Month: November 2018

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OkCash

What Is OkCash?

OkCash is an open source and decentralized cryptocurrency created to help people take control over their finances. It was created in 2014 when it went by the name Pimpcash. It rebranded to OkCash in 2015 under the lead developer OkToshi.

Cryptocurrencies were designed to be the ultimate solutions to issues in conventional banking systems. But one of the most pressing issues was slow transactions volumes or scalability. OkCash was created to help make transactions fast and reliable. The network targeted to redefine the crypto space by empowering all stakeholders to own and protect the network.

  • The history or OkCash

OkToshi developer has made a name for being a top developer in the computing niche. For example, he developed ROKOS, one of the most successful linux-based operating systems for the Internet of Thing devices like the Raspberry Pi. Indeed, Raspberry Pi is sold installed with OkCash client.

  • Performance of the OkCash coin in the market

OkCash is one of the coins whose performance in the market has been impressive. Between launch and mid-September, the value of OkCash grew by about 599,000%. This was impressive. Though the price of OkCash took a bearish trend starting from January 2018 when the value was $0.6 to early November when the price hit $0.03, it is still high compared to the starting mark of 2014.

What is the problem that OkCash Solves?

The OkCash platform was created with the purpose of being the best in the market. Therefore, the development team targeted and addressed the following issues.

  • Centralized mining

One issue that has become a major obstacle to the growth of pioneer coins is centralization of mining services. The centralization happens through the requirement of advanced mining equipment such as ASICs that generate very high hashing power. But the problem arises from the high cost of the equipment because only a few well-to-do in the community can afford.

The impact of centralized mining is that more tokens are likely to fall into the hands of a few wealthy people or mining pools. This raises the danger of the network suffering from 51% attack.

  • The high cost of power in standard mining systems

Today, it is estimated that that Bitcoin mining consumes about 343 megawatts of power every second. This is equivalent to the power that 285,833 homes in the United States. Some analysts have indicated that mining Bitcoin and other proof of work coins is unsustainable.

The alternative is going for a mining algorithm that is not reliant on computing power. The selected mining system should also help to ensure that more people can mine the networks using standard devices such as CPU and GPU.

  • Centralized financial services

The conventional setting of financial services is highly centralized. This implies that transactions have to be processed by the banking management. When your deposits are entrusted to a manager, it means that their safety depends on that management acting professionally and ethically.

However, if they mismanage the funds resulting in bankruptcy, the deposits in the facility could get lost. In many cases, the banks are taken over by receiver management that is expected to investigate what went wrong before clients can get their deposits.

  • Poor scalability

Though the blockchain networks are considered the ultimate solutions to most issues affecting the society today, they also have some issues related to their operations. One of the issues is scalability. For example, Bitcoin can only manage seven transactions every second while more advanced networks such as Ethereum can only handle 20.

When the rates are compared to industry leaders such as Visa that can handle in excess of 20,000 transactions every second, it implies that something needs to be done on the blockchain networks. OkCash was created to address the problem.

How Does OkCash Solve The Problem?

When OkCash was created in 2014, the founding team wanted to make the coin an example that others could emulate to provide better services and take the industry to the next level. Here is a demonstration of how OkCash addresses the problems.

  • Proof of stake consensus above protocol

When OkCash was created, it was operating as a proof of work cryptocurrency. This means that it was pretty like Bitcoin or Litecoin. The development team was quick to note that if the network continued with PoW consensus protocol, it would incur the same issues that faced Bitcoin.

The development team and the community agreed that a better alternative was needed. They settled for proof of stake protocol. The good thing with proof of stake protocol is that miners do not need to use expensive mining equipment such as ASICs. Instead, they only need to own some stake in the network to be selected to mine the network.

Because mining in proof of stake is not based on computing power, it implies that more people including those with GPU and GPUs can mine the network. It also means that the native coins are distributed more evenly to lower the risk of 51% attack.

  • Full decentralization

Decentralization is seen as the solution to many issues in the financial and payment systems. The OkCash platform operates as a completely decentralized system. This means that users who want to run transactions do not need to go through centralized companies such as banks or credit card firms.

The transactions are completed on a peer2peer basis to make them fast and cheaper. It does not matter whether you are in one side of the globe and recipient on another. All that is required is for both of them to be on the same network and the sender to have ample coins to send.

  • Partnership with many stakeholders

OkCash development team has been working on bringing more parties onboard to drive its value up and encourage more people to use cryptocurrencies. Some of the partners include Microsoft, and exchanges such as Kraken and Poloniex. They also help to facilitate faster payment of services offered in their systems of related affiliates.

What makes OkCash better than it’s competitors?

