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# Crypto Use-Cases in Africa on the Rise ... - Bitcoin News

• Crypto Use-Cases in Africa on the Rise ... - Bitcoin News
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##### Ultimate glossary of crypto currency terms, acronyms and abbreviations

I thought it would be really cool to have an ultimate guide for those new to crypto currencies and the terms used. I made this mostly for beginner’s and veterans alike. I’m not sure how much use you will get out of this. Stuff gets lost on Reddit quite easily so I hope this finds its way to you. Included in this list, I have included most of the terms used in crypto-communities. I have compiled this list from a multitude of sources. The list is in alphabetical order and may include some words/terms not exclusive to the crypto world but may be helpful regardless.
2FA
Two factor authentication. I highly advise that you use it.
51% Attack:
A situation where a single malicious individual or group gains control of more than half of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power. Theoretically, it could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system and spend the same coin multiple times, stop other users from completing blocks and make conflicting transactions to a chain that could harm the network.
A unique string of numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) used to send, receive or store cryptocurrency on the network. It is also the public key in a pair of keys needed to sign a digital transaction. Addresses can be shared publicly as a text or in the form of a scannable QR code. They differ between cryptocurrencies. You can’t send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address, for example.
Altcoin (alternative coin): Any digital currency other than Bitcoin. These other currencies are alternatives to Bitcoin regarding features and functionalities (e.g. faster confirmation time, lower price, improved mining algorithm, higher total coin supply). There are hundreds of altcoins, including Ether, Ripple, Litecoin and many many others.
AIRDROP:
An event where the investors/participants are able to receive free tokens or coins into their digital wallet.
AML: Defines Anti-Money Laundering laws**.**
ARBITRAGE:
Getting risk-free profits by trading (simultaneous buying and selling of the cryptocurrency) on two different exchanges which have different prices for the same asset.
Ashdraked:
Being Ashdraked is essentially a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.
ATH (All Time High):
The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency in its entire history. Alternatively, ATL is all time low
Bearish:
A tendency of prices to fall; a pessimistic expectation that the value of a coin is going to drop.
Bear trap:
A manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors.
Bitcoin:
The very first, and the highest ever valued, mass-market open source and decentralized cryptocurrency and digital payment system that runs on a worldwide peer to peer network. It operates independently of any centralized authorities
Bitconnect:
One of the biggest scams in the crypto world. it was made popular in the meme world by screaming idiot Carlos Matos, who infamously proclaimed," hey hey heeeey” and “what's a what's a what's up wasssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuup, BitConneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!”. He is now in the mentally ill meme hall of fame.
Block:
A package of permanently recorded data about transactions occurring every time period (typically about 10 minutes) on the blockchain network. Once a record has been completed and verified, it goes into a blockchain and gives way to the next block. Each block also contains a complex mathematical puzzle with a unique answer, without which new blocks can’t be added to the chain.
Blockchain:
An unchangeable digital record of all transactions ever made in a particular cryptocurrency and shared across thousands of computers worldwide. It has no central authority governing it. Records, or blocks, are chained to each other using a cryptographic signature. They are stored publicly and chronologically, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the term blockchain. Anyone can have access to the database and yet it remains incredibly difficult to hack.
Bullish:
A tendency of prices to rise; an optimistic expectation that a specific cryptocurrency will do well and its value is going to increase.
BTFD:
Buy the fucking dip. This advise was bestowed upon us by the gods themselves. It is the iron code to crypto enthusiasts.
Bull market:
A market that Cryptos are going up.
Consensus:
An agreement among blockchain participants on the validity of data. Consensus is reached when the majority of nodes on the network verify that the transaction is 100% valid.
Crypto bubble:
The instability of cryptocurrencies in terms of price value
Cryptocurrency:
A type of digital currency, secured by strong computer code (cryptography), that operates independently of any middlemen or central authoritie
Cryptography:
The art of converting sensitive data into a format unreadable for unauthorized users, which when decoded would result in a meaningful statement.
Cryptojacking:
The use of someone else’s device and profiting from its computational power to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge and consent.
Crypto-Valhalla:
When HODLers(holders) eventually cash out they go to a place called crypto-Valhalla. The strong will be separated from the weak and the strong will then be given lambos.
DAO:
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It defines A blockchain technology inspired organization or corporation that exists and operates without human intervention.
Dapp (decentralized application):
An open-source application that runs and stores its data on a blockchain network (instead of a central server) to prevent a single failure point. This software is not controlled by the single body – information comes from people providing other people with data or computing power.
Decentralized:
A system with no fundamental control authority that governs the network. Instead, it is jointly managed by all users to the system.
Desktop wallet:
A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
DILDO:
Long red or green candles. This is a crypto signal that tells you that it is not favorable to trade at the moment. Found on candlestick charts.
Digital Signature:
An encrypted digital code attached to an electronic document to prove that the sender is who they say they are and confirm that a transaction is valid and should be accepted by the network.
Double Spending:
An attack on the blockchain where a malicious user manipulates the network by sending digital money to two different recipients at exactly the same time.
DYOR:
Encryption:
Converting data into code to protect it from unauthorized access, so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it.
Eskrow:
the practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
Ethereum:
Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based platform that runs smart contracts and allows you to build dapps on it. Ethereum is fueled by the cryptocurrency Ether.
Exchange:
A platform (centralized or decentralized) for exchanging (trading) different forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges allow you to exchange cryptos for local currency. Some popular exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Kraken and more.
Faucet:
A website which gives away free cryptocurrencies.
Fiat money:
Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it, such as the US dollar or UK pound.
Fork:
A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate branches, an original and a new alternate version of the cryptocurrency. As a single blockchain forks into two, they will both run simultaneously on different parts of the network. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork.
FOMO:
Fear of missing out.
Frictionless:
A system is frictionless when there are zero transaction costs or trading retraints.
FUD:
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding the crypto market.
Gas:
A fee paid to run transactions, dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum.
Halving:
A 50% decrease in block reward after the mining of a pre-specified number of blocks. Every 4 years, the “reward” for successfully mining a block of bitcoin is reduced by half. This is referred to as “Halving”.
Hardware wallet:
Physical wallet devices that can securely store cryptocurrency maximally. Some examples are Ledger Nano S**,** Digital Bitbox and more**.**
Hash:
The process that takes input data of varying sizes, performs an operation on it and converts it into a fixed size output. It cannot be reversed.
Hashing:
The process by which you mine bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency, by trying to solve the mathematical problem within it, using cryptographic hash functions.
HODL:
A Bitcoin enthusiast once accidentally misspelled the word HOLD and it is now part of the bitcoin legend. It can also mean hold on for dear life.
ICO (Initial Coin Offering):
A blockchain-based fundraising mechanism, or a public crowd sale of a new digital coin, used to raise capital from supporters for an early stage crypto venture. Beware of these as there have been quite a few scams in the past.
John mcAfee:
A man who will one day eat his balls on live television for falsely predicting bitcoin going to 100k. He has also become a small meme within the crypto community for his outlandish claims.
JOMO:
Joy of missing out. For those who are so depressed about missing out their sadness becomes joy.
KYC:
Lambo:
This stands for Lamborghini. A small meme within the investing community where the moment someone gets rich they spend their earnings on a lambo. One day we will all have lambos in crypto-valhalla.
Ledger:
Away from Blockchain, it is a book of financial transactions and balances. In the world of crypto, the blockchain functions as a ledger. A digital currency’s ledger records all transactions which took place on a certain block chain network.
Leverage:
Trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment.
Liquidity:
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
of the coins.
The trading of assets or securities bought with borrowed money.
Market cap/MCAP:
A short-term for Market Capitalization. Market Capitalization refers to the market value of a particular cryptocurrency. It is computed by multiplying the Price of an individual unit of coins by the total circulating supply.
Miner:
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining:
The act of solving a complex math equation to validate a blockchain transaction using computer processing power and specialized hardware.
Mining contract:
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining rig:
A computer specially designed for mining cryptocurrencies.
Mooning:
A situation the price of a coin rapidly increases in value. Can also be used as: “I hope bitcoin goes to the moon”
Node:
Any computing device that connects to the blockchain network.
Open source:
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC:
Over the counter. Trading is done directly between parties.
P2P (Peer to Peer):
A type of network connection where participants interact directly with each other rather than through a centralized third party. The system allows the exchange of resources from A to B, without having to go through a separate server.
Paper wallet:
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline. Considered as one of the safest crypto wallets, the truth is that it majors in sweeping coins from your wallets.
Pre mining:
The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public.
Proof of stake (POS):
A consensus distribution algorithm which essentially rewards you based upon the amount of the coin that you own. In other words, more investment in the coin will leads to more gain when you mine with this protocol In Proof of Stake, the resource held by the “miner” is their stake in the currency.
PROOF OF WORK (POW) :
The competition of computers competing to solve a tough crypto math problem. The first computer that does this is allowed to create new blocks and record information.” The miner is then usually rewarded via transaction fees.
Protocol:
A standardized set of rules for formatting and processing data.
Public key / private key:
A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrencies into an account. The public key is made available to everyone via a publicly accessible directory, and the private key remains confidential to its respective owner. Because the key pair is mathematically related, whatever is encrypted with a public key may only be decrypted by its corresponding private key.
Pump and dump:
Massive buying and selling activity of cryptocurrencies (sometimes organized and to one’s benefit) which essentially result in a phenomenon where the significant surge in the value of coin followed by a huge crash take place in a short time frame.
Recovery phrase:
A set of phrases you are given whereby you can regain or access your wallet should you lose the private key to your wallets — paper, mobile, desktop, and hardware wallet. These phrases are some random 12–24 words. A recovery Phrase can also be called as Recovery seed, Seed Key, Recovery Key, or Seed Phrase.
REKT:
Referring to the word “wrecked”. It defines a situation whereby an investor or trader who has been ruined utterly following the massive losses suffered in crypto industry.
Ripple:
An alternative payment network to Bitcoin based on similar cryptography. The ripple network uses XRP as currency and is capable of sending any asset type.
ROI:
Return on investment.
Safu:
A crypto term for safe popularized by the Bizonnaci YouTube channel after the CEO of Binance tweeted
“Funds are safe."
“the exchage I use got hacked!”“Oh no, are your funds safu?”
“My coins better be safu!”

Sats/Satoshi:
The smallest fraction of a bitcoin is called a “satoshi” or “sat”. It represents one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin and is named after Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
This was the pseudonym for the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Scalability:
The ability of a cryptocurrency to contain the massive use of its Blockchain.
Sharding:
A scaling solution for the Blockchain. It is generally a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shitcoin:
Coin with little potential or future prospects.
Shill:
Spreading buzz by heavily promoting a particular coin in the community to create awareness.
Short position:
Selling of a specific cryptocurrency with an expectation that it will drop in value.
The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items were traded for Bitcoin. This marketplace is using accessed through “TOR”, and VPNs. In October 2013, a Silk Road was shut down in by the FBI.
Smart Contract:
Certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Software Wallet:
A crypto wallet that exists purely as software files on a computer. Usually, software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources.
Solidity:
A contract-oriented coding language for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum. Its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Stable coin:
A cryptocoin with an extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market.
Staking:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
Surge:
When a crypto currency appreciates or goes up in price.
Tank:
The opposite of mooning. When a coin tanks it can also be described as crashing.
Tendies
For traders , the chief prize is “tendies” (chicken tenders, the treat an overgrown man-child receives for being a “Good Boy”) .
Token:
A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system. A token is usually considered as a “coin” of a cryptocurrency, but it really has a wider functionality.
TOR: “The Onion Router” is a free web browser designed to protect users’ anonymity and resist censorship. Tor is usually used surfing the web anonymously and access sites on the “Darkweb”.
Transaction fee:
An amount of money users are charged from their transaction when sending cryptocurrencies.
Volatility:
A measure of fluctuations in the price of a financial instrument over time. High volatility in bitcoin is seen as risky since its shifting value discourages people from spending or accepting it.
Wallet:
A file that stores all your private keys and communicates with the blockchain to perform transactions. It allows you to send and receive bitcoins securely as well as view your balance and transaction history.
Whale:
An investor that holds a tremendous amount of cryptocurrency. Their extraordinary large holdings allow them to control prices and manipulate the market.
Whitepaper:

A comprehensive report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. It is also seen as a technical write up that most cryptocurrencies provide to take a deep look into the structure and plan of the cryptocurrency/Blockchain project. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to release a whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
And with that I finally complete my odyssey. I sincerely hope that this helped you and if you are new, I welcome you to crypto. If you read all of that I hope it increased, you in knowledge.
my final definition:
Crypto-Family:
A collection of all the HODLers and crypto fanatics. A place where all people alike unite over a love for crypto.
We are all in this together as we pioneer the new world that is crypto currency. I wish you a great day and Happy HODLing.
-u/flacciduck
feel free to comment words or terms that you feel should be included or about any errors I made.

https://preview.redd.it/a7jv4azk86u51.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e4a4dbb5afacd5747076beaa59e6343b805c3392

# ABSTRACT

Aryacoin is a new cryptocurrency, which allows for decentralized, peer to peer transactions of electronic cash. It is like Bitcoin and Litecoin, but the trading of the coin occurs on sales platforms that have no restriction to use. Further, it was created with the goal of addressing the double spend issues of Bitcoin and does so using a timestamp server to verify transactions. It works by taking the hash of a block of items to be timestamped and widely publishing the hash. The timestamp proves that the data must have existed at the time in order to get the hash. Each timestamp then includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain.
The Aryacoin team is continuously developing new use cases for the coin, including exchanges where users can exchange the coins without any fees or restrictions, and offline options where the coins can be bought and sold for cash. The coins can also be used on the company’s other platform, mrdigicoin.io. Along with the coin, there is a digital wallet that can be created and controlled by the user entirely, with no control being retained by the Aryacoin team.

# 1.INTRODUCTION

The concept of Blockchain first came to fame in October 2008, as part of a proposal for Bitcoin, with the aim to create P2P money without banks. Bitcoin introduced a novel solution to the age-old human problem of trust. The underlying blockchain technology allows us to trust the outputs of the system without trusting any actor within it. People and institutions who do not know or trust each other, reside in different countries, are subject to different jurisdictions, and who have no legally binding agreements with each other, can now interact over the Internet without the need for trusted third parties like banks, Internet platforms, or other types of clearing institutions.
When bitcoin was launched it was revolutionary allowing people to transfer money to anytime and anywhere with very low transaction fees . It was decentralized and their is no third party involved in the transaction , only the sender and receiver were involved.
This paper provide a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes. Bitcoin was made so that it would not be controlled or regulated but now exchanges and governments are regulating bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at every step. Aryacoin was developed to overcome these restrictions on a free currency.
Aryacoin is a new age cryptocurrency, which withholds the original principle on which the concept of cryptocurrency was established. Combining the best in blockchain technology since the time of its creation, Aryacoin strives to deliver the highest trading and mining standards for its community.

