Month: November 2018

Posted on

SuperNET

What is SuperNET?

SuperNET is a project for volunteers, people who come together to pool their money and time to support a cryptocurrency initiative, one that is radical and will change the way we do things online. It is important to highlight the fact that SuperNET is not cryptocurrency.

For this reason, participation in the SuperNET project or the distribution of revenues that are earned will depend on the ownership of tokens that the well-wishers receive in exchange for their donations.

Since SuperNET is not essentially cryptocurrency, what is it, or what is it all about?

This is a project that is rather powerful in its course, but all about simplicity.

The idea behind SuperNET is to bring forth a network of coins that is mutually beneficial and offers motivation for innovation. To do this, SuperNET is a collection of revenue-generating services and a collection of most of the major cryptocurrencies in the market at the moment.

In order to do this, the plan is to have SuperNET get 10% of the market cap for all the coins that are participating in the SuperNET project. This particularly applies to the coins that run a unique and promising technology.

This is to make sure that there is value addition on the blockchain since these projects will engage in cross-marketing for their unique features, and at the same time offering additional services where necessary.

What is the problem that SuperNET Solves?

Ever since the advent of cryptocurrencies, there have been a lot of projects coming up all the time. Each of these projects promises one thing or the other. However, whether they all get to make these promises a reality is a different story altogether.

Over fiat currency, cryptocurrencies have proved to offer relevant and significant advantages.

These include an increased speed of conducting transactions, lack of interference through central authorities and organizations like payment processors, banks and governments, or central banks and other financial watchdogs, low cost of transaction and so forth.

However, even with these amazing benefits, one of the biggest challenges that cryptocurrencies still face is the issue of adoption.

Large-scale adoption of cryptocurrency and integration into the normal economy has always been a challenge. There are a lot of reasons why this is true, and these challenges are either internal or external.

One of the biggest concerns that developers behind cryptocurrencies struggle with is operating in a zero-sum economy approach.

The problem here is that they often assume that the system has a finite supply of money, and as a result, if a given cryptocurrency project was to survive and become a success, it follows that another must be failing.

In fiat markets, this is possible, and might even be true. However, this only ends up creating competition, unnecessary competition between cryptocurrency projects and the different communities that back them.

This rivalry is not healthy because you end up with so many projects that are apparently out to solve the same problem. Instead of competing against one another, the project developers should embrace productive collaboration.

Another concern is the fact that indeed, there is credible and relevant innovation in the blockchain realm. However, at the same time, there are so many projects that are nothing but clones.

Other than a new name, they have nothing new to offer users or nothing new that sets them apart from other cryptocurrencies that are already in existence. The biggest issue here is that such projects operate like MLM scams. It is only the early adopters who eventually benefit from owning these cryptocurrencies, at the expense of the late adopters.

Other than that, such projects have effectively succeeded at tarnishing the name and reputation of cryptocurrency. This is an industry that is challenging the status quo, and at the same time, is riddled with a lot of controversy.

Having such dummy projects in the news all the time for all the wrong reasons makes it very difficult to engage potential buyers and make a sales pitch for them to invest in the specific project.

Most, if not all cryptocurrencies are generally traded on a speculative approach. Because of this reason, any market where these currencies are traded is often manipulated and controlled by those who own the largest portion of currency in their wallets.

This means that in such marketplaces, it is the large coin holders who will always benefit, while the small coin holders will always lose out in the long run.

How does SuperNET Solve the problem? 

In light of all the challenges that have been mentioned above, SuperNET is a solution whose initiative is to address all these concerns. SuperNET promises to do the following:

  • Bring value to participants who are on SuperNET for the long-term
  • Allow core members to share benefits, extending these to all the cryptocurrencies that are part of the SuperNET project
  • Encourage and reward active coin communities, talent, and innovation
  • Encourage collaboration to bring together different cryptocurrencies that would benefit from working together instead of working against each other.

