Author: Norah Amboko

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Golos

What Is Golos

Blockchain technology is adrift and moving rather fast. After Bitcoin introduced the decentralized and peer2peer method of sending value, programmers have now taken the technology to other niches. One case of this diversification is Golos.

  • A closer look at Golos

Golos (translates to “voice” in Russia) is the main cryptocurrency of the Golos.io platform (a Russian blogging platform). It is a licensed fork of Steemit project that runs on the Graphene blockchain.

This means that the cryptocurrency network has most of the features that you get in the Steemit system.

The Golos cryptocurrency was designed with the primary target of motivating publishing of quality content. It was designed in 2016 by a developer referred to as Cyber Fund. The developer is largely involved in supporting and investing in blockchain startups.

During the launch, ICO was only available to Russians. This method was intended to help promote the adoption of blockchain in the Russian community. The ICO raised $450,000.

  • The performance of Golos

When Golos coins entered the market early in December, the value was $0.07. Then, it grew by about 40% to $0.1 early in February 2017 before dropping to $0.009 in mid-march 2017. Between April and early December 2017, the price rose to $0.18.

Golos reached its highest price of $0.4 early in January 2018. However, the good performance did not last. The price took a bearish turn starting from January culminating to $0.03 in early October 2018. The community is very optimistic that the price will change and take a bullish trend.

What is the problem that Golos Solves?

  • Poor adoption of cryptocurrencies in the market.

Since 2009 when cryptocurrencies debuted, it has been a bumpy road trying to get people to adopt and use them as alternative currencies.

While it might appear like all is well because of a large number of cryptocurrencies, the experts argue that the rate of adoption is very poor.

When new coins enter the market, many people who rush to buy are investors looking forward to selling at a profit in the future. Therefore, people acquiring the coins for direct use in everyday activities such as shopping and paying bills are few.

Golos is aimed at extending the use of the blockchain technology in the social media and publishing niches. Indeed, the cryptocurrency specifically targeted reaching the Russian communities.

  • Lack of motivation for publishers especially in social media.

Today, almost everybody is on social media. The ease of access has made it a rich niche for publishers to sell content. However, the lack of motivation has pushed publishers off the market.

The problem has been worsened by the rising cases of black hat SEO where people plagiarize or release low-quality content but still get credit through tricks such as buying links. Golos targets to address the problem by ensuring that publishers get rewarded for their work.

  • The high volatility of cryptocurrencies.

One of the reasons keeping crypto enthusiasts away from the cryptocurrencies is high volatility.

Unlike the fiat currencies that are controlled by central banks that release more coins or mop them from the market to control inflation, cryptocurrencies do not have central management.

The impact of completely decentralized governance is that response to issues such as competition, regulation, speculation, and new technology swings the price to the extreme.

For example, speculation drove the price of most cryptocurrencies to record high towards the close of 2017.

Bitcoin reached $19,000 early in January 2018. But this growth did not last. In the subsequent months of January through to August, most of the coins experienced sudden price drop to record low. Golos targets to address this volatility so that users can use the coin without worrying their money will lose value.

  • The high cost of sending value.

If you want to send value using a conventional wire transfer, the process is lengthy and expensive.

The bank management reviews the sender and receiver according to banking regulations like know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) rules.

This bureaucratic process makes bank transfers to take many days before getting effected.

Because banks and credit card companies are profit based organizations, they charge high transaction fee to meet all associated costs. Golos targets to address the problem through complete decentralization of the network.

How Does Golos Solve The Problem

As a fork of Steemit platform, the main strategies used by Golos are similar to those used at Steem. Here is a closer look at the solutions for the above problems:

  • A three-tier token ecosystem

A three-tier ecosystem used at Steemit was considered an ingenious method of delivering more value to users. Now, the same model has been carried to Golos to replicate the benefits.

The primary coin on the Golos network is GOLOS that acts like other coins such as Bitcoin. This implies that you can trade the coin in the markets such as Bittrex and Livecoin.

The second coin used on the network is Golos Power is used for voting in the Golos.io network. This implies that if you want to upvote content on the platform, you will need to own some Golos Power. It is also used to reward people who publish quality content.  

The last coin on the Golos.io platform is the Gold Backed by Golos (GBG). The target of this coin is to help people joining the cryptocurrency niche to do it without risking the associated high volatility. In the system, 1GBG is equal to 1 milligram of gold.

  • Total decentralization of the blockchain platform

Like Steemit, Golos is a fully decentralized platform that combines proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithms. Combining the two protocols means that the network helps the platform to enjoy top security derived from PoW and speed of the PoS protocols.

Instead of requiring all the nodes spread in the Golos network to vote before transactions can be confirmed, only the delegates are involved. This means that the transactions are completed faster and the network is more reliable. Note that these delegates are selected by the nodes in its system.

