FTX Exchange Review

FTX Report – 4th February 2021

Overview:

FTX is a centralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. It offers a web platform and mobile app where you can buy, sell, and trade crypto.

The CMP of FTT on 4th February is $43.71

 

What is FTX?

FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange designed for trading by traders launched in May 2019. FTX provides cutting-edge products like as futures, options, volatility products, and leveraged tokens. They work hard to provide a platform that is both sophisticated enough for professional trading businesses and simple enough for first-time consumers.

The term derivative refers to a type of financial contract whose value is dependent on an underlying asset, group of assets, or benchmark. A derivative is set between two or more parties that can trade on an exchange or over-the-counter (OTC).

It is currently #27 (based on Mcap) in the cryptocurrency market. FTX token’s native token “FTT” has a max supply of 352 million FTTs and currently has 138.148 million FTTs (39%) in circulation. It is currently listed on all the major exchanges.

Binance, Coinbase, Bibox, Coinbase Pro, and OKEx are among FTX Exchange’s main competitors.

 

How does FTX bring value to the table?

Alameda Research, a crypto trading thought leader and the leading liquidity provider in the secondary markets, is behind FTX. Many of the following aspects are dependent on Alameda’s skill, making them difficult for someone else to imitate.

  • Live Product:- Unlike many other exchanges and companies that are raising funds through token sales, their exchange is already operational.

  • Liquidity from Day 1:- FTX is quite liquid. It already has greater liquidity than any other cryptocurrency futures market; only the BitMEX BTC perpetual futures are more liquid than their FTX counterpart. This is really difficult to recreate. No new exchanges will be able to do so, and those that have been operational for 5 years have only done so for a single contract.

  • Domain Expertise: – FTX is created by people who are intimately familiar with the products. Everything from collateral to maintenance margins to liquidation processes to product listing has been completely redesigned from the bottom up by one of the products’ most avid users.

  • Pioneering New Products: – They are the first to launch USDT futures and leveraged tokens. These items are in high demand, and anticipate that they will become quite popular.

  • Fast Development Cycle:- FTX can reap the benefits of Alameda’s tech staff, which is a skilled, battle-tested company that has built complicated crypto trading systems under time constraints. This implies that their development cycle is substantially shorter than others’, allowing them to release numerous big features every day.

  • Strong Partnerships:- They are now working with USDC and TUSD. Because Alameda is a vital element of the secondary markets, they have strong ties with leading exchanges, trading firms, OTC desks, and so forth, with whom they will collaborate.

Additional value-added:-

  • Clawback Prevention: – A clawback is a contractual provision whereby money already paid to an employee must be returned to an employer or benefactor, sometimes with a penalty. Socialized losses have taken a large amount of consumer cash on various derivatives exchanges. By employing a three-tiered liquidation model, FTX considerably minimizes the possibility of clawbacks occurring. 

  • Centralized Collateral Pool + Universal Stablecoin Settlement: – Collateral on existing futures markets is dispersed over several tokens and margin wallets. This makes it harder for traders to rebalance and avoid liquidating holdings. FTX derivatives are stablecoin-settled and require only one global margin wallet to address these difficulties.

  • Leveraged Tokens: – These tokens enable traders to enter short or leveraged trades without needing to use margin. A trader who wishes to 3x short Bitcoin, for example, may simply purchase a 3x short Bitcoin leveraged token on FTX. Leveraged coins are ERC-20 compliant and may be traded on any spot exchange.

  • USDT Futures: – USDT futures are game changers; many major crypto enterprises sorely need a mechanism to hedge USDT deltas given the currency’s past volatility, and USDT futures will provide that.

 

Tokenomics

FTT is the native cryptocurrency token of the crypto derivatives trading platform FTX that launched on May 8, 2019. The market cap of the native token is approximately $6.1 billion, placing it among the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap in the world. It has a max supply of 352 million FTTs and currently has 138.148 million FTTs (39%) in circulation. One-third of all FTX market fees are used to buy FTT off the open market and permanently remove it from circulation. This feature renders FTT deflationary for a token with a fixed supply cap. FTT has ample volume on any other exchanges it increasing the likelihood that the price is not being manipulated by FTX.