Each of the coins that form a part of SuperNET has unique features. When these coins are brought together, there is a lot of potential for innovation. Since this has been a challenge, SuperNET creates a GUI that is embedded in every wallet for the coins that are participating in this project. What about those who will be using these coins, or the SuperNET project?

People who use SuperNET or any of the coin communities that belong to the SuperNET project will earn goodwill payments. This works in the same way that dividends work. The goodwill payments only apply to specific services. They do appreciate in value, especially when the core currencies that they represent are doing well in the market, or through the collaboration of different features, products and services across the board.

In the long run, the hope is that SuperNET proves to be attractive enough to rope in wealth and talent and make cryptocurrency become powerful and reliable just as fiat currency is.

To do this, the goal is to empower people to use cryptocurrency as a form of commitment, talent and to reward innovation. It is important to mention at this juncture that the role of SuperNET is not to replace projects like Bitcoin but to build on some of the flaws and make sure that any cryptocurrency that is on the SuperNET project can actually compete favorably within a fiat economy.

This is what SuperNET participants are making a commitment to.

What makes SuperNET better than the competitors?    

The SuperNET project is different from any other project because of its core mode of operation. While most of the other projects exist in isolation, this project brings together a number of cryptocurrency projects, in the process benefitting from their advantages. This mode of operation is one of the key reasons why SuperNET stands out from all the other projects that might be competing against it.

SuperNET as a CryptoToken

We have already mentioned that SuperNET will not be operating as a cryptocurrency. Instead, it will operate as a crypto token, an NXT asset. This also means that it works differently from other common cryptocurrencies. The money that is accepted from participants in the SuperNET project is unlimited and uncapped.

However, it is not possible to dilute the membership share of participants through a large capital flow into the project. As a matter of fact, the larger the market cap that SuperNET can attain, the higher the expected benefits for everyone who is in the SuperNET ecosystem, and more importantly for the world of cryptocurrency. Success for the SuperNET project will mean success for a lot of cryptocurrencies.

Low risk of price crash

SuperNET is one of the projects that has the lowest risk of price crashing. Price crashes have been common among cryptocurrency projects over the years.

Promising projects have all of a sudden become dull projects, with a lot of users cutting their losses and selling their crypto assets. It is highly unlikely that the price of SuperNET would crash below the initial launch price.

The reason for this is because the participants would basically be selling the currencies that they hold at a lower rate than the market rate.

This means, for example, that if a user is committing, say 2 BTC to the SuperNET project, they must back it with cryptocurrencies worth 2 BTC.

Essentially, SuperNET is forming something that is more than just a currency offering, but a closed-end mutual fund. Therefore, the more money that can be collected, the more powerful the SuperNET project will be, increasing awareness of the project, and at the same time, improving the purchasing power of the users.

Coin Control

SuperNET is doing something that a lot of users have been wishing would be possible for the longest time possible, creating a platform where you have one wallet that can hold and help you move any of your favorite coins.

By having all these assets in one place, this also means that you can combine all their features and access them at will, conveniently. You can choose either to have the coins stored to your personal wallet, or keep them in the SuperNET decentralized exchange.

Decentralized Technology

SuperNET will serve as a third-party clearinghouse for transactions. Therefore, it forms a gateway to keep coins on different multisignature server clusters.

Every server can only access one of the many keys that is needed, and for any withdrawal to occur, the servers must all align.

Given that these servers are found in different parts of the world, and they can only be controlled by participating coin development teams, this is one of the most secure ways of keeping digital assets, making this one of the most secure projects.

Real-time trading

SuperNET is implementing InstantDEX, which allows real-time trading between different cryptocurrencies. Other than normal trading, those who are using the SuperNET project can also use this to trade in different telepods anonymously for unique cryptocurrency funds, especially once Teleport has been fully integrated.

Anonymous Trading

Security and privacy are two of the most important factors that keep the SuperNET project viable. To prevent the risk of large-scale surveillance, SuperNET uses BitcoinDark.

This gives users an assurance that at all times, they are safe when going about transactions on SuperNET.