  • Motivating publishers by rewarding them with Golos Power

To promote publishing of quality content, the Golos system rewards creators with Golos Power when their content is upvoted. Note that this model works in two ways. The publishers are motivated to create more high-quality content for Golos to draw more users to the platform.

If you are a publisher and have the skills to create quality content in any specific niche, Golos is an open platform that guarantees ready rewards. Remember that you will need to join the Golos platform before being allowed to publish content.

What makes Golos better than it’s competitors?

The fast-growing competition in the cryptocurrency niche implies that respective network developers gave to innovate and deliver higher value than opponents. Here are the main reasons that make Golos better than competitors.

  • It targets the rich traffic rich social media niche.

While most cryptocurrencies are targeted at facilitating financial transactions, Golos was created for the social media.

With social media platforms attracting a lot of people because of accessibility, Golos expects to reach them to sell content and optimize growth.

Unlike the common social media platforms such as Facebook where good content is only upvoted with no motivation, Golos is likely to win the trust of more publishers for the added rewards.

The platform is likely to become a center for high-quality content. Such growth is expected to also push the price of the native coin, GOLOS up.

  • Golos offers more products that many coins such as Bitcoin.

To make social media more valuable and increase adoption in the market, Golos has adopted more products that most coins in the market. For example, users can join the platform to send funds on a peer2per basis, post content, or upvote content.

  • Golos system is completely decentralized.

Golos beats the conventional financial platforms for operating a completely decentralized network. By running as a network of nodes that help to confirm transactions in the platform, Golos does not suffer from a single point of failure.

This means that users can join and use the platform without worrying about getting attacked and/or losing their funds.

The decentralized system has been crucial in helping to pull down the cost of sending value because payments are made on a peer2peer basis. Even when sending funds to a different part of the globe, the transactions are instant and cheap.

The only thing needed is for the payer and payee to be in the same network.

  • The platform is associated with the successful Steemit platform.

By associating Golos with Steemit, the development team expects to replicate the success that Dan Larimer and Ned Scott achieved even in other platforms such as Antshares and EOS. Because of the close association with these platforms, Golos is likely to enjoy features that are discovered in them.

How can Golos be categorized?

Golos is a completely decentralized platform of the social media that targets to extend the reach of blockchain technology to more people in the community. Its unique design of the 3-token system has helped to answer different issues such as high volatility and high transaction costs in the conventional media.

The main undoing of the platform is that it was created with the primary target being the Russian community. This means that it might take time before others outside Russia can join and help to grow the platform.

Experts have indicated that this could be the primary cause of the current low price of GOLO in the market.

What’s Golos’s vision on Security?

The Golos vision on security is to become the most secure and reliable cryptocurrency in the market. The focus is to help users to join the platform and use it without worrying that of losing their coins through attacks. Here are some of the methods used to keep the platform secure.

  • The system uses advanced encryption that helps to make user information and transaction details inaccessible.
  • The development team progressively reviews the Golos system to identify gaps and seal them through regular updates. This helps to prevent attackers who seek to take advantage of vulnerabilities to break into cryptocurrency networks.

Examples of Golos’s use cases / applications

Golos entered the market where hundreds of other cryptocurrencies were already in operation. Despite this, the development team has been very aggressive in extending the use cases of the applications of Golos. Here are some of the use cases.

  • Sending value on the Golos platform.

Golos main coin, GOLO, can be used to send value on a peer2peer basis. This implies that you can use it to bypass the standard centralized banking or credit card organizations. Note that to send value using Golos, both the sender and recipient must be in the network.

  • Paying transaction fee on the Golos system.

When you are processing transactions on the Golos platform, a transaction fee has to be paid in the native coin. Whether you are sending value or voting for content in the platform, you will need either GOLO or Golo Power coins to clear the payment.

  • Trade GOLO in the markets.

If you want to make more money from Golos, you could opt to trade the native coins in the exchanges. These are the main markets that bring together buyers and sellers so that the price is driven by forces of demand and supply. Note that the exchanges require users to start by opening accounts, funding them, and then pairing Golos with other coins such as Bitcoin and Ripple.

  • Gold Backed by Golos (GBG) for saving.

Unlike the standard cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum that are faced by the serious problem of volatility, Gold Backed by Golos is stable and very effective for saving money. This implies that when you buy Gold Backed by Golos (GBG), the price will be as stable as that of gold bullions. It is considered a better way of saving cash on a decentralized system instead of using the conventional banking system.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@dek/what-are-your-thoughts-on-golos

https://coincheckup.com/coins/golos/predictions

https://coincheckup.com/coins/golos

https://coincheckup.com/coins/golos/analysis/

https://golos.io/

 

 

 

 

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MergeCoin

What Is MergeCoin

MergeCoin is a peer2peer cryptocurrency and an open-source platform designed to help users run instant financial transactions. The coin operates as a decentralized cryptocurrency that rewards participants based on “connectivity age” and not “coin age” that has become easy to abuse especially from the exchanges by people who do not actively help support the networks.