The fast-growing cryptocurrency community in the industry means that the competition is expected to intensify. The OkCash development team has been working extra hard to win a bigger market and deliver value to clients. Here are some of the things that make OkCash better than competitors.

  • OkCash has a very aggressive development team. The team comprises some of the top brains that the industry is relying on to grow to the next level. For example, the team has added private messages to help users embed short messages to their transactions.
  • The coin is a completely decentralized platform. This implies that users are able to join and use the network without going through centralized financial services such as banks. This makes the transactions fast, cheap and reliable.
  • The OkCash is a reliable platform for using and owning the network. When you swipe a debit card and make payment for a product or service, there is a sense of passiveness. You are not involved in deciding the charges on the platform. But OkCash is different.

As a decentralized network, it implies that users spread on the network also own the system. This means that if you own some OkCash coins; you have a right to vote on governance issues such as the introduction of new features.

For examples, all members of the OkCash community voted when the network shifted from proof of work to proof of work protocol. Note that you only need to stake the OkCash coins to be able to mine and participate in voting.

  • Using OkCash allows users to invest or send funds without worrying about third-party seizures. Unlike banks that expose user details to many users such as cashiers and political leaders, the OkCash system does not involve any third party. As a decentralized network, the transaction takes place only between the sender and recipient. Even miners who come to confirm transactions can only check the balance in the public address.

How can OkCash be categorized?

OkCash is a truly anonymous and decentralized network created to help grow the crypto industry. The design of the platform has helped to demonstrate that though there are challenges in the implementation of cryptocurrencies, it is possible to get reliable solutions.

In their roadmap, the OkCash team has demonstrated that it will keep reviewing the system to take the coin at the top and make it compete with others such as Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. Though this will require a lot of work because other coins have very large communities, the commitment of the team can make it possible.

What’s OkCash’s vision on Security?

The OkCash vision on security is to become an enviable secure network that will draw users from the conventional financial systems as well as other networks. To achieve this objective, here are some of the methods and features used by the development team:

  • Regular update of the OkCash core code to identify and seal gaps.
  • Use of proof of stake protocol to facilitate even distribution of coins to prevent 51% attack.
  • Use of advanced encryption to ensure that no unauthorized person can access your details

It is crucial to note that even with the commitment of the development team, security of your coins will also depend on the personal ability to protect them. It is important to always keep the private keys private and avoid using the computer with the main OkCash client to access risky websites. You should also acquire a reliable and secure wallet such as Ledger Nano S or Trezor.

Examples of OkCash’s use cases / applications

If you want to know the acceptability of a coin in the society, a reliable method is looking at the applications. As the competition intensifies, the OkCash founder has been working on winning more players and stores to accept OkCash. Here are the main use cases of the coin and its platform.

  • You can use the OkCash coin to pay for goods and services in the market. As other coins such as Bitcoin and fiat currencies are used to pay for goods in stores downtown, so is OkCash. You only need to identify a store that supports OkCash to pay for the goods of choice.

Note that even if the targeted store only supports s different coin, it is still possible to buy with OkCash by converting it to the supported coin in exchanges such as Huobi or HitBTC.

  • Use OkCash to pay for utility bills and government services. If you live in a jurisdiction that supports digital coins, it might be possible to pay for government services using OkCash. One example is Arizona.

In April 2018, the Arizona government passed bill HB 1091 that allows users to pay taxes with cryptocurrencies. The bill requires the tax department to immediately convert the digital coins to USD when a resident pays taxes. Other jurisdictions that support the use of cryptos include Singapore and Switzerland.

  • Use OkCash to trade in the cryptocurrency markets. These are platforms that bring together buyers and sellers so that prices of cryptos are driven by the market forces. The markets work like forex markets but they are not regulated and deal with digital coins as opposed to fiat currencies.
  • Use OkCash to end value on a peer2peer basis. If you want to send value to a recipient in another country, the cheap and reliable method is the use of decentralized networks such as OkCash. Simply ask the recipient to sign up on the OkCash or open a supported wallet to receive the coins in seconds.
  • The OkCash is a reliable coin to save your money or invest as opposed to a bank. The unique features and the committed team have made the community believe that the price of the native coin is likely to grow in future. Therefore, buy some stake in the OkCash network and expect good return on investment when the value goes up.

However, it is important to appreciate that the expected value growth is speculative. The ultimate price of the token can be influenced by factors such as competition and new technology.

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SolarCoin

What Is SolarCoin?

When Satoshi Nakamoto launched the first decentralized network, he probably never knew that he was ushering a new world of endless opportunities. Immediately, cryptographers, financial experts, and conservationists went back to their drawing boards to evaluate how to take advantage of blockchain technology. One of the resultant projects was SolarCoin.