Contrary to what many of the other projects are doing, SuperNET does not perform coin mixing.
By design, SuperNET is specifically made to obfuscate the IP association of users and the trades that they perform. BitcoinDark, for example, uses Teleport to keep all transactions anonymous.

How can SuperNET be categorized?

SuperNET is a decentralized project that was built to develop open-source and decentralized tools specifically to serve the cryptocurrency market. Some of the tools include decentralized exchanges, multi-coin wallets, and price stability products.

What’s SuperNET’s vision on Security?

SuperNET uses delayed proof of work (dPoW). This is a consensus mechanism that uses the normal proof of work algorithm that Bitcoin uses, but not in the same way.

dPoW will notarize blocks on the SuperNET blockchain, making sure that they are totally immutable, and in the process offering the transactions an additional security layer.

There are 64 pre-selected notary nodes that are used to run the notarization task, thereby mitigating any risk associated with immutability before it happens. For this reason, should someone want to attack the network, they would need to, first of all, alter the Bitcoin blockchain, which is not possible.

Examples of SuperNET use cases/applications

Jumblr

This is a decentralized coin mixer that operates as a decentralized anonymizer. It offers coin mixing abilities better than normal centralized coin mixers by virtue of the fact that it has zero-knowledge proof, which gives users complete anonymity.

dICO

dICO is a decentralized token sale or ICO model that is powered by the SuperNET project. dICO runs on the Atomic swap and BarterDex technologies to provide a completely anonymous and decentralized issue and distribution model for coins.

Teleport

Teleport is the main privacy technology behind BitcoinDark (BTCD) which helps to keep user services anonymous when they are using the SuperNET project.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/SuperNET

http://supernet.org/

http://old.supernet.org/index.php

https://support.supernet.org/support/solutions/folders/29000036758 http://www.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/5/6/38564127/supernet.pdf

 

Posted on

Skycoin

What is Skycoin?

Skycoin is more than just a cryptocurrency project, it is an ecosystem, and the currency bit is just a factor in the system. What Skycoin does is to eliminate some of the common challenges that are experienced in blockchain projects such as mining of rewards.

Skycoin is built to use energy efficient software, and to offer the fastest transaction speeds that would give companies like Visa a run for their money. To do this, Skycoin is built in 5 components, all which are important to realizing the ultimate dream of the Skycoin ecosystem. These are:

  • Skycoin – a very fast and secure currency that is supported by bandwidth
  • Fiber – a decentralized open blockchain network
  • Skywire – a decentralized mesh internet that is fully anonymous
  • Skysuite – a complete suite of decentralized applications
  • Skyminer – the hardware and access point for Skywire

More importantly, the idea behind Skycoin is to bring forth a project that would be a champion for private internet access and unmatched security, which are currently lacking not just in the conventional financial markets, but also in a number of blockchain projects.

What is the problem that Skycoin Solves?

Resource constraints

In the early programming when Bitcoin was first released, there were several problems and loopholes that made it prone to attacks. One of these was a miscalculation that the process of mining would somehow end up producing an economic incentive which would make decentralization appealing to users.

However, this was not to be. Instead, proof of work ended up concentrating influence within a select category of miners, users who supply most of the resources needed at a cheaper power cost.

These groups eventually have the power to control the network, orchestrating some of the largest changes to the network, such as forks.

In fact, according to the founder, control over mining would be one of the biggest threats to the Bitcoin project that was not cryptographic in nature.

This is because it made 51% attacks a reality. As long as one user can influence and amass more than 50% of the hashing power, they have complete control over the network.

As such, the operation of the Bitcoin network was effectively inefficient, both environmentally and economically.

Besides, as the network kept growing, there would be an insane spending on electricity, which beats the purpose of coming up with a revolutionary project in the 21st Century.

We live in a time when electricity costs are at an all-time high, and a revolutionary project should have addressed these, among other fundamental concerns.

Since the consumption of power on Bitcoin was estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars each month, this beat the concept of sustainability. Therefore, Bitcoin would be its own enemy, killing itself from within, crashing under its own weight as more people joined the network.