  • A closer look at MergeCoin

MergeCoin was created early in 2017 and entered into the market by the close of April the same year. On April 27th, 2017 the price of the native coin was $0.09. Then, it dropped slightly to $0.07 by mid-May 2017 before rising sharply to $0.1 towards the close of the month.

The price dropped early in June 2017 before hitting another peak of $0.19 towards the close of the month. But that good performance did not last. Between July 2017 and January 2018, the price took a bearish trend culminating to a low of $0.01.

The most notable thing about MergeCoin is its ability to steadily push a bullish trend when most of the coins’ prices were taking a downward trend. For example, the price of the coin rose from $0.028 in late January 2018 to $0.19 in April the same year.

Note that the MergeCoin has been inactive in the market since May 2018.

What is the problem that MergeCoin Solves?

Though the blockchain niche has been growing at a steady rate, it has been suffering from serious challenges. Here are some of the issues that MergeCoin solves.

  • Lack of privacy in financial institutions

If you take a closer look at the current governance of most financial institutions, their structures lack privacy.

Personal information and transaction details are known to cashiers, bank management, and even political administration. Indeed, the details can even be ordered by a court of law if you are facing criminal charges.

Lack of privacy implies that you can become an easy target for both political and business reasons.

Note that even in some cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, advanced technologies are now making it possible to pull out individual information. MergeCoin seeks to address this problem by ensuring that all transactions and personal details are completely out of reach.

  • High cost and slow transactions when sending value

Most centralized services such as banks and credit card companies follow strict guidelines outlined in the law.  When clients send value, they have to check their background and ensure that the funds are not proceeds of fraud. This makes the transactions to slow.

Because the centralized financial service providers are profit-oriented, they also charge very high transaction costs. The cost is used to meet the expenses of paying staff, renting space, and profit. Now, MergeCoin is providing a better way for faster and cheaper transactions.

  • Centralized mining

While the principal goal of cryptocurrencies is to facilitate decentralized operations, the development of advanced ASICs mining equipment has become a serious threat. Though they are designed to generate more hashing power than the common GPUs and CPUs, they are very expensive and out of reach for the average person.

This implies that mining and associated rewards are only available to the well to do in the community. The issue raises the threat of the networks suffering from 51% attacks. MergeCoin addresses the problem through proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

How Does MergeCoin Solve The Problem

The founders of MergeCoin wanted to have a competitive edge in the market by crafting a system that addresses the outlined problems. Here are some of the solutions it adopted.

  • Static-proof of stake algorithm

Proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm was created as an alternative to proof of work (PoW) protocol that is used in many pioneer coins such as Bitcoin and Litecoin.

However, even the PoS protocol was still subject to abuse because people would only need to buy some stake and get a reward. MergeCoin opted for a different type protocol referred to as Static proof of stake.

Under the static proof of stake system, users on the platform are rewarded based on their behavior to support a secure, fast, and robust system. This means that you will need to use the coins stored in the MergeCoin platform to get rewarded.

  • Complete decentralization

MergeCoin operates as a completely decentralized system. It is a set of nodes in its system that work together to confirm transactions and govern the system.

This implies that there is no centralized administration and the nodes are called to vote when changes are being implemented in the network.

As a decentralized network, users who want to send funds are able to do it on a peer2peer basis without going through third parties. This means that transactions are instant and cheaper.

  • Use of masternodes

Masternodes are used in the MergeCoin to help in breaking up transactions into multiple and undistinguishable relays to make the original transaction complex.

Then, they send them in different paths and are only merged at the final destination.

The target is obfuscating the transaction details so that no one can easily follow and know the personal details of the sender. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people have been joining MergeCoin, especially from other less anonymous networks.

What makes MergeCoin better than it’s competitors?

The cryptocurrency niche has become an attraction that is drawing interest from all companies and computing experts.

By the close of the third quarter of 2018, over 1600 cryptocurrencies had entered the market. Here are some of the things that make MergeCoin better than the competitors.

  • MergeCoin is a completely decentralized system.

Unlike the conventional banking system, MergeCoin operates as a completely decentralized system. This means that it does not have a single point of failure.  It utilizes the advanced static proof of stake (PoS) model that involves using the nodes with a stake in the network to facilitate transactions and keep the system secure.