  • What exactly is SolarCoin?

SolarCoin is cryptocurrency and an open source platform that was founded in 2014 by Nick Gogerty and Joseph Zotoli. Today, the project is run by the SolarCoin Foundation, an organization based in Delaware, and registered as a Public Benefit Organization.

The primary goal of the founders was to identify an energy references coin that could help to promote efficient use of energy to ensure all can access it for economic growth. The team was concerned that though the centralized administrations always targeted making their countries efficient, the involvement of the society was limited. They wanted to get everybody involved.

  • The performance of SolarCoin in the market

After entering the market in March 2014, SolarCoin token was valued at $0.01. It traded at around $0.01 until March 2016 when the value rose marginally to $0.2. By June 2016, the price shot up to $0.2 before sliding to about $0.06 in the subsequent six months.

Starting from January 2017, the value of SolarCoin started climbing steadily to reach its highest point of $2.06 in mid-January 2018. But this growth did not last. SolarCoin price followed the bearish trend that other coins such a Bitcoin and XRP had adopted in the market.

The downward trend continued to $0.05 mark by the close of October. Though the industry started showing signs of recovery starting from the onset of the third quarter of 2017, it will be interesting to see the performance of SolarCoin in the coming years.

What is the problem that SolarCoin Solves?

SolarCoin was created to help close the gaps that had started emerging following the blockchain technology intensification in the market. Though being able to send funds on a peer2peer basis was a great achievement, the following issues also needed answers.

  • The high cost of running decentralized networks

If you take a closer look at the cost of running decentralized networks, you will realize that a lot of energy is needed. Of greater concern is the proof of work (PoW) based cryptocurrencies that incur high cost of mining machines and running them. Here is a demonstration of power requirement for Bitcoin.

By October 2018, the power requirement for running the entire Bitcoin network was about 342,934,450 wallets. If you compare the figure with the normal household requirement of 1.2 kilowatts requirement, it implies that Bitcoin power needs can power about 285,833 homes.

The high energy requirements stem from the ever-growing mining difficulty which means that computers are required to work more to find new blocks. But this paints only a small section of the real situation. If you combine all cryptocurrencies, it implies that the power use is even more. This is one major issue that SolarCoin addresses.

  • Lack of motivation for clean energy users

It is interesting that even though a lot of people know about clean energy solutions such as solar, they rarely use it. Most people ask the question; “If I have power from the mains, why worry about solar?” SolarCoin addresses this problem by creating a motivation schedule for people using solar energy.

  • The risk of centralized mining

A few years after the launch of Bitcoin, companies making advanced mining chips entered into the market. They wanted to help people generate high computing power and mine more blocks for rewards. Though this might sound impressive because users are assured of more coins, it is disastrous to the cryptocurrency and its community.

Because the advanced mining equipment cost a lot of money, only the well to do in the community can afford. This means that most of the new coins getting into the market are taken by the rich. The implication is that the few users in the network can conspire to harm the network or run schemes such as pump and dump strategies.

  • The negative perception of cryptocurrencies

Though the blockchain technology is really impressive, it has not has been received well by some parties. The most irked parties are the administrations and tax authorities. Their dislikes have seen them regularly discourage the community from using the coins.

In Russia, the administration discouraged its citizens from buying and using cryptocurrencies. Even in the draft financial digital assets draft bill, the ministry of finance recommended that people who accept payment with cryptocurrencies to be considered to have committed offenses.

In the EU, the EU Commission insisted that people who use cryptocurrencies are at a great risk of losing their money because digital coins do not have consumer protection. Other jurisdictions that have made cryptos to have negative perception include the UK, China, and India.

SolarCoin targets to address the problem by demonstrating that there is something positive that can come from cryptos.

  • Poor adoption of cryptos in the community

Though a lot of cryptocurrencies have been entering the market since 2009, it is interesting that society has been lagging behind in adopting the technology. When new tokens are released through ICOs, the people who are first to take the opportunity are capitalists who target to buy at a lower price and sell when the value moves up.

This means that the community and stores do not have the opportunity to become part of the new networks. Even when those who bought the tokens during the ICO start selling, the price is high and prohibitive. The effect is that very few stores that allow users to pay with digital coins while the available ones are located in different jurisdictions.

How Does SolarCoin Solve The Problem?

Even as society works towards optimizing profits through new technologies such as blockchain, the founding team was of the view that a clean and green environment should be part of the society all the time. Here are some of the methods used to help ingrain the need for a better environment.

  • Proof of stake consensus protocol

The proof of stake protocol used at SolarCoin is the main force that helps to address the problems of centralized mining and associated high cost. Unlike the proof of work protocol, the proof of stake system does not require users to generate a lot of hashing power to mine the network.