Centralizing a decentralized network

Proof of Stake algorithms have managed to address the risk of 51% attacks. However, one thing that they have been unable to do so well is deal with centralization.

According to experts, PoS networks are actually more susceptible to centralization than the PoW networks.

In PoS, voter power is determined by the size of the user’s holdings in terms of the currency in question. This also means their influence on the technical changes that are expected on the network. Regardless of their processing ability, such participants are also able to mine a specific portion.

In so doing, this increases barriers to instigating a 51% attack on the project. The reason is that it would generally cost more to acquire coins on the open market than the financial gain from attacking the network. Therefore, initiating an attack would be pointless.

Besides, if an attacker were to successfully become the main shareholder on a network, they would be the worst hit from the attack they instigate, considering the subsequent market response and stability concerns on the network once news of an attack goes out.

In order to prevent such attacks, PoS has simply created an impulse similar to PoW that centralizes the network.

Majority shareholders on the network have the power to make any changes on the network without considering the influence of the miners, businesses, community, and developers on the project.

This centralizes voting power, shifting the control of power and the network to a few individuals, which goes against the basic requirements of a ledger-based crypto project.

How does Skycoin Solve the problem?      

In light of the challenges that have been addressed above, Skycoin introduced Obelisk.

Obelisk is a distributed consensus solution. It distributes influence on the network in a web of trust approach. This means that there is no mining in Skycoin. Instead of mining, nodes are created on the project.

Nodes include things like Skyminers and computers. Every node can subscribe to a number of trusted nodes. In this way, influence on the network is determined by the number of subscribers that are available on the specific node.

The following are the in-depth solutions that Obelisk brings to the Skycoin project, and helps to deal with the risks that are associated with traditional blockchain projects:

  • Low energy consumption and high scalability

Computationally, this project was built to be one of the most affordable alternatives to PoW, hence a scalable algorithm was mandatory. Block making and the algorithm are designed to work on simple, budget hardware. The idea here is that the more access people have to the network, the harder it is to centralize it.

  • Robust defense system

One of the benefits of using Obelisk on the Skycoin network is that by design, this consensus algorithm was built to withstand even the most organized attacks in the form of malicious nodes. The algorithm can converge so fast and is not iterative. This makes it easier to run it on a mesh network.

  • Protection against 51% attacks

The Web-of-Trust consensus is one of the reasons why it is possible to avoid 51% attacks on Skycoin.

The consensus makes it impossible for any individual to amass the required power through centralization. There is no mining of incentives on Skycoin, so it is not vulnerable to the challenges that PoW and PoS networks experience.

In the unlikely event that attackers manage to pool resources and cause a disruption on the network, there will be a minute effect on all the other users. This is because they would need to have a private key for any of the users in a transaction to effect the damage.

  • Concealed IP addresses

All nodes are addressed through the cryptographic public keys. The IP address, therefore, is only accessible and read by the nodes that are connected directly to the node in question.

  • Independent clock synchrony

The calendar date/time method does not work in this algorithm. Instead of using the wall clock, Skycoin uses block sequence numbers. These numbers are validated and extracted from validated consensus and blockchain messages. This is how the internal time in the nodes is calculated.

What makes Skycoin better than the competitors?         

One of the advantages that the Skycoin project enjoys over most of the competing projects on the blockchain at the moment is that they have been around much longer.

This is actually one of the oldest projects on the blockchain at the moment, meaning that they have had a lot of time to fine tune through so many challenges.

Skycoin was designed to be an infrastructure project, based on the concept of decentralization. It uses a unique algorithm, Obelisk, which is all about trust. By implementing Obelisk, what Skycoin has done is to move away from the challenges that most of the blockchain projects currently experience, especially those that are running either Proof of Stake or Proof of Work. The following are some of the other features that make Skycoin stand out:

  • Speed

This is one of the fastest projects on the blockchain at the moment. Transactions are completed in as short a time as 2 seconds. There are no fees or bottlenecks that usually slow down most of the other networks, thereby making this a strong competition not just for other blockchain projects, but also for credit cards and payment systems such as Apple Pay.

