that's what we've created so far. I know it's a lot.

We've been really working hard on building out the coverage map and this router pre-registration router. So the app and the points system are the next two things that are coming your way. Once we have these further developed and they're ready for lease, the community will be the first to know through our Discord server, and then we'll release it to the general public. That's in general how we like to do things: to give our initial early adopter community first dibs and then release it out to everybody else. What are the blue dots on the coverage map?

Claudia: Those are the verified routers. There are still a lot of routers that we need to import into the system. This is just the initial development numbers, so it's a small number. The next question concerns how the clock on router preregistration works in terms of earning points. As soon as you register your router, the timer starts and you start earning rewards. So the sooner that you go and register a router, the more potential rewards that you can earn. And we'll have a lot more clarity on what those points are, how much you're going to be earning in the point system, the tiers, and so on. We're going to have a tiered system where you can actually earn additional points for hitting a certain tier, and you can actually jump tiers for referrals. It's all going to be very gamified. So it's going to be a fun way to participate in our ecosystem. I'm very excited about it. Can you tell us anything else about the roadmap? Claudia: That is a great question. Actually, we're in the middle of reviewing legal feedback on the litepaper. The litepaper has the roadmap in there, and we will hopefully be releasing that soon. We'll let you guys know as soon as it's ready to go live. We'll also have this information in our new website that is going live soon. I actually kind of gave a rough drop of our roadmap that's coming in the next couple of months. First is our point system integrated into the platform. Next is the app itself. And we'll have that event in October. So keep on the lookout. You'll get the roadmap soon. Does providing MAC address information compromise privacy?

Claudia: No. It can only compromise privacy if you're sharing it in a public setting; that's why we say that you should never share it on general chat or to anyone that you do not know. If you're giving it to us on the platform directly, we have gold standard privacy standards. Your data is completely secure with us. We do not use your data for any reason other than understanding your router model and knowing where you're located. And that's it. We'll be release additional information about data privacy and security on the telecommunications side to enlighten the community on how this works and how secure the networks actually are.

Carlos: Every time we get a question about privacy security, I think we always forget to mention the following: we've been doing this, we've been in this space, since 2016, and there's a lot of things that we cannot even say right now because we have companies that we're working with, Fortune 500 companies for which we had to go through more than 18 months of cybersecurity diligence. It's on our roadmap that we're going to announce these companies very soon. But we've been very active. And I got to say that one of the biggest frustrations that we had was really like, oh, man, these cybersecurity processes were very long. So yeah. Yes, it's very secure because whoever's going to be consuming this data needs to be secure. And we went through long, long months of cybersecurity due diligence.

Claudia: Yeah, very excited to announce those companies. And that's also why I can't even get into detail on the security standards that we had to get approved for. We're excited to share those with you in the coming months!

Carlos: Claudia is right now speaking with the marketing teams of some of these big corporations so that we can announce it. It's very complicated, but it's on our roadmap. We have a very exciting couple of months coming up!

Claudia: It's been a long time in the making! This is a big relationship we're excited to share with you guys soon. Does any router work on the Uplink network, regardless of location?

Claudia: Yes, it will work on any router regardless of the location. Our plan is to be as hardware agnostic as possible. Part of the point of having community members pre-register is for us to understand which models are being used and what improvements we might need to make in order to have all routers be onboarded as quickly and easily as possible. It's a matter of simple upgrades. So yes, please, regardless of your location, regardless of your model, import that information and you'll contribute to the ecosystem and be able to be brought in once tools and solutions are formulated. Regardless, you'll be able to validate that connection. If you have additional questions about your specific router, if it's a niche case of some kind, then please reach out to us and we'll see how we can help. Carlos: The way we're building this is we're trying to be as hardware agnostic as possible. We've joined the right alliances, we've worked on really cool software, but there's always outliers. And the reason why we're asking for your router info in pre-registration is that it allows us to understand if there's any trends and if there's specific software for specific firmware that we should develop to. If I were to move internationally, would I need to worry about reconnecting on the network?

Carlos: So the way that we see it is that at the end of the day, this works as a marketplace. We have people like you guys, who say, "I have my routers. I don't mind securely sharing some of my connectivity to these businesses that use it." So we focus a lot on traction first. And we believe that a lot of this traction comes from real businesses today. And that's what we've been doing. But more like even these companies, if they're working in a market A or country B, C, D, or E, it works. And the same for a user. So if you are using the network as a data consumer, you can be in one country, move to others, you don't need to worry about reconnecting. And actually the magic is that you connect even without a user interaction. It's like you don't even need to put a password, it's just your phone will just connect. And it's already working. Actually, the office where I am right now, I don't put in passwords. We just connect.

Claudia: That's the joy of us joining the OpenRoaming Network and getting IDP and ANP certified was so that people could basically register for PassPoint and then go anywhere in the world and connect to an OpenRoaming device. So imagine that, but with even more devices all at once. That's essentially what we're doing. Where is the team based? Carlos: Right now I'm speaking from the meeting room of our Portuguese office. We have team members all around the world. We have an office here in Europe, and we have another one in New York, and we have people in Portugal, Spain, Belarus, Poland, Dubai, and then in North America, where most of our marketing and product and business development teams are, in New York, Vancouver, North Carolina, and Miami.

Claudia: I'm the weirdest one.

Carlos: Yeah, you're the one that moved from the USA to Portugal while most of the people actually moved from Portugal to the USA. So that was a strange one. Conclusion

Carlos: Claudia, I have a question for you! I came here to the office and there was a box full of T-shirts and merch and stuff. How is the community going to be able to get some?

Claudia: I did mention that points will become rewards! Swag will be one of those. We are going to have rarity items and we're going to have ones with the overall community. And like I said, I mentioned that we're going to have a party that might be invite only for our community in October. So I might have released that info a little bit. There's a lot that's coming up. It's exciting.

That'll be it for today's AMA! Thank you all so much for attending. If you have questions, please reach out to us, whether in the general chat or via a ticket. We're looking forward to sharing more news with you in the months to come! We'll see you next time.

[Session ends]