Aryacoin is a new age cryptocurrency, which withholds the original principle on which the concept of cryptocurrency was established. Combining the best in blockchain technology since the time of its creation, Aryacoin strives to deliver the highest trading and mining standards for its community.
Aryacoin is a blockchain based project that allows users to access their wallet on the web and mobile browsers, using their login details.
Aryacoin can be mined; it also can be exchanged by other digital currencies in several world-famous exchanges such as Hitbtc, CoinEx, P2pb2b, WhiteBit, Changelly and is also listed in reputable wallets such as Coinomi and Guarda.
Aryacoin is a coin, which can be used by anyone looking to use cryptocurrency which allows them to keep their privacy even when buying/selling the coin along with while using the coin during transactions. Proof of work and cryptographic hashes allows transactions to verified.
Stable Fee Per AYA is a unique feature of Aryacoin, so by increasing the amount or volume of the transaction, there is no change in the fee within the network, which means that the fee for sending an amount less than 1 AYA is equal to several hundred million AYA. Another unique feature of Aryacoin is the undetectability of transactions in Explorer, such as the DASH and Monero, of course, this operation is unique to Aryacoin.
Using Aryacoin digital currency, like other currencies, international transactions can be done very quickly and there are no limitations in this area as the creators claim.
Aryacoin aims to allow users to access the Aryacoin wallet via the web and mobile browsers using their login details.
Aryacoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that enables users to send and receive payments directly from one party to another, and allow them to transfer funds across borders with no restriction or third party involvement. The blockchain-based system embraces the digital signature, which prevents double spending and low transfer fees, which enables users to transfer huge amounts with very low fees. The proof-of-work consensus mechanism allows each transaction to be verified and confirmed, while anonymity enables users to use the coin anywhere at any time.
According to the website of the operation, each wallet is divided into 2 or more AYA wallet addresses for each transaction, and depending on the volume of the transaction block, the origin, and destination of transactions in the network can not be traced and displayed to the public.
In fact, each wallet in Aryacoin consists of a total of several wallets. The number of these wallets increases per transaction to increase both security and privacy. Aryacoin also uses the dPoW protocol. In the dPoW protocol, a second layer is added to the network to verify transactions, which makes “51% attack” impossible even with more than half of the network hash, and blocks whose Blockchain uses this second layer of security never run the risk of 51% attacks.
AYA has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by
first buying Bitcoin from any large exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin.

## 1.1.1 ARYACOIN HISTORY

Aryacoin (AYA) is a new cryptocurrency, which has been created by a group of Iranian developers, is an altcoin which allows for decentralised, peer to peer transactions of electronic cash without any fees whatsoever. Along with the coin, there is a digital wallet that can be created and managed by the user entirely, with no control being retained by the Aryacoin team.
Aryacoin’s founder, Kiumars Parsa, has been a fan of alternative currencies and particularly Bitcoin.
We see people from all around the world using Blockchain technology and the great benefits that came with it and it then that I decided to solve this puzzle for find a way of bringing the last missing piece to the jigsaw. The idea for Aryacoin was born.” Parsa said.
Parsa and his team of Iranian ex-pats not only persevered but expedited the project and just a year later, in the summer of 2019, the first version of Aryacoin was released. In 2020, Aryacoin is the first and only Iranian coin listed on CMC.
Parsa goes on to state that it is now the strength of the community that has invested in the coin that will ultimately drive its success, alongside its robust technology and appealing 0% network fees.
We have thousands of voices behind Aryacoin. People for the people make this coin. It is a massive shout out for democracy. This had made us base the whole team strategy on the benefits for both our users and our traders.
One key example is that the network fee on AYA Blockchain is 0%. Yes, absolutely nothing, which which differentiates us from other networks. What also differentiates us from other coins is that we have AYAPAY which is the first cryptocurrency Gateway in the world which does not save funds on third party storage with all funds being forwarded directly to any wallet address that the Gateway owner requests”.
So for the first time ever, and unlike other gateways, incoming funds will be saved on the users account with submitted withdrawal requests then made on the Gateway host website. In AYAPAY which has also been developed by the Aryacoin team, all funds without extra fees or extra costs will directly forwarded to users wallets. We have named this technology as CloudWithdrawal.
We are continuously challenging ourselves as it is a crowded marketplace. We are striving to have a safer Blockchain against 51% attacks, faster confirmations speeds of transactions, cheaper network fee, growing the market by cooperation with Top tier Exchangers.

## 1.1.2 ARYACOIN’S MAIN GOAL

Aryacoin’s main goal is to educate people and give them the freedom to use cryptocurrency in any way they want. Aryacoin empowers the users to transfer, pay, trade cryptocurrency from any country around the globe.
Platforms that have been created by Aryacoin Team, as well as those that will go live in future, operate on the same principle and exclude absolutely no one.

## 1.1.3 PROBLEM ARYACOIN SEEKS TO SOLVE

Aryacoin aims to provide a long-term solution to the problem of double spending, which is still common in the crypto market. The developers of the system have created a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server that generates computational proof of the transactions as they occur.
Besides, the system remains secure provided honest nodes control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes. While Bitcoin was designed not to be regulated or controlled, many exchanges and governments have put regulatory measures on the pioneer cryptocurrency at every step. Aryacoin aims to overcome these restrictions as a free digital currency.

## 1.1.4 BENEFITS OF USING ARYACOIN

Aryacoin solution offers the following benefits:
• Real-time update: whether you’re going on a holiday or a business trip, no problem. You can access your coins all over the world.
• Instant operations: Aryacoin makes it quite easy for you to use your digital wallet and perform various operations with it.
• Safe and secure: all your data is stored encrypted and can only be decrypted with your private key, seed, or password.
• Strong security: The system has no control over your wallet. You are 100% in charge of your wallet and funds.

## 1.1.5 ARYACOIN FEATURES

1. Anonymity
The coin provides decent level of anonymity for all its users. The users can send their transactions to any of the public nodes to be broadcasted , the transaction sent to the nodes should be signed by the private key of the sender address . This allows the users to use the coin anywhere any time , sending transactions directly to the node allows users from any place and country .
2. Real Life Usage
aryacoin’s team is continuously developing new and innovative ways to use the coins , they are currently developing exchanges where the users can exchange the coins without any fees and any restrictions . They also are currently developing other innovative technologies, which would allow users to spend our coins everywhere and anywhere.
3. Offline Exchanges
They are also working with different offline vendors which would enable them to buy and sell the coins directly to our users on a fixed/variable price this would allow easy buy/sell directly using cash . This would allow the coins to be accessible to users without any restrictions which most of the online exchanges have, also increase the value and number of users along with new ways to spend the coin. This would increase anonymity level of the
coin. In addition, introduce new users into the cryptomarket and technology. Creating a revolution, which educates people about crypto and introduce them to the crypto world, which introduces a completely new group of people into crypto and a move towards a Decentralized future!
4. Transactions
When it comes to transactions, Aryacoin embraces a chain of digital signatures, where each owner simply transfers the coin to the next person by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner. The recipient can then verify the signatures to confirm the chain of ownership. Importantly, Aryacoin comes with a trusted central authority that checks every transaction for double spending.
Aryacoin is the first and only Iranian digital currency that managed to obtain a trading license in other countries.
In collaboration with the foundation and financial giant Simplex, a major cryptocurrency company that has large companies such as Binance, P2P, Changelly, etc. Aryacoin has been licensed to enter the world’s major exchanges, as well as the possibility of purchasing AYA through Credit Cards, which will begin in the second half of 2020.
Also, the possibility of purchasing Aryacoin through Visa and MasterCard credit cards will be activated simultaneously inside the Aryacoin site. plus, in less than a year, AYA will be placed next to big names such as CoinCapMarket, Coinomi, P2P, Coinpayments and many other world-class brands today.

## 1.1.6 WHY CHOOSE ARYACOIN?

If you want to use a cryptocurrency that allows you to keep your privacy online even when buying and selling the coins, the Aryacoin team claims that AYA is the way to go. Aryacoin is putting in the work: with more ways to buy and sell, and fixing the issues that were present in the original Bitcoin, plus pushing the boundaries with innovative solutions in cryptocurrencies. You can get started using Aryacoin (AYA) payments simply by having a CoinPayments account!