  • Fees

Instead of charging people fees to use the Skycoin platform, transactions are paid for in Coin Hours. This is a unique form of currency that is only paid to Skycoin holders for every hour that they hold coins in their wallets. This is actually a good idea as it basically pays users returns for the time they keep the project alive and active.

  • Security

Skycoin is about money. Therefore, it only follows that security will always be a priority in this project. What they have done is to bring on board some of the best cryptographic security standards that are used in the blockchain realm.

This is to make sure that true to the concept of decentralization and the blockchain, transactions once commuted cannot be interfered with. In so doing, Skycoin is one of the projects that is safe from the obvious risks that other projects face like the risk of 51% attack, malleability, duplication of transactions and reversals.

  • Privacy

The structure of Skycoin is unique. It was built to adopt the CoinJoin protocol without any challenges. Having been integrated into the project, transactions from different wallets are mixed together, making sure that it becomes impossible for anyone to identify them.

This gives users on Skycoin a level of privacy that most blockchain projects can only theorize about.

  • Sustainability

One of the biggest concerns that most people have with investing in blockchain projects at the moment is whether or not they are stable. A lot of projects have been raised in the past, but flopped because they could not live up to the sustainability concern. This is not the case with Skycoin.

What Skycoin lacks is the need for unnecessary computational resources that are common in PoS and PoW systems. Therefore, Skycoin is one of the most resource-conscious projects you will come across on the blockchain. In fact, it is so simple and easy, you can run it on a 30-watt cell processor without any challenges.

  • Incentive

Another feature that sets Skycoin apart from the other projects is the way it is run. This is more than just a cryptocurrency. There is a lot of value on the Skycoin blockchain. Instead of making money from transactions, users on Skycoin earn from the provision and consumption of network resources.

  • Utility support

It is virtually impossible to tell what makes the value of certain projects rise or fall. This is because no one really knows what is backing them. Skycoin, on the other hand, is supported by bandwidth. This is the real asset that makes the project stay alive, and it is what people are incentivized to provide.

How can Skycoin be categorized?

Skycoin is one of the most advanced blockchain platforms in the world, dubbed as the new internet for the new world. The developers are people who were some of the earliest contributors to Ethereum and the Bitcoin project who are committed to making it an ISP independent, infinitely scalable and utterly secure project. Skycoin is supported by computational power, storage, and bandwidth, and is seen as the one project that is in line with the original Satoshi vision for blockchain technology.

What’s Skycoin’s vision on Security?

Skycoin has put in place several measures to make sure that the project remains safe and secure for users. One of these is to limit the influence of human interactions which usually are responsible for most attacks on PoS and PoW networks. This has been made possible through Obelisk.

Accountability of nodes to the Skycoin community and to 3rd party audits and the fact that the consensus method is a transparent one further strengthens the element of collective decision making on the Skycoin project. Other than that, this also makes this a very democratic network, and fully decentralized.

Examples of Skycoin use cases/applications

The following are some of the applications to which the Skycoin is currently being put to use, given the benefits discussed above:

Fiber

This is a launchpad for secure, scalable and decentralized applications that are operated by third parties. Since a lot of businesses are currently interested in implementing blockchain architecture for one reason or the other, this is a necessary solution.

On Fiber, every coin has its own blockchain that can be customized depending on the needs of users, while at the same time still enjoying the benefits of running Skycoin technology, such as zero transaction fees, very fast transaction time and low consumption of energy.

Spaco

This is one of the first decentralized applications that were built on Skycoin through Fiber. Spaco runs data storage and transfer through a P2P encrypted internet browser. It is built to withstand and block spam and is one of the most versatile projects, capable of building secure applications for future use.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/Skycoin

http://skycoin.net/

https://www.skycoin.net/blog/

http://skycoin.wikidot.com/faq

https://downloads.skycoin.net/whitepapers/Skycoin-Whitepaper-v1.0.pdf