To use the proof of stake protocol to mine the SolarCoin platform, you only need to own some stake. This means buying the native SolarCoin and holding them. Every year, those with some stake in the SolarCoin system are rewarded with 2% of the returns generated through different transactions.

  • Rewarding solar energy users

Though there are many power options out there, solar is considered the most effective consideration because it is cheap, renewable and clean. However, many people who take additional effort to use solar energy are rarely rewarded. The SolarCoin targets to change the narrative by ensuring that people are motivated when they go solar.

  • Total decentralization

SolarCoin operates as a completely decentralized cryptocurrency. Like other digital coins, the SolarCoin token is completely decentralized to allow users to make direct payments without involving centralized banking systems.

The decentralized model uses a network of nodes spread in the system to ensure to confirm transactions and vote on governance issues. This implies that if you have some stake in the SolarCoin network, you will be called to vote when key decisions on network governance such as adoption of new features are being done.

What makes SolarCoin better than it’s competitors?

To win in the highly competitive niche, many cryptocurrency networks are forced to redefine their operations. Here are the main things that make SolarCoin better than competitors.

  • The SolarCoin network targets an area that is less explored. This implies that it is likely to enjoy near monopoly and grow rapidly as more people discover it.
  • The idea of using clean energy and cutting power bills is an impressive one. This implies that more people are likely to join the SolarCoin community to explore different ways that they can benefit from.
  • The cryptocurrency allows users to join and own the network. Unlike conventional banking systems that make people feel passive, the SolarCoin system is not owned or run by a centralized entity. Rather, users who buy some stake own and govern it.
  • The SolarCoin network provides users with an opportunity to invest without worrying about third-party seizures. Because the transactions and user accounts are encrypted, it is difficult for third parties to access the info. Indeed, even a court of law cannot order you to provide the details because cryptocurrencies are not regulated.
  • The SolarCoin system provides users with a reliable platform to send value without limitations. Unlike the conventional banking systems that have a lot of limitations such as being unavailable during public holidays or requiring prior notice when withdrawing large sums, it is different when it comes to SolarCoin.

No matter the time of the day or night, you have full control over what to do. Whether you want to send funds, trade, or check the operational history, there are no limitations. You can even send funds on a public holiday.

How can SolarCoin be categorized?

SolarCoin is a carefully thought cryptocurrency that targets the energy niche that touches a wide range of people. As the reality of the dwindling fossil fuels dawns in the coming years, the SolarCoin is likely to gain a lot of popularity. Therefore, it could be a great investment especially for those who target to stake the coins over the long term.

What’s SolarCoin’s vision on Security?

The SolarCoin vision on security is to make it the most secure and attractive network to facilitate the adoption and growth of clean energy. To achieve this vision, the SolarCoin development team employs the following strategies:

  • Use of proof of stake consensus protocol for even distribution of coins. This is important because it helps to prevent 51% attack.
  • The team also reviews the network regularly to identify gaps and address them immediately before attackers take advantage of them.
  • The network operates as a completely decentralized system. When a user joins the SolarCoin network, his account and transaction info is encrypted so that no third party can easily access the details. Even miners who confirm transactions can only know the balance in a public address but cannot know the actual user.

Examples of SolarCoin’s use cases / applications

SolarCoin development team has been working very hard to win a bigger market and increase the coin’s use cases. Here are some of the coins’ applications.

  • Use the coin to pay for products and services in the market. Like other coins such as Bitcoin or fiat currency, SolarCoin can be used to pay for goods and services. You only need to identify a shop that accepts the coin to make a purchase.
  • Trade the SolarCoin in the markets. If you want to optimize returns from SolarCoin, one option is trading it in the markets. This means opening a trading account and pairing the coin with others such as ETH or XPR.

If you are new to trading cryptocurrencies, it is important to start by learning how to analyze the market. This is because the crypto market can be highly volatile and result in losses within a short time.

  • Use SolarCoin to send value on a peer2peer basis. As a cryptocurrency, SolarCoin can be used to send value on a peer2peer basis. This can be done by asking the recipient to join the SolarCoin network or opening a wallet that supports SolarCoin. Then, send the coins to his wallet.
  • Use SolarCoin to pay for government services. If you stay in jurisdictions such as Arizona, Singapore or Switzerland that are supportive of cryptocurrencies, it might be possible to pay for government services using SolarCoin.

In Arizona, bill HB 1091 that was passed in April 2018 allowed residents to pay taxes in cryptocurrencies. According to the bill, when a resident pays taxes using a coin such as SolarCoin, the funds are converted to USD immediately and then credited to his account.

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