## 1.1.7 ARYANA CENTRALIZED EXCHANGE

Aryana, the first Iranian exchange is a unique platform with the following features:
• The first real international Persian exchange that obtains international licenses and is listed in CoinMarketCap.
• The first Iranian exchange that has been cooperating with a legal and European exchange for 3 years.
• The possibility of trading in Tomans (available currency in Iran) at the user’s desired price and getting rid of the transaction prices imposed by domestic sites inside Iran.
• There is an internal fee payment plan by Iranian domestic banks for depositing and withdrawing Tomans for Aryacoin holders in Aryana Exchange.
• The number that you see on the monitor and in your account will be equal to the number that is transferred to your bank account without a difference of one Rial.
• The last but not least, noting the fact that there is a trading in Tomans possibility in Aryana exchange.
Aryana Exchange is using the most powerful, fastest, and most expensive server in the world, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which is currently the highest quality server for an Iranian site, so that professional traders do not lag behind the market even for a second.
The feature of Smart Trading Robots is one of the most powerful features for digital currency traders. Digital cryptocurrency traders are well aware of how much they will benefit from smart trading robots. In the Aryana exchange, it is possible to connect exchange user accounts to intelligent trading bots and trade even when they are offline.
The injection of $1 million a day in liquidity by the WhiteBite exchange to maintain and support the price of Tether and eliminate the Tether fluctuations with Bitcoin instabilities used by profiteers to become a matter of course. ## 1.1.8 HOW DOES ARYACOIN WORK? Aryacoin (AYA) tries to ensure a high level of security and privacy. The team has made sure to eliminate any trading restrictions for the network users: no verification is required to carry out transactions on AYA, making the project truly anonymous, decentralized, and giving it a real use in day-to-day life. The Delayed-Proof-of-Work (dPoW) algorithm makes the Aryacoin blockchain immune to any attempts of a 51% attack. AYA defines a coin as a chain of digital signatures — each owner transfers the coin to the next owner by digitally signing the hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner, and the receiver verifies the signatures and the chain of ownership. # 2. ARYACOIN TECHNOLOGY ## 2.1 PROOF-OF-WORK They use a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back’s Hashcash to implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, rather than newspaper or Usenet publications. The proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed, such as with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of zero bits. The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash. For their timestamp network, they implement the proof-of-work by incrementing a nonce in the block until a value is found that gives the block’s hash the required zero bits. Once the CPU effort has been expended to make it satisfy the proof-of-work, the block cannot be changed without redoing the work. As later blocks are chained after it, the work to change the block would include redoing all the blocks after it. The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If honest nodes control a majority of CPU power, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it, then catch up with, and surpass the work of the honest nodes. ## 2.2 NETWORK The steps to run the network are as follows: • New transactions are broadcast to all nodes. • Each node collects new transactions into a block. • Each node works on finding a difficult proof-of-work for its block. • When a node finds a proof-of-work, it broadcasts the block to all nodes. • Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent. This is a very simple system that makes the network fast and scalable, while also providing a decent level of anonymity for all users. Users can send their transactions to any of the public nodes to be broadcast, and the private key of the sender’s address should sign any transaction sent to the nodes. This way, all transaction info remains strictly confidential. It also allows users to send transactions directly to the node from any place at any time and allows the transferring of huge amounts with very low fees. ## 2.3 AYAPAY PAYMENT SERVICES GATEWAY: According to creators Aryacoin, the development team has succeeded in inventing a new blockchain technology for the first time in the world, which is undoubtedly a big step and great news for all digital currency enthusiasts around the world. This new technology has been implemented on the Aryacoin AYAPAY platform and was unveiled on October 2. AYAPAY payment platform is the only payment gateway in the world that does not save money in users’ accounts and transfers incoming coins directly to any wallet address requested by the gateway owner without any additional transaction or fee. In other similar systems or even systems such as PayPal, money is stored in the user account. ## 2.4 CONSENSUS ALGORITHM IN ARYACOIN The devs introduced the Delayed-Proof-of-Work (dPoW) algorithm, which represents a hybrid consensus method that allows one blockchain to take advantage of the security provided by the hashing power of another blockchain. The AYA blockchain works on dPoW and can use such consensus methods as Proof-of-Work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and join to any desired PoW blockchain. The main purpose of this is to allow the blockchain to continue operating without notary nodes on the basis of its original consensus method. In this situation, additional security will no longer be provided through the attached blockchain, but this is not a particularly significant problem. dPoW can improve the security level and reduce energy consumption for any blockchain. ## 2.5 DOUBLE-SPEND PROBLEM AND SOLUTION One of the main problems in the blockchain world is that a receiver is unable to verify whether or not one of the senders did not double-spend. Aryacoin provides the solution, and has established a trusted central authority, or mint, that checks every transaction for double-spending. Only the mint can issue a new coin and all the coins issued directly from the mint are trusted and cannot be double-spent. However, such a system cannot therefore be fully decentralized because it depends on the company running the mint, similar to a bank. Aryacoin implements a scheme where the receiver knows that the previous owners did not sign any earlier transactions. The mint is aware of all transactions including which of them arrived first. The developers used an interesting solution called the Timestamp Server, which works by taking a hash of a block of items to be ‘timestamped’ and publishing the hash. Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain. To modify a block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of all previous blocks, then catch up with, and surpass the work of the honest nodes. This is almost impossible, and makes the network processes more secure. The proof-of-work difficulty varies according to circumstances. Such an approach ensures reliability and high throughput. # 3. ARYACOIN ROADMAP April 2019: The launch of Aryacoin; AYA ICO, resulting in over 30BTC collected December 2019: The launch of AYA Pay April 2020: The successful Hamedan Hardfork, supported by all AYA exchanges, aimed at integrating the dPoW algorithm, improving the security of the AYA blockchain. June 2020: Aryana Exchange goes live, opening more trading opportunities globally July 2020: The enabling of our Coin Exchanger November 2020: The implementation of Smart Contracts into the Aryacoin Ecosystem Q1 2021: Alef B goes live (more details coming soon) # 4. THE NUCYBER NETWORK COMMUNITY & SOCIAL Website: https://aryacoin.io/ Explorer: https://explorer.aryacoin.io/ Github: https://github.com/Aryacoin/Aryacoin Twitter: 1.1k followers https://twitter.com/AryacoinAYA Reddit: 442 members https://github.com/nucypher Instagram: 3.8k followers https://www.instagram.com/mrdigicoin/ Telegram: 5.9k subscribers https://t.me/AYA_Global # 5. SUMMARY Aryacoin (AYA) is a new age cryptocurrency that combines the best of the blockchain technology and strives to deliver high trading and mining standards, enabling users to make peer-to-peer decentralized transactions of electronic cash. Aryacoin is part of an ecosystem that includes payment gateway Ayapay and the Ayabank. AYA has a partnership with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, which provides the ability to develop applications and store data on servers located in distributed data centers. The network fee for the AYA Blockchain is 0%. In Ayapay service, which has been developed by the Aryacoin team, all funds without extra fees or costs are directly forwarded to users’ wallets with technology called CloudWithdrawal. The devs team is introducing new use cases including exchanges where users will exchange AYA without any restrictions. You can buy AYA on an exchange of your choice, create an Aryacoin wallet, and store it in Guarda. # 6. REFERENCES 1) https://coincodex.com/crypto/aryacoin/ 2) https://www.icosandstos.com/coin/Aryacoin%20AYA/YuXO60UPF3 3) https://www.publish0x.com/iran-and-cryptocurrency/a-brief-introduction-of-aryacoin-first-ever-iranian-cryptocu-xoldlom 4) https://techround.co.uk/cryptocurrency/aryacoin-the-digital-currency-created-by-iranians/ 5) https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/aryacoin/ 6) https://blog.coinpayments.net/coin-spotlight/aryacoin 7) https://guarda.com/aryacoin-wallet submitted by CoinEx_Institution to Coinex [link] [comments] ##### Dive Into Tendermint Consensus Protocol (I) This article is written by the CoinEx Chain lab. CoinEx Chain is the world’s first public chain exclusively designed for DEX, and will also include a Smart Chain supporting smart contracts and a Privacy Chain protecting users’ privacy. longcpp @ 20200618 This is Part 1 of the serialized articles aimed to explain the Tendermint consensus protocol in detail. Part 1. Preliminary of the consensus protocol: security model and PBFT protocol Part 2. Tendermint consensus protocol illustrated: two-phase voting protocol and the locking and unlocking mechanism Part 3. Weighted round-robin proposer selection algorithm used in Tendermint project Any consensus agreement that is ultimately reached is the General Agreement, that is, the majority opinion. The consensus protocol on which the blockchain system operates is no exception. As a distributed system, the blockchain system aims to maintain the validity of the system. Intuitively, the validity of the blockchain system has two meanings: firstly, there is no ambiguity, and secondly, it can process requests to update its status. The former corresponds to the safety requirements of distributed systems, while the latter to the requirements of liveness. The validity of distributed systems is mainly maintained by consensus protocols, considering the multiple nodes and network communication involved in such systems may be unstable, which has brought huge challenges to the design of consensus protocols. ## The semi-synchronous network model and Byzantine fault tolerance Researchers of distributed systems characterize these problems that may occur in nodes and network communications using node failure models and network models. The fail-stop failure in node failure models refers to the situation where the node itself stops running due to configuration errors or other reasons, thus unable to go on with the consensus protocol. This type of failure will not cause side effects on other parts of the distributed system except that the node itself stops running. However, for such distributed systems as the public blockchain, when designing a consensus protocol, we still need to consider the evildoing intended by nodes besides their failure. These incidents are all included in the Byzantine Failure model, which covers all unexpected situations that may occur on the node, for example, passive downtime failures and any deviation intended by the nodes from the consensus protocol. For a better explanation, downtime failures refer to nodes’ passive running halt, and the Byzantine failure to any arbitrary deviation of nodes from the consensus protocol. Compared with the node failure model which can be roughly divided into the passive and active models, the modeling of network communication is more difficult. The network itself suffers problems of instability and communication delay. Moreover, since all network communication is ultimately completed by the node which may have a downtime failure or a Byzantine failure in itself, it is usually difficult to define whether such failure arises from the node or the network itself when a node does not receive another node's network message. Although the network communication may be affected by many factors, the researchers found that the network model can be classified by the communication delay. For example, the node may fail to send data packages due to the fail-stop failure, and as a result, the corresponding communication delay is unknown and can be any value. According to the concept of communication delay, the network communication model can be divided into the following three categories: • The synchronous network model: There is a fixed, known upper bound of delay$\Delta$in network communication. Under this model, the maximum delay of network communication between two nodes in the network is$\Delta$. Even if there is a malicious node, the communication delay arising therefrom does not exceed$\Delta$. • The asynchronous network model: There is an unknown delay in network communication, with the upper bound of the delay known, but the message can still be successfully delivered in the end. Under this model, the network communication delay between two nodes in the network can be any possible value, that is, a malicious node, if any, can arbitrarily extend the communication delay. • The semi-synchronous network model: Assume that there is a Global Stabilization Time (GST), before which it is an asynchronous network model and after which, a synchronous network model. In other words, there is a fixed, known upper bound of delay in network communication$\Delta$. A malicious node can delay the GST arbitrarily, and there will be no notification when no GST occurs. Under this model, the delay in the delivery of the message at the time$T$is$\Delta + max(T, GST)$. The synchronous network model is the most ideal network environment. Every message sent through the network can be received within a predictable time, but this model cannot reflect the real network communication situation. As in a real network, network failures are inevitable from time to time, causing the failure in the assumption of the synchronous network model. Yet the asynchronous network model goes to the other extreme and cannot reflect the real network situation either. Moreover, according to the FLP (Fischer-Lynch-Paterson) theorem, under this model if there is one node fails, no consensus protocol will reach consensus in a limited time. In contrast, the semi-synchronous network model can better describe the real-world network communication situation: network communication is usually synchronous or may return to normal after a short time. Such an experience must be no stranger to everyone: the web page, which usually gets loaded quite fast, opens slowly every now and then, and you need to try before you know the network is back to normal since there is usually no notification. The peer-to-peer (P2P) network communication, which is widely used in blockchain projects, also makes it possible for a node to send and receive information from multiple network channels. It is unrealistic to keep blocking the network information transmission of a node for a long time. Therefore, all the discussion below is under the semi-synchronous network model. The design and selection of consensus protocols for public chain networks that allow nodes to dynamically join and leave need to consider possible Byzantine failures. Therefore, the consensus protocol of a public chain network is designed to guarantee the security and liveness of the network under the semi-synchronous network model on the premise of possible Byzantine failure. Researchers of distributed systems point out that to ensure the security and liveness of the system, the consensus protocol itself needs to meet three requirements: • Validity: The value reached by honest nodes must be the value proposed by one of them • Agreement: All honest nodes must reach consensus on the same value • Termination: The honest nodes must eventually reach consensus on a certain value Validity and agreement can guarantee the security of the distributed system, that is, the honest nodes will never reach a consensus on a random value, and once the consensus is reached, all honest nodes agree on this value. Termination guarantees the liveness of distributed systems. A distributed system unable to reach consensus is useless. ## The CAP theorem and Byzantine Generals Problem In a semi-synchronous network, is it possible to design a Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol that satisfies validity, agreement, and termination? How many Byzantine nodes can a system tolerance? The CAP theorem and Byzantine Generals Problem provide an answer for these two questions and have thus become the basic guidelines for the design of Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocols. Lamport, Shostak, and Pease abstracted the design of the consensus mechanism in the distributed system in 1982 as the Byzantine Generals Problem, which refers to such a situation as described below: several generals each lead the army to fight in the war, and their troops are stationed in different places. The generals must formulate a unified action plan for the victory. However, since the camps are far away from each other, they can only communicate with each other through the communication soldiers, or, in other words, they cannot appear on the same occasion at the same time to reach a consensus. Unfortunately, among the generals, there is a traitor or two who intend to undermine the unified actions of the loyal generals by sending the wrong information, and the communication soldiers cannot send the message to the destination by themselves. It is assumed that each communication soldier can prove the information he has brought comes from a certain general, just as in the case of a real BFT consensus protocol, each node has its public and private keys to establish an encrypted communication channel for each other to ensure that its messages will not be tampered with in the network communication, and the message receiver can also verify the sender of the message based thereon. As already mentioned, any consensus agreement ultimately reached represents the consensus of the majority. In the process of generals communicating with each other for an offensive or retreat, a general also makes decisions based on the majority opinion from the information collected by himself. According to the research of Lamport et al, if there are 1/3 or more traitors in the node, the generals cannot reach a unified decision. For example, in the following figure, assume there are 3 generals and only 1 traitor. In the figure on the left, suppose that General C is the traitor, and A and B are loyal. If A wants to launch an attack and informs B and C of such intention, yet the traitor C sends a message to B, suggesting what he has received from A is a retreat. In this case, B can't decide as he doesn't know who the traitor is, and the information received is insufficient for him to decide. If A is a traitor, he can send different messages to B and C. Then C faithfully reports to B the information he received. At this moment as B receives conflicting information, he cannot make any decisions. In both cases, even if B had received consistent information, it would be impossible for him to spot the traitor between A and C. Therefore, it is obvious that in both situations shown in the figure below, the honest General B cannot make a choice. According to this conclusion, when there are$n$generals with at most$f$traitors (n≤3f), the generals cannot reach a consensus if$n \leq 3f$; and with$n > 3f$, a consensus can be reached. This conclusion also suggests that when the number of Byzantine failures$f$exceeds 1/3 of the total number of nodes$n$in the system$f \ge n/3$, no consensus will be reached on any consensus protocol among all honest nodes. Only when$f < n/3$, such condition is likely to happen, without loss of generality, and for the subsequent discussion on the consensus protocol,$ n \ge 3f + 1$by default. The conclusion reached by Lamport et al. on the Byzantine Generals Problem draws a line between the possible and the impossible in the design of the Byzantine fault tolerance consensus protocol. Within the possible range, how will the consensus protocol be designed? Can both the security and liveness of distributed systems be fully guaranteed? Brewer provided the answer in his CAP theorem in 2000. It indicated that a distributed system requires the following three basic attributes, but any distributed system can only meet two of the three at the same time. 1. Consistency: When any node responds to the request, it must either provide the latest status information or provide no status information 2. Availability: Any node in the system must be able to continue reading and writing 3. Partition Tolerance: The system can tolerate the loss of any number of messages between two nodes and still function normally https://preview.redd.it/1ozfwk7u7m851.