  • MergeCoin uses an effective system of masternodes to help make transactions secure and anonymous

As more governments target the cryptocurrencies, anonymity is becoming even more crucial. MergeCoin uses a system of masternodes to break transactions and obfuscate the tracks so that no third party can easily know the user’s personal details. This implies that you can now use the network without worrying of third-party seizures or attacks.

  • The platform is cheaper and faster to use than centralized organizations

As a decentralized network, MergeCoin system bypasses profit-seeking organizations such as banks to make transactions faster and cheaper. This implies that users will no longer need to wait for three days to send value from one part of the globe to another. The MergeCoin system allows users to send funds instantly no matter the location of the sender and the receiver.

  • The MergeCoin platform allows users to join and own the network

The MergeCoin system uses proof of stake consensus model that implies it is owned by the people who have some stake there. This means that when you buy some MergeCoin coins, you will be called to help in making key decisions to build consensus because you are part of the system governance.

How can MergeCoin be categorized?

MergeCoin can be categorized as a completely decentralized and truly anonymous platform. Its design has helped to effectively address most of the issues that had proven very difficult for pioneering platforms such as Litecoin.

The platform has helped to advance the blockchain industry by demonstrating how static PoS, a variant of the proof of stake consensus algorithm can be applied to help keep crypto networks more secure. Now, people have to get actively involved to receive rewards for staking the network.

What’s MergeCoin’s vision on Security?

The MergeCoin’s mission on security is to become the most secure and anonymous cryptocurrency network in the industry. As technology advances, the crypto community is getting worried that older encryption methods such as the use of pseudonyms at Bitcoin will become obsolete and make their transactions accessible to third parties.

MergeCoin puts a lot of effort in keeping the platform secure and attractive to users. Here are the main strategies.

  • The platform operates as a completely decentralized system using static proof of stake consensus protocol. The protocol helps to ensure that the coins are distributed evenly to reduce the danger 51% attack.
  • MergeCoin also uses advanced encryption and masternodes that help to keep the users’ information and personal details anonymous.
  • The development team at MergeCoin reviews the network regularly to identify gaps and fix them promptly before attackers can take advantage of the vulnerabilities.
  • The MergeCoin system uses QT wallets for Windows, Mac, and Linux to ensure that users have total control over their private keys. Remember to keep the keys as secure as possible to avoid losing the native coins.

Examples of MergeCoin’s use cases / applications

When MergeCoin was unveiled early in 2017, the founders wanted to win a greeter market share in the unfolding market. Therefore, they targeted to make the coin has as many use cases as possible. Here are some of its applications.

  • Use MergeCoin to pay for transaction fee on the native network.

If you want to use the MergeCoin network to send value on a peer2peer basis, the transaction fee has to be paid in MGC. The transaction fee is used to facilitate the development of the network and motivating miners.

  • Trader MergeCoin in the markets for a profit.

Like other coins, MergeCoin can be used for trading in the exchanges. These are markets that list the coin and provide the meeting point for buyers and sellers. To trade the coin, you will need to register a trading account, verify it, and fund with MergeCoin.

You will also need to create the right currency pairs before executing a trade. For example, you can pair MergeCoin with Bitcoin to form BTC/MGC or Ripple to trade as MGC/XRP.  Remember to get some insights into trading in respective platforms.

  • Use MergeCoin to pay for government services in countries that support cryptocurrencies.

When cryptocurrencies were first unveiled, many governments felt threatened. They held the view that the digital coins were unnecessary disruption and required to be blocked using all possible ways. However, this view is changing and some jurisdictions are now allowing people to pay government services using digital coins.

One such jurisdiction is Arizona. In April 2018, Arizona passed HB 1091 that allows residents to pay taxes using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and MergeCoin. When users pay taxes with the digital coins, they are converted to fiat and credited in their tax accounts.

  • Use MergeCoin to pay for goods and services.

The fast-growing digital space is attracting a lot of traders who are out searching for more effective methods of facilitating payments. If you have some MergeCoin, simply look for the store that accepts them for direct payment. If only a different coin is supported, consider converting MergeCoin to the accepted coin to complete the payment.

  • Buy the native coins to save your money.

If you save funds in a bank, the transactions and stored value are known to many entities including the cashiers, bank management and the political administration. You cannot do anything privately. However, MergeCoin allows users to buy the native coins and save their money anonymously.

NOTE:  While the MergeCoin structure and performance in the market have been impressive, the community is concerned about the inactivity from the market starting from May 2018. Therefore, it is important to follow the best practices when investing or joining the network.

First, you should not invest all your funds in the network. It is advisable to spread over a number of cryptocurrencies. Second, you should compare the network with others offering similar services. Good examples, in this case, include Zcash and Ripple.

https://coincheckup.com/coins/mergecoin

http://www.mergechain.com/Mergecoin%20Technical%20Whitepaper.pdf