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=fdee6318de2cf1c021e636654766a7a0fe7b38b4 A distributed system aims to provide consistent services. Therefore, the consistency attribute requires that the two nodes in the system cannot provide conflicting status information or expired information, which can ensure the security of the distributed system. The availability attribute is to ensure that the system can continuously update its status and guarantee the availability of distributed systems. The partition tolerance attribute is related to the network communication delay, and, under the semi-synchronous network model, it can be the status before GST when the network is in an asynchronous status with an unknown delay in the network communication. In this condition, communicating nodes may not receive information from each other, and the network is thus considered to be in a partitioned status. Partition tolerance requires the distributed system to function normally even in network partitions. The proof of the CAP theorem can be demonstrated with the following diagram. The curve represents the network partition, and each network has four nodes, distinguished by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. The distributed system stores color information, and all the status information stored by all nodes is blue at first. 1. Partition tolerance and availability mean the loss of consistency: When node 1 receives a new request in the leftmost image, the status changes to red, the status transition information of node 1 is passed to node 3, and node 3 also updates the status information to red. However, since node 3 and node 4 did not receive the corresponding information due to the network partition, the status information is still blue. At this moment, if the status information is queried through node 2, the blue returned by node 2 is not the latest status of the system, thus losing consistency. 2. Partition tolerance and consistency mean the loss of availability: In the middle figure, the initial status information of all nodes is blue. When node 1 and node 3 update the status information to red, node 2 and node 4 maintain the outdated information as blue due to network partition. Also when querying status information through node 2, you need to first ask other nodes to make sure you’re in the latest status before returning status information as node 2 needs to follow consistency, but because of the network partition, node 2 cannot receive any information from node 1 or node 3. Then node 2 cannot determine whether it is in the latest status, so it chooses not to return any information, thus depriving the system of availability. 3. Consistency and availability mean the loss of the partition tolerance: In the right-most figure, the system does not have a network partition at first, and both status updates and queries can go smoothly. However, once a network partition occurs, it degenerates into one of the previous two conditions. It is thus proved that any distributed system cannot have consistency, availability, and partition tolerance all at the same time. https://preview.redd.it/456x2blv7m851.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=550797373145b8fc1471bdde68ed5f8d45adb52b The discovery of the CAP theorem seems to declare that the aforementioned goals of the consensus protocol is impossible. However, if you’re careful enough, you may find from the above that those are all extreme cases, such as network partitions that cause the failure of information transmission, which could be rare, especially in P2P network. In the second case, the system rarely returns the same information with node 2, and the general practice is to query other nodes and return the latest status as believed after a while, regardless of whether it has received the request information of other nodes. Therefore, although the CAP theorem points out that any distributed system cannot satisfy the three attributes at the same time, it is not a binary choice, as the designer of the consensus protocol can weigh up all the three attributes according to the needs of the distributed system. However, as the communication delay is always involved in the distributed system, one always needs to choose between availability and consistency while ensuring a certain degree of partition tolerance. Specifically, in the second case, it is about the value that node 2 returns: a probably outdated value or no value. Returning the possibly outdated value may violate consistency but guarantees availability; yet returning no value deprives the system of availability but guarantees its consistency. Tendermint consensus protocol to be introduced is consistent in this trade-off. In other words, it will lose availability in some cases. The genius of Satoshi Nakamoto is that with constraints of the CAP theorem, he managed to reach a reliable Byzantine consensus in a distributed network by combining PoW mechanism, Satoshi Nakamoto consensus, and economic incentives with appropriate parameter configuration. Whether Bitcoin's mechanism design solves the Byzantine Generals Problem has remained a dispute among academicians. Garay, Kiayias, and Leonardos analyzed the link between Bitcoin mechanism design and the Byzantine consensus in detail in their paper The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol: Analysis and Applications. In simple terms, the Satoshi Consensus is a probabilistic Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol that depends on such conditions as the network communication environment and the proportion of malicious nodes' hashrate. When the proportion of malicious nodes’ hashrate does not exceed 1/2 in a good network communication environment, the Satoshi Consensus can reliably solve the Byzantine consensus problem in a distributed environment. However, when the environment turns bad, even with the proportion within 1/2, the Satoshi Consensus may still fail to reach a reliable conclusion on the Byzantine consensus problem. It is worth noting that the quality of the network environment is relative to Bitcoin's block interval. The 10-minute block generation interval of the Bitcoin can ensure that the system is in a good network communication environment in most cases, given the fact that the broadcast time of a block in the distributed network is usually just several seconds. In addition, economic incentives can motivate most nodes to actively comply with the agreement. It is thus considered that with the current Bitcoin network parameter configuration and mechanism design, the Bitcoin mechanism design has reliably solved the Byzantine Consensus problem in the current network environment. ## Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, PBFT It is not an easy task to design the Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol in a semi-synchronous network. The first practically usable Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol is the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) designed by Castro and Liskov in 1999, the first of its kind with polynomial complexity. For a distributed system with$n$nodes, the communication complexity is$O(n2$.) Castro and Liskov showed in the paper that by transforming centralized file system into a distributed one using the PBFT protocol, the overwall performance was only slowed down by 3%. In this section we will briefly introduce the PBFT protocol, paving the way for further detailed explanations of the Tendermint protocol and the improvements of the Tendermint protocol. The PBFT protocol that includes$n=3f+1$nodes can tolerate up to$f$Byzantine nodes. In the original paper of PBFT, full connection is required among all the$n$nodes, that is, any two of the n nodes must be connected. All the nodes of the network jointly maintain the system status through network communication. In the Bitcoin network, a node can participate in or exit the consensus process through hashrate mining at any time, which is managed by the administrator, and the PFBT protocol needs to determine all the participating nodes before the protocol starts. All nodes in the PBFT protocol are divided into two categories, master nodes, and slave nodes. There is only one master node at any time, and all nodes take turns to be the master node. All nodes run in a rotation process called View, in each of which the master node will be reelected. The master node selection algorithm in PBFT is very simple: all nodes become the master node in turn by the index number. In each view, all nodes try to reach a consensus on the system status. It is worth mentioning that in the PBFT protocol, each node has its own digital signature key pair. All sent messages (including request messages from the client) need to be signed to ensure the integrity of the message in the network and the traceability of the message itself. (You can determine who sent a message based on the digital signature). The following figure shows the basic flow of the PBFT consensus protocol. Assume that the current view’s master node is node 0. Client C initiates a request to the master node 0. After the master node receives the request, it broadcasts the request to all slave nodes that process the request of client C and return the result to the client. After the client receives f+1 identical results from different nodes (based on the signature value), the result can be taken as the final result of the entire operation. Since the system can have at most f Byzantine nodes, at least one of the f+1 results received by the client comes from an honest node, and the security of the consensus protocol guarantees that all honest nodes will reach consensus on the same status. So, the feedback from 1 honest node is enough to confirm that the corresponding request has been processed by the system. https://preview.redd.it/sz8so5ly7m851.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=d472810e76bbc202e91a25ef29a51e109a576554 For the status synchronization of all honest nodes, the PBFT protocol has two constraints on each node: on one hand, all nodes must start from the same status, and on the other, the status transition of all nodes must be definite, that is, given the same status and request, the results after the operation must be the same. Under these two constraints, as long as the entire system agrees on the processing order of all transactions, the status of all honest nodes will be consistent. This is also the main purpose of the PBFT protocol: to reach a consensus on the order of transactions between all nodes, thereby ensuring the security of the entire distributed system. In terms of availability, the PBFT consensus protocol relies on a timeout mechanism to find anomalies in the consensus process and start the View Change protocol in time to try to reach a consensus again. The figure above shows a simplified workflow of the PBFT protocol. Where C is the client, 0, 1, 2, and 3 represent 4 nodes respectively. Specifically, 0 is the master node of the current view, 1, 2, 3 are slave nodes, and node 3 is faulty. Under normal circumstances, the PBFT consensus protocol reaches consensus on the order of transactions between nodes through a three-phase protocol. These three phases are respectively: Pre-Prepare, Prepare, and Commit: • The master node of the pre-preparation node is responsible for assigning the sequence number to the received client request, and broadcasting the message to the slave node. The message contains the hash value of the client request d, the sequence number of the current viewv, the sequence number n assigned by the master node to the request, and the signature information of the master nodesig. The scheme design of the PBFT protocol separates the request transmission from the request sequencing process, and the request transmission is not to be discussed here. The slave node that receives the message accepts the message after confirming the message is legitimate and enter preparation phase. The message in this step checks the basic signature, hash value, current view, and, most importantly, whether the master node has given the same sequence number to other request from the client in the current view. • In preparation, the slave node broadcasts the message to all nodes (including itself), indicating that it assigns the sequence number n to the client request with the hash value d under the current view v, with its signaturesig as proof. The node receiving the message will check the correctness of the signature, the matching of the view sequence number, etc., and accept the legitimate message. When the PRE-PREPARE message about a client request (from the main node) received by a node matches with the PREPARE from 2f slave nodes, the system has agreed on the sequence number requested by the client in the current view. This means that 2f+1 nodes in the current view agree with the request sequence number. Since it contains information from at most fmalicious nodes, there are a total of f+1 honest nodes that have agreed with the allocation of the request sequence number. With f malicious nodes, there are a total of 2f+1 honest nodes, so f+1represents the majority of the honest nodes, which is the consensus of the majority mentioned before. • After the node (including the master node and the slave node) receives a PRE-PREPARE message requested by the client and 2f PREPARE messages, the message is broadcast across the network and enters the submission phase. This message is used to indicate that the node has observed that the whole network has reached a consensus on the sequence number allocation of the request message from the client. When the node receives 2f+1 COMMIT messages, there are at least f+1 honest nodes, that is, most of the honest nodes have observed that the entire network has reached consensus on the arrangement of sequence numbers of the request message from the client. The node can process the client request and return the execution result to the client at this moment. Roughly speaking, in the pre-preparation phase, the master node assigns a sequence number to all new client requests. During preparation, all nodes reach consensus on the client request sequence number in this view, while in submission the consistency of the request sequence number of the client in different views is to be guaranteed. In addition, the design of the PBFT protocol itself does not require the request message to be submitted by the assigned sequence number, but out of order. That can improve the efficiency of the implementation of the consensus protocol. Yet, the messages are still processed by the sequence number assigned by the consensus protocol for the consistency of the distributed system. In the three-phase protocol execution of the PBFT protocol, in addition to maintaining the status information of the distributed system, the node itself also needs to log all kinds of consensus information it receives. The gradual accumulation of logs will consume considerable system resources. Therefore, the PBFT protocol additionally defines checkpoints to help the node deal with garbage collection. You can set a checkpoint every 100 or 1000 sequence numbers according to the request sequence number. After the client request at the checkpoint is executed, the node broadcasts messages throughout the network, indicating that after the node executes the client request with sequence number n, the hash value of the system status is d, and it is vouched by its own signature sig. After 2f+1 matching CHECKPOINT messages (one of which can come from the node itself) are received, most of the honest nodes in the entire network have reached a consensus on the system status after the execution of the client request with the sequence numbern, and then you can clear all relevant log records of client requests with the sequence number less than n. The node needs to save these2f+1 CHECKPOINTmessages as proof of the legitimate status at this moment, and the corresponding checkpoint is called a stable checkpoint. The three-phase protocol of the PBFT protocol can ensure the consistency of the processing order of the client request, and the checkpoint mechanism is set to help nodes perform garbage collection and further ensures the status consistency of the distributed system, both of which can guarantee the security of the distributed system aforementioned. How is the availability of the distributed system guaranteed? In the semi-synchronous network model, a timeout mechanism is usually introduced, which is related to delays in the network environment. It is assumed that the network delay has a known upper bound after GST. In such condition, an initial value is usually set according to the network condition of the system deployed. In case of a timeout event, besides the corresponding processing flow triggered, additional mechanisms will be activated to readjust the waiting time. For example, an algorithm like TCP's exponential back off can be adopted to adjust the waiting time after a timeout event. To ensure the availability of the system in the PBFT protocol, a timeout mechanism is also introduced. In addition, due to the potential the Byzantine failure in the master node itself, the PBFT protocol also needs to ensure the security and availability of the system in this case. When the Byzantine failure occurs in the master node, for example, when the slave node does not receive the PRE-PREPARE message or the PRE-PREPARE message sent by the master node from the master node within the time window and is thus determined to be illegitimate, the slave node can broadcast to the entire network, indicating that the node requests to switch to the new view with sequence number v+1. n indicates the request sequence number corresponding to the latest stable checkpoint local to the node, and C is to prove the stable checkpoint 2f+1 legitimate CHECKPOINT messages as aforementioned. After the latest stable checkpoint and before initiating the VIEWCHANGE message, the system may have reached a consensus on the sequence numbers of some request messages in the previous view. To ensure the consistency of these request sequence numbers to be switched in the view, the VIEWCHANGE message needs to carry this kind of the information to the new view, which is also the meaning of the P field in the message. P contains all the client request messages collected at the node with a request sequence number greater than n and the proof that a consensus has been reached on the sequence number in the node: the legitimate PRE-PREPARE message of the request and 2f matching PREPARE messages. When the master node in view v+1 collects 2f+1 VIEWCHANGE messages, it can broadcast the NEW-VIEW message and take the entire system into a new view. For the security of the system in combination with the three-phase protocol of the PBFT protocol, the construction rules of the NEW-VIEW information are designed in a quite complicated way. You can refer to the original paper of PBFT for more details. https://preview.redd.it/x5efdc908m851.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=97b4fd879d0ec668ee0990ea4cadf476167a2948 VIEWCHANGE contains a lot of information. For example, C contains 2f+1 signature information, P contains several signature sets, and each set has 2f+1 signature. At least 2f+1 nodes need to send a VIEWCHANGE message before prompting the system to enter the next new view, and that means, in addition to the complex logic of constructing the information of VIEWCHANGE and NEW-VIEW, the communication complexity of the view conversion protocol is$O(n2$.) Such complexity also limits the PBFT protocol to support only a few nodes, and when there are 100 nodes, it is usually too complex to practically deploy PBFT. It is worth noting that in some materials the communication complexity of the PBFT protocol is inappropriately attributed to the full connection between n nodes. By changing the fully connected network topology to the P2P network topology based on distributed hash tables commonly used in blockchain projects, high communication complexity caused by full connection can be conveniently solved, yet still, it is difficult to improve the communication complexity during the view conversion process. In recent years, researchers have proposed to reduce the amount of communication in this step by adopting aggregate signature scheme. With this technology, 2f+1 signature information can be compressed into one, thereby reducing the communication volume during view change. submitted by coinexchain to u/coinexchain [link] [comments] ##### MiniSwap -- A New Hybrid Incentive Model in DeFi Cryptocurrency exchanges process over$20 billion in trade volume per day. Most of the transactions are going through centralized exchanges, where the users need to fully trust them for managing their assests and transactions. However, the risk of trusting these centralized exchanges has also been seen. For example, QuadrigaCX, which was the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Canada, lost $19 million of their customers' assets [1]. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes) have been introduced to address this problem -- they allow traders to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer manner, so no involvement of any trusted party is required. Atomic Swap is one of the promising technology for implementing a DEX. While it enables pure peer to peer trading, it also introduces problems such as unfairness and long confirmation latency. While existing work [2] has provided a solution towards a fair atomic swap protocol, the issue of long confirmation latency is inherent. Another promising direction is leveraging liquidity pools. With liquidity pools, pairs of assets are reserved for trading. For any pair of assets supported by the liquidity pool, traders can exchange their assets without any third party. As traders can only perform the transactions if there are reserved assets, one core problem is how to attract liquidity providers to provide liquidity by reserving assets. It is not difficult to see that incentive [3,4], which has been a key component of all permissionless blockchains, can be equipped to incentivize liqudity providers. However, flawed incentive designs will lead to attacks and other concerns [5-13]. There are two main types of incentive designs, namely "trans-fee mining" and "liquidity mining". They are different from the Proof-of-X mining in blockchains for reaching consensus (a detailed analysis can be found in the survey [14]). Rather, they are used to incentivise users to join the ecosystem. "Trans-fee mining" was proposed by FCoin in 2018 [15]. With FCoin, each time a transaction is created, 100% of its transaction fee will be returned in FCoin token to the payer as a reward. This is one incentive design to encourage traders to join the system. However, as FCoin may have no value to the trader, FCoin also introduces extra reward to all coin holders -- 80% of the transaction fee in its native currency (such as ETH) will be distributed to all coin holders. So, traders are incentivized to join the system, becoming a holder of FCoin token, and obtaining a share of the transaction fee of every transaction in the FCoin ecosystem. While this had successful attracted traders, it is not sustainable. Rather than charging a trader to perform transactions, FCoin rewards traders. Profit-driven traders will create transactions at full speed to earn FCoin token and the share as a token holder. Indeed, the trading volume of FCoin was the top one among all exchange services, and the daily reward can be as high as 6000 BTC [16]. However, once all coins are minted, then the system would lose liveness as there is not enough supply to be distributed. "Liquidity mining" aims at giving reward to the liquidity providers rather than the traders. There are different ways to implement liquidity mining. Compound [17] is a famous example of protocols deploying liquidity mining. With Compound, users become a liquidity provider by supply assets to a pool and obtain interests for its contribution (similar to depositing money into a bank). Liquidity providers first reserve some assets in the pool and obtain "cToken" of Compound which entitles the owner to an increasing quantity of the underlying asset. Users can use their "cToken" to borrow different assets available on the Compound and pay some interests to Compund. The borrowers may have some quick gains through the financial games [18]. Both borrowers and liquidity providers can withdraw their asset by trading them back with "cToken". Oners of "cToken" can also manage the business direction and decisions of Compound through weighted voting. The potential concern here is that rich users might be able to take over the control of the system. Uniswap [19] is another popular DEX deploying liquidity mining. Uniswap incentivizes liquidity providers by giving them a share of the earned transaction fees. In particular, Uniswap changes each transaction a 0.3% fee, where 0.25% will be distributed to the liquidity providers, and 0.05% will go to the Uniswap account. One issue is how to incentivize traders. With Uniswap, traders are incentivized by the potential profit it can gain through the price difference between Uniswap and other exchanges. Uniswap price oracle is based on a constant function market makers [20,21], where the product of the number of reserved tokens is a constant. For example, if Uniswap has a pair of X token A and Y token B, then when a user using X' token A to buy Y' token B, the product of the reserved number of tokens should remain the same, i.e., XY = (X+X')(Y-Y'). The price of Uniswap (V1) is also defined in this way. This allows traders to speculate in the exchange market as the asset price on Uniswap is changed dynamically and is different from other exchanges. This, on the other hand, may have a security risk as the price can be easily manipulated. Uniswap (V2) fixed this problem by taking an accumulated price over a period of time [22]. However, as speculation/manipulation becomes harder, the trading volume may decrease. MiniSwap [23] introduces a hybrid model (a mixture of "trans-fee mining" and "liquidity mining") to address the above issues. MiniSwap provides three types of rewards. For each trade with transaction fee f ETH in MiniSwap, a number of MiniSwap tokens (called MINI) worth 2f ETH will be minted. A (parameterized) portion of the tokens are given to the trader, and the rest are distribued to the liqudity providers. The transaction fee (f ETH) is used to exchange MINI in the liquidity pool. 50% of the obtained MINI will be distributed to all MINI holders, and the other 50% will be destroyed. In this way, both traders and liquidity providers are incentivized to join the ecosystem. Recall that with FCoin, there is a problem when all coins are minted. MiniSwap has an upper bound (of 500,000 tokens) on the number of tokens can be created every day, and this limit reduces every month until a point where the limit (18,000 tokens) remains unchanged. This guarantees the sustainability of the system as the mining process can last for 100 years. The parameterized ratio of tokens as the reward to the trader and liquidity provider can also strengthen sustainability. It enables the system to dynamically balance the incentive of different parties in the system to make it more sustainable. Overall, the MiniSwap hybrid model has taken the benefit of both "trans-fee mining" model and "liquidity mining" model, while eliminated the potential concerns. Formally defining and analyzing these models, e.g. through the game-theoretic approach [24], would be an interesting direction. Reference [1] The Guardian, Cryptocurrency investors locked out of$190m after exchange founder dies, 2019.
[2] Runchao Han, Haoyu Lin, Jiangshan Yu. On the optionality and fairness of Atomic Swaps, ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies, 2019.
[3] Satoshi Nakamoto. 2008. Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system
[4] Jiangshan Yu, David Kozhaya, Jeremie Decouchant, and Paulo Verissimo. Repucoin: your reputation is your power. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2019.
[5] Joseph Bonneau. Why Buy When You Can Rent? - Bribery Attacks on Bitcoin-Style Consensus. Financial Cryptography and Data Security - International Workshops on BITCOIN, VOTING, and WAHC, 2016.
[6] Yujin Kwon, Hyoungshick Kim, Jinwoo Shin, and Yongdae Kim. Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash: Coexistence or Downfall of Bitcoin Cash, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), 2019.
[7] Kevin Liao and Jonathan Katz. Incentivizing blockchain forks via whale transactions. International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 2017.
[8] Ayelet Sapirshtein, Yonatan Sompolinsky, and Aviv Zohar. Optimal Selfish Mining Strategies in Bitcoin. Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 2016.
[9] Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer. Majority Is Not Enough: Bitcoin Mining Is Vulnerable. Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 2014.
[10] Ittay Eyal. The Miner’s Dilemma. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2015.
[11] Miles Carlsten, Harry A. Kalodner, S. Matthew Weinberg, and Arvind Narayanan. On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward. ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2016.
[12] Kartik Nayak, Srijan Kumar, Andrew Miller, and Elaine Shi. Stubborn mining: generalizing selfish mining and combining with an eclipse attack. IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2016.
[13] Runchao Han, Zhimei Sui, Jiangshan Yu, Joseph K. Liu, Shiping Chen. Sucker punch makes you richer: Rethinking Proof-of-Work security model, IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch, 2019.
[14] Christopher Natoli, Jiangshan Yu, Vincent Gramoli, Paulo Jorge Esteves Veríssimo.
Deconstructing Blockchains: A Comprehensive Survey on Consensus, Membership and Structure. CoRR abs/1908.08316, 2019.
[15] FCoin, https://www.fcoin.pro
[16] The Block Crypto. Cryptocurrency exchange Fcoin expects to default on as much as $125M of users' bitcoin, 2020. [17] Compound, https://compound.finance. [18] Philip Daian, Steven Goldfeder, Tyler Kell, Yunqi Li, Xueyuan Zhao, Iddo Bentov, Lorenz Breidenbach, Ari Juels. Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2020. [19] Uniswap. https://uniswap.org [20] Bowen Liu, Pawel Szalachowski. A First Look into DeFi Oracles. CoRR abs/2005.04377, 2020. [21] Guillermo Angeris, Tarun Chitra. Improved Price Oracles: Constant Function Market Makers, CoRR abs/ 2003.10001, 2020. [22] Uniswap V2.0 whitepaper. https://uniswap.org/whitepaper.pdf [23] MiniSwap. https://www.miniswap.org [24] Ziyao Liu, Nguyen Cong Luong, Wenbo Wang, Dusit Niyato, Ping Wang, Ying-Chang Liang, Dong In Kim. A Survey on Blockchain: A Game Theoretical Perspective. IEEE Access, 2019. submitted by MINISWAP to u/MINISWAP [link] [comments] ##### Summary of Ryan Taylor's economics AMA Ryan Taylor recently conducted an AMA (ask me anything) discussing the economics of reallocating Dash's block reward. The topic followed up on his "Improving Dash as a Store of Value" presentation from the 2019 open house. I've categorized and summarized his responses: Objective: reduce the severity and duration of high inflation rates in our circulating supply • "It would be naive to think that [this endeavor] would cause day-to-day volatility to change... My primary objective is not to increase the price, though it would likely be a secondary effect. My primary objective is to reduce the severity and duration of high inflation rates in our circulating supply to mitigate the effects this has on our network. One of those effects is downward pressure on our price. Another is long-term price instability (both upward and downward). So I'm not looking to find a band-aid solution to affect price. I'm trying to address one of the root causes. Dash can't have the best payment network if the token economics that the network uses are not competitive within the cryptocurrency markets. I am making the case for a set of changes that would make Dash more competitive. The price will continue to fluctuate based on many other factors, including adoption rates, technology delivery, and new services / integrations / utility added to the network." Implement joint masternode shares rather than a new proof of stake system • "We evaluate[d] various forms of Proof-of-Stake. I challenged the team on whether ChainLocks or some derivation of them could make a PoS system adequately secure. My instinct is that the answer is "yes" but would constitute a monumental task that I think would take a very long time for the team to execute. Just look at how long it is taking Ethereum, and the risks that they nearly introduced. Given the resources and risks of a PoS implementation, I don't think we need to go that route. The more pragmatic approach is to rely on the basic proven technology that we already have, and simply tweek the economics of the system. We also evaluated hybrid consensus models, deterministic holder lists, shared masternodes, and various assumptions about transaction activity, fees, etc. as a means of "sensitivity testing" various potential economic scenarios. It is difficult to predict the future, but we've run many scenarios to test what is reasonable and what is unlikely to occur." • "I would personally advocate for masternode shares, which are also easier to implement [than adding proof of stake shares]. From discussions with the team, this would take time, but not compared to say ChainLocks." Increase masternode and treasury share of block reward, reduce mining share • "My own vision for this is simple and simple to implement. Allow up to 20% of the block subsidy to go toward proposals [and] allow unused budget to flow through to the miner / masternode allocations, it ensures that masternodes would not simply approve frivolous projects because the funding would otherwise be "wasted"... they have skin in the game and would support only projects that should deliver value over the long-term." • "Excluding the proposal funding allocation, the current split is 50/50 miners / masternodes of the block subsidy and transaction fees. I believe that the allocation could very safely move, over a long period of time, to as high as 15/85. However, I don't think a change of that magnitude is needed to capture the majority of the benefit. A reallocation to 25/75 seems more prudent for a few reasons....The reallocation itself would take place over time. A rate of about 1% per quarter....I think we should make the system dynamic in SOME WAY. As discussed in my presentation last month, the rigidity of the current allocation leads to behavioral issues." • "With a reallocation, it gives us plenty of room to alter the proposal system. I think we could make it more flexible by allowing MNs to approve any amount up to say 20%, but unlike today the remaining amount would be allocated to the masternodes and miners. As an example, if the non-proposal funding were 25% miners and 75% masternodes and the budget approved 8% for the month, the non-proposal funding (92%) would get split 25/75. In other words, the split would vary each month, so a month like this would be 23% miner / 69% masternode / 8% proposals. In another month, it could be 20% / 60% / 20%. In this way, masternodes must truly think a proposal will generate value, because they need to be willing to adjust their own allocation to make it happen. It also means they wouldn't feel the need to "use the entire budget" even on low-value activities. It allows the network to invest when it needs to and reap the benefits if the budget / price grows larger than required to address the network's needs." • "One of the pros of "rolling over" the budget is that it provides some flexibility to use unallocated funds. However, at times of abundance there is still the hazard that the result is an even larger surplus of unused funds the following month. In other words, it would simply delay the behavior described in which masternodes feel compelled to overallocate to "use up" the budget. I think we'd see healthier results from allocating unused funds to the MN / miner allocations to create a healthy "trade off" dynamic for approving the use of funds. It would help ensure proposals would need to demonstrate value regardless of the price of Dash or the value of the budget." • "I think [the 10% treasury cap] should be lifted. I also think we should start small by only increasing the max to 20% (which was actually Evan's initial intended allocation before MNs questioned whether the proposal system would be effective... 10% was the compromise). There are some concerns that whatever the maximum is, the MNOs would blindly use, so to alleviate those concerns, I think 20% provides plenty of flexibility and help address the concerns. To expand a bit... I would be concerned about increasing the emission rate. If we lift the cap, it should come from MN and miner rewards. Predictable scarcity is one of the defining features of any cryptocurrency. Even those with inflation forever (e.g., 1% into perpetuity) has a defined limit within a person's lifetime. Unbounding the proposal system would risk abuse or loss of confidence over our future supply." Keep X11 mining for now, ensure Dash dominates X11 hashing by 10x • "In my opinion - and this is just an opinion - we should aim to have X11 hashrate an order of magnitude (10x) or more than the rest of the X11 market combined. ChainLocks and InstantSend are the reason that we are treated by exchanges as "most secure", but perception issues if we had "too low" of a hashrate would likely crop up long before real risks were actually present. So IMO, there is a phycological level we need to maintain more than a mathematical one." Block subsidy belongs to the network, to be used for all needs, not just mining • "I view the block subsidy and transaction fees are revenue that belongs to the network. It just so happens that Bitcoin and others allocate that toward mining in the protocol. Dash's allocation is much smarter, because it incentivizes all needs and the NETWORK is the one that decides how its revenue should be allocated. The NETWORK will decide if my proposal should be adopted. That's not a tax. That's the network making rational decisions about what activities it wants to incentivize and pay for. The block subsidy does not - by default - belong to the miners. It belongs to the network first and foremost." Commentary on masternode ROI, plans to conduct and release supporting analyses • "One of the amazing things about the structure of the masternode rewards is that it changes based on demand. If operators shut down masternodes to lend instead, the returns for the remaining masternodes increase. There will always be a market because the ROI will always adjust to the rate demanded by the market. In fact, if you look at after-inflation ROI of operating a masternode, the ROI now is as high as it has ever been. In 2014, returns were above 20%, but inflation was 27% or so. Today, returns are 6-7%, but inflation of the supply is down to 7-8% currently." • "There are several analyses that we've conducted. I plan to share those with the community as part of a formal presentation in the coming weeks. Those analyses primarily establish the hypothesis from my presentation, and those include: • Statistical correlation between masternode ROI and masternode investments (both before and after the effects of inflation) • Establishing causation between masternode ROI and masternode investment (because correlation is not causation) • Establishing that net investment in masternodes effects "circulating supply" • Establishing that "circulating" supply inflation statistically contributes to price • Predictions and rationale for future ROI changes demanded by the MN network • Models of the effects of proposed solutions" • "Some of the interesting findings so far (some of which surprised me): • While the market tends to value "headline" ROI the most - that is to say the stated ROI before the effects of dilution from inflation - they are not nearly as irrational as I initially assumed. The masternode market increasingly is considering the post-inflation returns, which have have improved over time. In short, the masternode market is becoming more rational and taking into account the effects of inflation to a lesser degree than the "headline" ROI. This is healthy and means the issue is less severe than I initially thought. It also means that we don't need to take as drastic of steps to address the issue, which is also good news. • Masternode ROI is a leading indicator of masternode investment (no surprise there). In other words, if we allocate more rewards toward masternodes, that strongly encourages masternode creation. • Changes in "circulating supply" caused by masternode creation does impact the price. • Models suggest modest and slow reallocations are far better than making a dramatic change. Therefore, any changes are best conducted over a long multi-year period to avoid shocking the system." Timing: discuss now, detailed proposals starting as early as next month • "It is through dialogue with the core developers, researchers (including other researchers at ASU), and economists that my own views have been shaped on what the right answer looks like, and establishing constraints on the potential solutions. I plan to ramp up community engagement to share more about key findings so far to make sure we collectively understand the dynamics of the system changes we'll be voting on as a community. This is critically important to reaching the right answer." • "I believe it is feasible that we would begin discussing detailed proposals [for block reward reallocation] within the next month. In terms of voting, we may need several rounds of voting to narrow any specific aspects of a solution with multiple potential options in a kind of a "bake off" toward a final proposal... similar to the process we followed last year when we had multiple PR firms competing." submitted by ISkiAtAlta to dashpay [link] [comments] ##### WARNING: Bitcoin Cash May Introduce Fatal Errors Hi All, I am long-term Bitcoin enthusiast and a core developer of PascalCoin, an infinitely scalable and completely original cryptocurrency (https://www.pascalcoin.org). I am also the developer of BlockchainSQL.io, an SQL-backend for Bitcoin. I have been involved in Bitcoin community for a long time, and was a big supporter of hard-forking on Aug 1 2017 (https://redd.it/6i5qt1). Due to the recent alarming proposals and the method which they are being pushed, I feel I have a moral duty to speak out to warn against what could be fatal technical errors for BCH. As a full-time core developer at PascalCoin for last 18 months, I have dealt with DoS attacks, 51% attacks, timewarp attacks, mining centralisation attacks, out-of-consensus bugs, high-orphan rates and various other issues. Suffice to say, Layer-1 cryptocurrency development is hard and you don't really appreciate how fragile everything this until you work on a cryptocurrency codebase and manage a live mainnet (disclaimer: Albert Molina is main genius here, but it is a team effort). Infinite Block Size: I know there has been much discussion here about the safety of "big blocks", and I generally agree with those arguments. However, the analysis I've seen always assumes the attackers are economically rational actors. On that basis, yes, the laws of economics will incentivise miners to naturally regulate the size of minted blocks. However, this does not include "economically irrational actors" such as competing coins, governments, banks, etc. Allowing the natural limit of 32mb I think was a sensible move, but adding changes to the network protocol to allow 128mb blocks and then more, does not seem appropriate right now since: • Blocks are nowhere near the limit right now in BCH. There is plenty of time for security/technical/reliability analysis going forward. The BCH social contract has been established as "onchain" so the risk of a "Blockstream 1mb attack" arising again is far less than that of a serious network instability issue arising from some unknown attack exploiting 100mb blocks. It makes much more sense to leave the blocksize at 32mb until blocks reach ~16mb at which point the technical, security and reliability issues can be better understood and a more informed decision can be made by the BCH community. Re-Enabling Opcodes: It's important to remember that these opcodes were disabled by Satoshi Nakamoto himself early on in the project due to ongoing bugs and instability arising out of the scripting engine (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures). Later as the scripts became standardized, this issue was forgotten/abandoned since it would require a hard-fork to reactivate them and Core developers were against HF's. Personally, I think it's a good idea to re-enable them, but only after: • Transaction Malleability is fixed: transactions can be malleated through many areas, including the scripts. What are the consequences of malleability on smart-contract scripts that pay out money based on complex rules? If an attacker can flip a few opcodes, suddenly someone that shouldn't be paid may get paid? I'm not aware of any such attack right now, but in my professional opinion, I believe such an attack would be possible and would not be convinced otherwise until a thorough security analysis was performed. • Testnet release: given the new large attack surface this introduces (remember, Satoshi disabled them himself for a reason), it makes sense to do a testnet deployment of this feature for at least 3-6 months. This is common practice in cryptocurrency development. Infinite Script Size: One of the proposals I've seen that compliments re-enabling opcodes is to enable unbounded script sizes. From local discussions I've had with people promoting this idea, the "belief" is that miners will auto-regulate these as well. However, this is unproven. Unbounded script-size introduce signficant attack-vectors in the areas of denial of service and stack/memory overflow (especially with all opcodes). One attack I can foresee here is the introduction of quadratic-hashing attack but inside a single transaction! You have to understand that Ethereum had this problem from the onset and this is why they introduced the concept of "GAS". CPU power is a limited resource and if you don't pay for it, it will be completely abused. From what I've seen, there is no equivalent to GAS inside this proposal. To understand the seriousness of this issue, think back to Ethereum's network instability before the DAO hacker. It went through many periods of DoS attacks as hackers cleverly found oversights in their opcode/EVM engine. This is a serious, proven and real-world attack-vector and not one to be "solved later". The BCH network could be brought to a grinding halt and easily with unbounded script sizes that do not pay any gas. Voting/Signaling/Testnet: Even at PascalCoin, we go through a process of voting to enable all changes (https://www.pascalcoin.org/voting). We are barely a 10mill mcap coin and yet show more discipline with Voting, well-defined PIP design guidelines and Testnet releases. There is no excuse for BCH! It is a multi-billion dollar network and changes of this magnitude cannot be released so recklessly in such short time-frames. I hope these comments are considered by stakeholders of BCH and the community at large. I am not a maximalist and support BCH, but the last week has revealed there is a serious technical void in BCH! The Bitcoin Core devs may not know much about economics, but they did know some things about security & reliability of cryptocurrency software. PLEASE REMEMBER THERE ARE EXTREMELY TALENTED AND VICIOUS ATTACKERS OUT THERE and you need to be very careful with changes of this magnitude. submitted by HermanSchoenfeld to btc [link] [comments] ##### Use of Blockchain Technologies in the Field of Labor https://preview.redd.it/vvyaycga09g41.jpg?width=1275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e26e7f5f125e3a7e068a1a29e05989eb1c33822e The issues of using blockchain technologies, conducting ICOs and the use of cryptocurrencies are relevant not only for the field of law, but also for political, economic, other sciences, and are also of interest to ordinary citizens. Labor law does not remain aloof from the development of technology, as well as globalization processes, which necessitates the conduct of relevant scientific research. For a short time, judicial practice is changing, the approaches of state bodies in matters of cryptocurrency transactions, their theft, seizure, etc. At the same time, electronic technologies are acquiring special significance in the field of labor law. Workflow experiments, discussions about the need to introduce workbooks, electronic sick-lists, and the work of remote workers — information technologies have already found application in all these areas. In addition, at the present time, given the globalization processes, there is a need to increase pay opportunities. It is no accident that in some countries the possibilities of a monetary form of remuneration have expanded by assuming, under certain conditions, remuneration in the currency of other states. Based on this provision, the question arises about the practical feasibility of using cryptocurrency workers as wages, as well as the use of blockchain technologies in the world of work. Blockchain is a technology of distributed databases (registries) based on a constantly renewed chain of records. The name Cryptocurrency, meaning “cryptocurrency”, appeared in Forbes magazine in 2011. However, cryptocurrencies themselves would not have been so widespread without a blockchain system that provides all the necessary elements for circulation. Cryptocurrency is a special kind of electronic means of payment. Strictly speaking, this is a mathematical code. It is called so because of the use of cryptographic elements in the circulation of this digital money, namely, an electronic signature. https://preview.redd.it/7s4qq1s949g41.jpg?width=877&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2bdb9dbb0a4bde88e302047c55b7207e1f66d347 ## The popularity of cryptocurrencies is due to a number of factors that directly affect labor law. Such electronic money is universal regardless of the place of work, the legal form of the employer or the citizenship of the employee. Cryptocurrencies are not tied to a particular state or bank. This decentralization is one of their main advantages, which encourages many countries to start using cryptographic currencies for international payments and as reserve currencies. Bitcoin operations are increasingly being conducted on global financial markets. In the future, this factor allows creating a single world labor market, where remuneration for labor will be paid in a single form and currency, without linking this money to specific countries and existing systems. This will significantly simplify emerging issues and difficulties in relations associated with employees located abroad. This eliminates the need for multiple transfers of funds and the exchange of one currency for another. From this point of view, I would like to draw attention to the main problems associated with the use of cryptocurrencies in remuneration. One of the most acute problems is associated with tax legislation. Incomes of employees are taxed, while the employer, as a tax agent, performs this function for the employee. A distinctive feature of all operations with cryptocurrencies is their anonymity and lack of control. All operations occur instantly since they are not controlled by anyone and are not delayed for checks. Accordingly, the tax authorities do not know the number of funds received by the employee for the performance of his labor function, cannot personify the taxpayer and his tax burden. Similarly, the employer and employee are able to evade the payment of taxes, which is a violation of the law. It is also important for the legislator to determine which form of labor remuneration should include cryptocurrencies. When assigned to cash, there are fewer problems with the payment and regulation of these funds, since in accordance with the above article, payments, in this case, can be made in full and the employer is not threatened with sanctions for violation of labor legislation. If you equate cryptocurrency payments to a non-monetary form of payment, then the employer has the right to pay in this way no more than 20% of the employee’s total salary per month. However, there is currently a variety of cryptocurrencies, some of which are notable for the instability and difficulty of selling by ordinary users. A wide range of cryptocurrencies at the same time can be both a plus and a minus in the issue of their use as a form of salary. The employer and employee can choose the most convenient currency for them to transfer funds. But such a variety can and can significantly interfere with the development of the institution of cryptocurrency payroll. ## It should be noted that in many countries, judicial practice recognizes cryptocurrencies as property. The largest online resources specializing in the purchase and sale of electronic means of payment, there are about 1,500 types of various cryptocurrencies. And this number will only increase over time, as large companies of completely different industries, often not even related to technology and innovation, create their own cryptocurrencies. Also, the difficulty in paying wages will be the instability of the cryptocurrency rate. Since one of the constituent parts of wages is salary, which means a fixed wage for an employee for performing labor (official) duties of a certain complexity for a calendar month without taking into account compensation, incentive, and social benefits. Accordingly, this component of wages cannot be changed according to the norms of labor legislation. And the cryptocurrency exchange rate for a given period of time is notable for its instability. In this case, it is necessary to specify in the employment contract with the employee the method of calculating his salary. The first way is to fix the number of wages in a specific number of cryptocurrency units, regardless of their value. This method is unlikely and quite complicated for both employers and workers themselves, and for control and tax authorities. A simpler way is to pay a salary in cryptocurrency with reference to a specific amount. It is important to take into account the fact that, regardless of the concept chosen by the employer, the employee can suffer the most, since jumps in the cryptocurrency rate are possible in both cases, and it is the employee’s turnover, sale or personal use of electronic funds that will fall. The position in which the employee will be paid in electronic currency only part of the salary, and the remaining funds will be in the format of the usual money for everyone, will not be completely clear. Therefore, a potential user of cryptocurrency funds and a potential participant in their turnover can, unexpectedly for themselves and all those around them, suffer enormous losses and get rich quite unexpectedly. The issue of using electronic money is of interest to employers in many countries. The development of regulations governing the circulation of cryptocurrency funds between an employer and an employee has begun almost around the world since the rise in the value of popular currencies. Since April 1, 2017, the concept of “virtual currencies” has been introduced into the legislation of Japan, and cryptocurrencies have become a fully legalized means of payment. This event could not but affect the employment relationship. So, at the end of 2018, GMO Corporation planned to transfer about 5 thousand of its employees to the cryptocurrency form of payment. (Bitcoin.com “Japanese Internet Giant GMO Offers to Pay 4 700+ Employees in Bitcoin”). https://preview.redd.it/6a3rakkd49g41.jpg?width=1229&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=145524c16558a822495912e7cf6756d51ffd7dcd The United States of America, as the state with the largest number of cryptocurrency users, is also actively developing relevant legislation. US authorities have created a favorable atmosphere for the use of cryptocurrencies. This is also confirmed by studies in the field of labor relations and the labor market. According to a recent release from Bitwage, it was revealed that 10.5% of the companies surveyed currently pay employees, at least in part, in bitcoins. Across the country, about 20 thousand employees are registered in this program, who, accordingly, receive wages in cryptocurrency funds (Legal Ramifications of Paying Employees with Cryptocurrency). https://preview.redd.it/c077826i49g41.jpg?width=986&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c5cbd2ede96c15b056afab7ac9ec859eff2801f In order to ensure that the employee and the employer do not hide from taxation when paying wages with cryptocurrencies, some states create entire committees within financial ministries whose main function is to control cash flows and record the tax base of a particular subject of labor relations. One of these countries is Singapore, which in recent years has become the economic center of the world since most projects designed for worldwide use are tested here. Already in 2014, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the beginning of the process of legislative regulation of all operations with cryptocurrencies, including those related to labor relations. This body will regulate the process of payment of wages to the employee in this format all stages of the currency movement: from entering the employer company to paying the employee for his own purchases and services, thereby ensuring the security of cryptocurrency transactions and in every possible way helping employees quickly and safely enter the new payment system (Putting Singapore’s Dollar On Blockchain May Prove It’s The Most Crypto-Friendly Place On Earth). https://preview.redd.it/8vzcundl49g41.jpg?width=801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d12e2410fe85254e9aa26e848f2a3e919fdceaf2 ## In order for cryptocurrencies to become one of the forms of remuneration, it is necessary first of all to solve the main problems that impede the full use of electronic means in labor relations. The paramount task is the normative consolidation of all aspects related to the circulation of such financial resources. The assignment of electronic means of payment to cash will greatly simplify the mechanism for regulating these relations, as this will avoid introducing a large number of changes to existing legislation. It is logical to solve the problem of taxation after legislative determination and consolidation, using Singaporean experience, creating a specially authorized committee in the Federal Tax Services. This will significantly save energy and money while deciding the whole layer in the use of cryptocurrency funds. The existing mechanisms for accounting for taxable items and calculating the amount of legally established taxes and fees will not differ much from the existing ones. Therefore, from this side, the introduction of cryptocurrencies will not greatly complicate or change the current system. The problem of a large number of different cryptocurrencies and their changing value can be solved in several ways. This may be the choice of one cryptocurrency, not necessarily Bitcoin, from among the existing ones. This decision will not create potential difficulties since a well-chosen currency by specialists at the time of consolidation will already be functioning for a long time, showing the real rate without sharp jumps, which will protect workers from depreciation situations and the inability to use their funds. As for other blockchain technologies, it seems that the principles of smart contracts can be applied to the work of remote workers. There is currently no established definition of smart contracts. In the most general form, you can define a smart contract as a contract with the automatic fulfillment of certain conditions. This automatic system will simplify the control of the employer over the employee. In the case of a remote employee, it is the control by the employer that will be, on the one hand, a motivating factor in compliance with labor discipline, and on the other hand, a way to minimize the risks of the employer when bringing the remote employee to disciplinary liability. The remoteness of the employee from the employer should not become an insurmountable obstacle to the implementation of the above control. Smart contracts will facilitate the interaction of the employee and the employer, simplify the control mechanism. Thus, competent legislative consolidation and integration of blockchain technologies into the existing financial system are not an insoluble issue. If you take this seriously, the problem can be solved in a fairly short time, since examples of successful incorporation of electronic currencies into the economic scheme in some countries are very common. ## Therefore, the question of the cryptocurrency form of remuneration is becoming very real and having good prospects in the near future, as well as the use of other blockchain technologies in the world of work. Material developed by IMBA-Exchange submitted by IMBA-Exchange to u/IMBA-Exchange [link] [comments] ##### We shouldn’t be ok with what Coinbase just did Coinbase just added Bitcoin Cash to their service without any announcement. There is clear evidence of insider trading which should be outrageous enough on its own but I feel like people are missing the other part of this. Coinbase, the largest exchange in the US, geared towards inexperienced crypto investors, just added a new coin to their service without warning. We knew it was coming but it’s unacceptable that the date and time was not announced well in advance. This is market manipulation and this should worry a lot of people. BTC crashes and BCH gets pumped to the point where Coinbase feels the need to halt trading. What did they think was going to happen? I’d like to chalk it up to incompetence but all the evidence points to incredibly shady behavior. We should expect and demand better than this as a community and I hope the SEC or any other relevant regulatory body investigates Coinbase thoroughly. EDIT: It’s shocking and disappointing to see people justifying insider trading and market manipulation. Saying they’re going to release Bitcoin Cash “before January 1st” is not even close to the same thing as specifying a date and time in advance to the release. You don’t have to take my word on how this created mass instability in the market. Just look at the last four hours. EDIT 2: The point is Coinbase should have been transparent and they weren’t. If they had been specific with the timing, you wouldn’t hear people complaining. EDIT 3: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42425857 BBC article citing exactly what I said about insider trading. I’ve received so many responses saying that we “knew it was coming and you’re just salty you missed the boat” and “you’re clearly just a BTC shill.” The assumptions about my motivations for this are borderline insane. This has nothing to do with me being salty about not buying BCH as everyone has (unnecessarily) repeatedly said that I could have bought a long time ago. It’s almost as if this has nothing to do with me making money and everything to do with transparency and fairness. Announcing a specific time matters. It reduces uncertainty and gives the people participating in the market the best opportunity to make decisions. In what world is transparency a bad thing? EDIT 4: And now a Yahoo finance article https://finance.yahoo.com/news/leading-crypto-brokerage-coinbase-fire-possible-insider-trading-bitcoin-cash-162147599.html EDIT 5: So people are saying that they did announce the release (they didn’t no matter how much you’ve deluded yourselves into thinking that they did) and also that if they had announced it, it would have spiked anyway. So which is it? Cause it can’t be both. BCH would have certainly spiked both at the time of announcement and at the time of implementation but because uncertainty is reduced and the road map is clearly defined, the market has a better way of dealing with it and anticipating it. Announcing the day and time trading begins does not shock the system in the same way that allowing trading without warning does. Also are we just ignoring that they allowed trading with no liquidity causing the price to skyrocket and people to lose money in buys and arbitrage attempts? Why are some of you bending over backwards to defend at worst, fraud and at best incompetence? submitted by MyFabulousUsername to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments] ##### The 'hard' asset in the world, oddly enough, the virtual  Over the past few months, we are faced with the growing financial, commercial and political instability that has led to a growing concern about the onset of a major global economic downturn. Trade dispute between the US and China, Brexit and other European political turmoil, another sovereign default and the introduction of government control over the movement of capital in Argentina, as well as problems associated with the role of Central banks and their independence — all this excited the markets.  While you are trying to understand all these events, and myriad explanations and opinions on what various indicators, such as the inverted yield curve and negative interest rates on the mortgage loans may mean for the future of the economy, you will hear recommendations for the transfer of your investment portfolio in 'hard assets'.  And, not without reason, because hard assets such as gold, show good results in a period of economic and financial instability (figure 1).  Figure 1: the Price of gold often grow during economic downturns*  https://preview.redd.it/lx9dvczwp0v31.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e7ff415a97819074499a9576ec73d9cd6752097 But what is a solid asset? And why is Bitcoin (BTC), despite the fact that it is completely virtual, and transactions with it are made through the Internet, is perhaps the most \"solid\" asset in the world?  \"Solid\" (material) and \"soft\" (intangible) assets Solid assets have traditionally been defined as tangible property or physical goods such as gold, which are valued for their reliably limited supply. They contrast with \"soft assets\" such as fiat currencies, stocks and bonds, whose offer can be quickly increased with just a click on a computer keyboard. Soft \"financial\" assets may also be subject to restructuring or default, dividend and profit reductions or other changes (sometimes arbitrary) that undermine long-term value.  Throughout history, experienced investors have relied on solid assets to manage risk and protect long-term value in the face of instability and economic downturns, when the supply of many soft assets has traditionally increased and thus puts downward pressure on their cost.  What makes Bitcoin more scarce than real estate or gold? Solid assets are back in vogue as central banks in countries such as China, Russia, India and Turkey buy large amounts of gold. It is estimated that in the first quarter of this year alone, central banks purchased 145.5 metric tons of gold, which is 68% more than in the same period in 2018.  We have also seen legendary investors such as Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, recently encouraged people to invest in gold (increase investment in gold). Not surprisingly, the price of gold has risen by 16% in the last five months.  We have centuries of data on the value of gold and its traditional role as a repository of values and a safe haven. Its physical nature and countless proven uses of gold, in addition to being a means of preserving value (e.g. jewelry, industrial products), make it, in our opinion, complementary to Bitcoin, and not competing with him.  In other words, we do not view bullish sentiments about gold and Bitcoin as mutually exclusive.  We do not consider bullish sentiments regarding gold and Bitcoin mutually exclusive.  However, it is important to emphasize the key difference between Bitcoin and gold, which is that the dynamics of the gold supply is not fixed.  If, for example, earlier gold production was unprofitable, then as the price of gold increases, the supply of gold to the market may increase. As a result, the increase in the supply of gold in the market can become a deterrent to the further growth of its price.  Traditional solid assets vulnerable to deflationary supply shocks The same dynamics of the gold supply (the higher price of the increase in the supply of the lower impact on prices) affects both silver and any  https://preview.redd.it/godq6qg7q0v31.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc6260eb88979e352f25cb0a1a6e511e303ca729 Then, around May 2024, or about four years after the previous halving, the next one will occur. Again, the mining reward will be halved, this time to 3,125 new bitcoins mined every 10 minutes. And then again, around May 2028, to 1.5625 new bitcoins.  And so on, and so on...  Until about 2140, when the hard limit of 21 million will be reached. bitcoins and further mining of new bitcoins will become impossible.  The next \"halving\" when the supply of new bitcoins decreases every 4 years is due around May 2020.  While bitcoin mining will continue for about the next 100-plus years, more than 98% of all possible bitcoins will be mined over the next decade, by 2030. In other words, over time, new bitcoins will become smaller and smaller until the final limit of 21 million is eventually reached. coins, laid software in the protocol Bitcoin, and on this creation of the new bitcoins will completely stop.  More than just digital gold For more than a decade, as an algorithmically defined bitcoin proposal has created the kind of predictability and clarity much desired and needed by investors to maintain value for a long period of time. Combine this dynamic with the portability, security and usefulness of Bitcoin as a payment mechanism, and you have an irresistible and attractive value proposition for investors seeking to manage a variety of macroeconomic, political and other forms of risk. Indeed, over the past decade, Bitcoin has already attracted tens of millions of owners and users, and its growth rate surpasses those of the Internet and personal computers combined (slide on page 94).  Although this post focused on the function of Bitcoin as a scarce and solid asset, it is worth noting its growing role as a broad technology platform for digital identification and other non-non-neonitarian uses. As we discuss in our recently published investment thesis, the notion that Bitcoin is only \"digital gold\" underestimates its full potential and the overall target market. submitted by top001token to u/top001token [link] [comments] ##### Best Cryptos to Invest in the Year 2019 Looking back in recent history, it seems as though big investors and financial organizations are changing their attitudes towards Bitcoin and altcoins. The media coverage worldwide illuminated the vast returns being had in the cryptocurrency markets, with many coins up over 100x since their conception. This certainly has garnered the attention from both legacy and newcomer investors. Currently, everyone is waiting to see if cryptocurrencies can continue on their path to new all time highs. 2017 turned out to be a whirlwind year, with most cryptocurrencies soaring to new all time highs at the end of 2017 and early 2018. The media coverage of cryptocurrencies was nonstop, with news reports on financial programs almost daily. In addition, many movies and tv shows mentioned cryptocurrency, including the technology oriented show “Silicon Valley.” So far, 2018 has seen a vast pullback in the cryptocurrency markets. Many of the smaller altcoins are down over 90% with Bitcoin, the crypto leader, still being down over 60% from all time highs. Even with the overall market pullback, many investors are still very bullish on cryptocurrencies going into 2019. Many big name institutions are jumping head first into crypto, with NYSE announcing a new crypto exchange, BAAKT. Also Fidelity has announced a crypto support platform for their customers. Even legendary Ivy league university Yale has announced a new 400 million dollar investment fund geared towards cryptocurrency. With so much bullish news adding up rapidly, almost everyone seems to expect a very profitable year for crypto leading into 2019. While Bitcoin is still currently the market leader there are also some big name altcoins that expect 2019 to be a huge year for them. The Altcoin Hierarchy Before investing in the crypto market, let us go through the basic classes of cryptocurrencies that exist in the market. While every class has the potential to have impressive returns, some coins have more impressive use cases and concepts, In addition to more qualified and funded development teams. Simply put, not all altcoins were created the same. The Penny Stocks of Crypto These are the bottom tier altcoins that could possibly become worthless in the near future. They operate much like penny stocks, advertising big promises of ‘guaranteed gains’. Eventually, many fail to offer a fraction of their promised returns. One of the ways to identify these is to look at their team members, their past experiences, objectives of the project, probability of mass adoption, actual use of the coins and many more. The reasons for their failure is usually because of unwillingness to work for the vision they once promised in the first place, bad wealth management, inclusion of scammers in their team, unrealistic expectation from the project and also making money via pump and dump schemes. Some of these coins are Trumpcoin, Russia Coin and Verge. Average Coins According to the ‘coinmarketcap’ website, there are currently more than 2000 cryptocurrencies listed on their website. Among those, there are around 500 of them that can be considered in this ‘average’ category. These are the coins that do have a purpose/objective to work on but fail to maintain a good development team. They and their coins don’t really have any kind of purpose in the crypto market and fail to finalize any kind of legitimate deals and partnerships with good investors. This makes their performance very limited as compared to other altcoins in the market. Some of these coins are Deep Brain Chain, Funfair, Decred, Navcoin, Populous, Cryptonex. Good Coins There are around 500 of such good coins in the market that do offer a good objective for the project, a solid team with good experience to execute such tasks, a good marketing strategy to reach out to masses to share their ideas and quality contacts to make some good partnerships in the market. The only reason why they are only classified as ‘good coins’ is due to the lack of uniqueness that the other ‘very good coins’ offer. They don’t really have that ‘point of parity’ in their project/product that separates them from their counterparts. Some of these coins are NEM, Stratis, Monero, and BAT. Very Good Coins There are around 100 such ‘very good coins’ in the market. Their objectives are well defined with a solid team to execute their tasks perfectly. Along with that, their marketing teams are also well-qualified to make their ideas reach to the masses. Because of such a wonderful blend, they are able to make better and strong partnerships with a number of good companies. What separates them from the ‘Good Coins’ category is their USPs (Unique Selling Points). They are unique in what they do and that’s what makes the difference. Such coins are NEO, Stellar, Cardano, Ripple Top Tier Cryptocurrencies These are the top tier coins that provide the best functionalities. They have real-world usage, objectives to solve a real-world problem, strong fundamental teams to execute the mission of the project, marketing teams to spread the ‘idea’ and collaboration with a number of media channels to gain early investors. Also, due to a good PR team, they are able to make a very strong partnership with a lot of Fortune 500 companies that give them an extra edge over rest of the projects in the market. Some of these coins are VeChain, Ethereum, Bitcoin, IOTA, Icon, EOS, Kinesis. Promising Projects Going Into the New Year With more than 2000 cryptocurrencies out there in the crypto market, only a couple 100 of them qualify to be a top tier investment. It can be quite the challenge to find a worthy project among the thousands of choices. These next projects are some that show a lot of promise heading into 2019. Always remember the 3’S’ of the investment – Sane, Smart and Sensible. An investor who is sane, smart and sensible will always look into the facts before he invests in any business or project. Kinesis This is one of the most promising upcoming projects in crypto. The broad overview of the coin is to offer an alternate and better evolutionary step beyond the basic monetary and banking system available today. In short, it is a cryptocurrency that is backed by precious metals like gold and silver. According to the CEO of the company, Thomas Coughlin, the Kinesis coin is basically divisible units of allocated gold and silver which you can use as a currency. There will be two stable Kinesis coins in the market backed by Gold and Silver. The stable Kinesis coins backed by Gold will be tagged as KAU and the stable Kinesis coins backed by Silver will be tagged as KAG. These stablecoins backed by the precious metals like Gold and Silver are real game changers as these 2 precious metals are definable stores of value for use in trade and investment in the real-world economies. The Kinesis coin is based on the Bespoke Blockchain Technology, a blockchain network forked off from the Stellar Blockchain Technology in order to suit the requirements of the Kinesis coin. The cryptocurrency project is headed by Thomas Coughlin who is also the CEO of the Kinesis company. He has 15 years experience in the investment, funds management and capital markets. Before being the CEO of the Kinesis company, he held similar positions for the Bullion Capital and TRAC Financial Group as well. Apart from Thomas Coughlin, there are other great members in the team as well. Their team consists of people like: Michael Coughlin, Chief Financial Officer, having 41 years experience as a CPA in the accountancy and financial services professions. Eric Maine, Chief Strategy Officer, having more than 30 years experience in Senior Management in the exchange and financial markets. Ryan Case, Head of Sales & Trading in Kinesis, having extensive experience as Head of sales trading & partnership and also valuable experience in commodity, cryptocurrency, forex and derivative markets. Jai Bifulco, Chief Marketing Officer, having a full-fledged 12 years of experience in award-winning full-stack marketer in Finance. He previously held roles of directors in multiple brokerages, consulting and Fintech sectors. There are more than 30 different team members in this project spanning their roles from The Executive Committee to the Advisory Board to the Operations and Development team. The coins are very limited in number as compared to other cryptocurrencies where the softcap is limited to just 15,000 KVT coins and HardCap is limited to 300,000 KVT coins. Minimum token that one can buy is set to 1 KVT which is equal to$1000.
So far, more than 57,000 KVT tokens have been sold which roughly equals to a whopping sum of $57 Million. With such a huge investment already deployed for the development of the project, there are still 30 more days left for the ICO sale period to end. Also, apart from the investments gained, the Kinesis cryptocurrency is also focusing much on the partnerships with the top companies in the industry. These include companies like ABX (Allocated Bullion Exchange), MLG (Blockchain Consulting), Sigma Prime, Etherlabs and Fine Metal Asia Limited. This cryptocurrency is certainly the one to watch out for in 2019. VeChain Broad Overview – In simple layman terminology, Vechain is a supply chain protocol to track logistics inventory. It has successfully implemented blockchain technology in various sectors like agriculture and industries like luxury goods and liquor. They basically strive to solve real-life problems by providing solutions in various industries like: Logistics: In this sector, VeChain implements the blockchain technology to improve the flow of information from one department to another by breaking silos yet maintaining the data privacy of every department. Government: There are more than 111 VeChain nodes deployed worldwide. The municipal governments participate in the VeChain blockchain network as nodes. The VeChain blockchain network offers decentralization and immunity against the data hacking that allows room for transparent information exchange. This indeed improves the efficiency of the municipal governments. The technologies used to track the logistics are: Assigning digital identities to physical stocks that can be stored on the VeChain blockchain network Usage of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) NFC (Near Field Communication) Proof Of Authority Consensus In-House Temperature Controlled Tracking Quick Response Codes (QR Codes) The future potential of the VeChain cryptocurrency looks quite promising as the coin is signing new partnerships every month or so. Some of its partners are PricewaterhouseCoopers, DNV GL, Renault Group, KUEHNE + NAGEL, D.I.G, China Unicom and the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration of China. Every single company with whom VeChain partnered has millions of customers that will use the VeChain technology embedded in their system. This makes the coin solve real-life problems and have mass adoption. VeChain indeed makes a big difference in the logistics business. However, given the kind of turmoil that the entire cryptomarket is facing where the total market capitalization has fallen from$800 Billion to just around $200 Billion, no one can give any kind of assurance on the returns in your investment in the crypto assets. However, stablecoins like Kinesis has a reward yield system that incentivizes its investors for holding, depositing and also referring new users. Hence, the investors always stay on the benefit side even if the market collapses for a short duration. IOTA In simple terms, IOTA is a cryptocurrency which is designed for the Internet of Things. The cryptocurrency was developed to root a new direction to IoT by establishing a standardization called, ‘Ledger of Everything’ which means that the data exchange between sensor-equipped machines would be enabled to populate IoT. IOTA has the potential to make transactions easy. A basic use case of IOTA can be seen in IOTA enabled vending machines. These machines can dispense the items without involving the associated transaction costs. Some other use cases of IOTA are Reddit Chains etc. Technology Behind IOTA Surprisingly, IOTA does not use the traditional Blockchain technology for its design and development. In fact, a new platform called ‘Tangle Technology’ is being used for IOTA to operate on. The Tangle Technology deploys a mathematical concept called Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) which resolves both the scalability and transaction fees issues which we face in blockchain based cryptocurrencies. In IOTA, for a transaction to be valid, each node present in DAG Tangle must approve the previous two transactions occurring at the other node. And adding to a note, this process removes the chances of mining and makes the system fully decentralized. Future Potential Keeping in mind the remarkable result of IOTA, there exists a promising scope for it in the near future in various applications and platforms. IOTA would be standing tall and different in the future world full of cryptocurrencies vulnerable to quantum computers. IOTA has a lot of companies that it is working with. Some of them include Bosch, Volkswagen,Fujitsu, Accenture, Poyry and many more. When viewed from a macro perspective, so far IOTA looks to be fee-less, scalable and fast which makes it next to perfect. However, if you own IOTA, the chances of you liquidating it into fiat currency via a ‘debit card’ and buying something from a grocery store is quite low. In order to fill this gap of actually buying something from the street market and becoming the global currency, Kinesis has introduced its Kinesis Debit Cards that enables the Kinesis token holders to exchange their tokens against FIAT currency and simultaneously buy products from a grocery shop, something which IOTA fails to offer. ICON ICX Broad Overview: ICON is a South Korean based company that develops blockchain technology and accompanies the cryptocurrency called ‘ICX’. ICON is a network framework which has been designed to allow independent blockchains to interact with each other. It allows interconnected blockchain networks to participate in a decentralized system which converges at a central point. Technology: ICX token is built on the Ethereum blockchain network. ICON has developed a loop-chain platform that connects different blockchain communities through the ICON Republic which serves as the governing head for the Federation of other independent blockchain bodies. All the communities are linked to Republic through C-Reps (Community Representatives) which then connects to Nexus. C-Reps functions as the portals to the communities to establish a connection with Nexus. And this way the entire procedure is carried out. Future Scope: It is believed that ICON has plans to provide platforms to financial, security, insurance, healthcare, educational industries which can help them to carry transactions on a single network. Thus, ICON (ICX) can be seen having a good time in the coming days. Also, it has been successful in signing a partnership deal with the tech-giant Samsung where it will be using ICON’s own Chain ID for a new Samsung project called ‘Samsung Pass’. Apart from Samsung, ICON has also signed deals with PORTAL NETWORK & W Foundation. However, it is notable that ICON is built on the Ethereum network and is an ERC20 token. Hence, the transaction speed greatly depends on the Ethereum network. Currently, Ethereum can execute 15 transactions per second which is quite low in terms of what ICON (ICX) is currently aiming for. However, to fill this gap, we have Kinesis Bespoke Technology that offers a whopping speed of 3000 transactions per second. This lightning fast speed keeps the Kinesis token way ahead than ICX token. Enjin Broad Overview The native cryptocurrency of the Enjin Network, the Enjin Coin (popularly known as only ENJ) follows the ERC20 token standard and is used with a smart contract-based blockchain platform. Its typical users include content creators, game developers, and other members of the gaming community, who need to use virtual tokens to manage and trade virtual goods in the gaming world. Technology behind Enjin As an ERC20-compliant token, the ENJ functions in accordance with the rules an Ethereum contract has to implement. It is used on a dedicated platform that is designed to support open-source software development kits (SDKs), applications, plug-ins, and payment gateways. As for its users, they will be able to efficiently participate in developing, launching, managing, and trade content and game-related products on the Enjin Network, without having to deal with the technical complexities. Summary of Potential The ENJ is expected to solve some performance issues in using similar cryptocurrencies on the market today, including payment frauds where goods are not actually delivered, slow transaction processes, lack of ownership of virtual goods, lack of transaction standards, and centralization problems. According to its creators, the ENJ coin, which is based on a blockchain, will create a distributed, trustworthy, and secure framework where transactions can be executed smoothly and quickly with minimal transaction fees. Its autonomous and decentralized system will ensure that all offers and deals will be honored. Conclusion Generally speaking, the Enjin Coin is good. It helps bring the benefits of blockchain to millions of people participating in the virtual goods market. Its creators are working hard to prevent fraud in the gaming world. However, it is still a relatively new project. As such, it is still volatile. This means that you still have to take utmost care and be wise when using it. EOS Broad Overview EOS is considered by many people who are participating in the virtual goods market as one of the best cryptocurrencies to use, supported by a powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications. Basically, the EOS blockchain is used for the development, execution, and hosting of decentralized applications (dApps) that are traded virtually. Technology behind EOS The EOS system is composed of two key components, which are the EOS.IO and the EOS token. As for the former, it functions like a computer’s operating system in managing and controlling the EOS blockchain, with the use of an architecture that enables horizontal and vertical dApps. As for the latter, it is held (instead of spent) by the users to be able to become eligible of building, running, and trading apps, as well as using EOS network resources. While EOS still does not have an official full form, it supports all core functionalities to allow individuals and businesses to create and trade blockchain-based apps. It also runs on a web toolkit for interface development, just like Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store. Summary of Potential While there are already a lot of cryptocurrencies based on Ethereum similar to it, the EOS system focuses on the critical and problematic points of the blockchain. Specifically, it attempts to solve the problems of scalability, speed, and flexibility that often cause transaction processes to slow down, which is a common issue in blockchain-based systems. According to its creators, EOS.IO could also address other problems that come with the ever-increasing size of the dApps ecosystem, such as limited availability of resources, constrained networks, spamming, false transactions, and limited computing power. It is said to be able to support thousands of commercial-scale dApps without hitting performance bottlenecks by using asynchronous communication methodologies and parallel execution across its network. Conclusion The EOS system is very advanced. It is designed to address common problems with standard blockchain-based networks. But like other new cryptocurrency platforms on the virtual market today, it still has some weak points to improve. Also, there is again the exposure to volatility, as users hold the tokens to be eligible to trade virtually. Nebulas Broad overview Nebulas (NAS) is a new generation blockchain and is open for public collaborations for decentralized application (dApp) development. Its adaptability and scalability are the two characteristics that could propel NAS to be one of the top cryptocurrencies, thus giving it enough leverage to compete in the market. Technology behind Nebulas Nebulas is the first crypto running on a 3rd generation blockchain, thus making it the dominant player of the new platform. This makes Nebulas highly flexible and scalable, even giving a good leverage in future-proofing their code. That could help avoid hard forking whenever some issues come up during scaling processes. Summary of potential Adaptability, scalability and search-ability are three of the biggest potential NAS has to offer. With the 3rd generation blockchain it uses, it can allow the adaption of other codes based from Nebulas. This means that other cryptos can adapt to its platform soon enough. Moreover, it can also act as a blockchain search engine. This can let users search particular blockchains based on efficiency and community strength. Finally, its goal to provide fair incentives to Decentralized Application (dApp) developers is something that collaborators could expect. This means that more developers are expected to come, thus strengthening NAS even further. Conclusion Nebulas (NAS) is a promising crypto especially with its adaptability, scalability and search-ability potentials. It can help with the fluidity of crypto into this new generation platform. However, it still lacks the value stability that Kinesis or stablecoins hold. NAS is still unpredictable, unlike Kinesis that backs it value with real gold. Sky Broad overview SkyCoin is a full environment system of blockchain technology, and has the goal of endorsing the actual usage of cryptocurrency. Technology behind Sky Sky has its own algorithm, the Obelisk, which uses the web of trust dynamics to spread influence all throughout the network to come up with a consensus decision. The consensus decision depends on each node, by valuing its influence score. The influence score of each node is determined by the number of network nodes connected to it. This depicts the importance of the node to the network. Aside from the Obelisk, Sky also operates its own cryptocurrency which is SkyCoin, its own ICO platform Fiber, a decentralized social media platform called BBS, and a decentralized messenger called Sky-Messenger. Summary of potential Sky focuses its potential on being a full ecosystem of blockchain technology that encourages actual usage of crypto. Through its unique algorithm which is the Obelisk and some other dApps associated with it, Sky is a promising crypto technology and could be considered as the most complete one as of today. Conclusion Sky, SkyCoin and the Obelisk is definitely a massive platform that could be considered as a full ecosystem of crypto and its related technology. Nonetheless, the SkyCoin depends its value on node influence scores, which could change from time to time as well. This makes Kinesis and Stablecoins still a better choice, especially for investors who want clear investments without hassle. Crypto Predictions for 2019 While 2017 had the masses captivated and investing large amounts of capital, 2018 has seen price drops and sagging hopes. While the returns in 2017 exceeded anyone’s expectations, a strong pullback was predicted by many. Whether or not this bear market continues from here is the real question many investors face today. Bitcoin’s rapid rise and fall exposed many problems, and the developers of the top cryptocurrencies in 2019 took note. When considering your crypto investments for 2019, factor in the following trends we predict will influence investments: More Pullbacks According to the CEO of Vellum Capital, Eric Kovalak, the price of cryptos will reach new lows before they will rebound to new heights. This includes the biggest cryptocurrencies in the market, including Bitcoin. Kovalak believes that it will be priced below$3,500 before it will find its way back up. However, there are many mixed opinions on the current price of BTC, with some arguing the bottom for the crypto markets have already been seen.
Due to Bitcoin-based remittances, uncertainty in global economies like Asia, Turkey and Venezuela, and mobile penetration, there will be a surge in interest and the price of the digital currency.
A Flood of Institutional Investors
Institutional investors have been waiting on the sideline for the ETF to rule in favor of Bitcoin. According to Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Capital, once the ETF arrives, “institutional fomo’ will start flooding the market.”
Another factor is Kinesis, the investment blockchain that provides investors with a safe and reliable alternative. Pegged against precious metals, it provides protection against volatility that may be caused by political instability.
The Kinesis Monetary System lets you own real gold or silver when you purchase the digital currency. Your ownership is then digitized and then made available for spending, trading, and transfer. What is even better, the monetary system can be used internationally, ensuring reliability of money around the world.
With the recent crisis around the Turkish Lira, the price of gold has significantly increased.
Mass adoption of crypto by consumers In January 2019, blockchain technology will be 10 years old. It remains a speculative investment to this day but 2019 could be the year of mass adoption for digital currencies.
For this to happen, however, there has to be some triggers.
Speculation should become a real utility. People must use blockchain projects in everyday life so they will gain widespread use. Decentralized applications (DApps) must gain mainstream status to promote widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies. Improved payment processing, addressing the issue on the current situation of slow transaction times and high transaction fees. Scalability of blockchain technology with little to no impact on its efficiency. To date, slow transaction times are due to the growing number of users and transaction sizes. This calls for blockchain to grow and have the ability to compete with Mastercard, PayPal, or Visa. Introduction of off-chain solutions that allow users to complete a transaction through peer-to-peer payment channel instead of within the blockchain. This will address slow transaction times. Security will be provided by the parent blockchain. Gold Is Still The Standard Despite the promises and unique functions of many cryptocurrencies, there is still uncertainty in these new markets.
Gold has remained the best form of investment throughout history, and the best store of value, especially through times of crisis in politics and economies.
Kinesis pegs its value to gold which has proven to be the safest investment in history. Therefore Kinesis stands to gain from the stability gold offers while simultaneously fusing it with the unique features of this cutting edge crypto technology.
With the Kinesis Monetary System, investing in gold is no longer the slow process that many older investors are used to. This cryptocurrency is backed by gold and silver and supports precious metals trade.
It has three essential assets.
Tokens that represent an investors ownership of gold and silver. The inherited system where performance is done. Complete blockchain security that supports investments and paves the way for the creation of new assets protected in a banking system. Most importantly, the Kinesis Monetary System allows thousands of transactions to be completed per second in a completely secure channel.
The Near Future
Even a decade later, cryptocurrencies are still very much in their infancy. At this time, no one is sure what shape this growing sector will take in the future. Many cryptocurrencies will come and go but the ones that show the most promise, that fulfill their use cases, will stick around for the long term. With any emerging technology, we have to watch how it evolves and how it merges with our everyday life, changing the way we interact with everything around us.