FTT was created to serve as the platform’s backbone and propel it forward. Originally supplied as a reward for exchange transactions, the FTT token now serves various services within its ecosystem, such as VIP discounts based on the number of coins owned by users or prizes for supplying liquidity through futures contracts trading with their own FTT currency.

One of the most significant advantages of utilizing FTT is acquiring a reduction on trading expenses. Crypto futures not only have a smaller charge, but they also have narrower spreads. The percentage differential might be as high as 60% for active traders on the FTX platform. Traders can also utilize FTT as collateral for future trades.

 

 

Competition Analysis

 

FTX vs Binance

Looking at the sorts of products that both exchanges provide, we can see that they have a lot of similarities in terms of their overall offering. The main distinction is that Binance is more focused on the spot market and has a broader variety of currencies, whilst FTX is primarily focused on the futures market. Both exchanges also feature goods that are exclusive to them, such as Binance Earn, Crypto Loans, P2P market, and so on. FTX, on the other hand, features volatility and prediction markets. Also, both of these exchanges are entering the NFT sector and have recently launched their NFT marketplace.

 

The web and app interfaces for each of these exchanges are exceptionally clean and user-friendly. The interface may be difficult for a total newcomer to grasp, but a trader with any expertise will readily navigate around the exchange. However, Binance has an advantage here because of its extensive resource collection known as Binance Academy. Binance Academy not only teaches consumers how the exchange works but also how the crypto market operates and what the newest market trends are.

Both exchanges have relatively low costs on their spot trade market, and the rates continue to fall as volume grows; nonetheless, FTX wins here, charging 0.02 percent as a maker fee and 0.07 percent as a taker fee for tier 1 accounts. This is much less than the 0.1 percent maker and taker fee charged by Binance. In fact, even after utilizing the local currency BNB for trading, the customer will have to pay a fee of 0.075 percent, which is still greater than what FTX charges.

Binance being #1 and FTX being #3 in the exchange market FTX has a great deal of potential to grow even bigger than Binance as of now Binance has a weekly visit of 34,051,317 whereas FTX has 4,373,686 and the average liquidity of Binance is 802 while FTX has 685 which is not that far from Binance.

 

 

Team, Media & Community strength

 

Sam Bankman-Fried is the co-founder and CEO of FTX.  Sam worked as a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk before starting FTX. He traded a wide range of ETFs, futures, currencies, and stocks, as well as designed their automated OTC trading system. He received a physics degree from MIT.

 

 

Gary Wang is the co-founder and CTO of FTX. Gary worked as a software developer at Google before launching FTX. He designed systems that aggregate costs over millions of flights, reducing latency and memory use by more than half. He earned a degree in Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT.

 

 

Nishad Singh is the Head of Engineering at FTX. Nishad worked as a software engineer at Facebook before joining FTX, where he focused on applied Machine Learning. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, with the highest distinction.

 

FTX’s social media family is growing rapidly on Twitter and telegram. They have over 380.4K followers on Twitter and 58k members in telegram in just over 3 years. They have had a lot of traction in news articles and is been closely monitored because it has a promising future and a lot of potentials to grow.

 

Conclusion

FTX being a trading platform, cryptocurrency users who wish to invest in any major cryptocurrency will ultimately learn about or use the platform. This gives FTT holders a significant edge because they may anticipate the token’s price to increase as more users join the platform and utilize it as a trading platform on a daily basis.

On both its international and US exchanges, FTX maintains strict security requirements. Neither has been the victim of a security event, such as a data leak or hack, to date. FTX requires two-factor authentication (2FA). The Authy or Google Authenticator app is recommended by the exchange, although there are other 2FA choices available as well. You may also need 2FA and a different password for all withdrawals on your account with FTX.

The team comes from leading Wall Street quant funds and tech companies: Jane Street, Optiver, Susquehanna, Facebook, and Google. They are familiar with the traditional secondary market. They have backgrounds in equity derivatives trading; they know both how derivatives are traditionally designed, and what derivatives there is market demand for.

Investing in FTT appears to be a sensible idea when past trends and general price patterns of similar cryptocurrencies are considered. Since early 2021, FTT has returned about 1,000%. Even from the standpoint of the crypto market, this is nothing but astounding.

Because of the unique trading instruments it provides, the FTX exchange has a “first-mover” edge in several crypto worlds with its creative array. Overall, FTX is well worth a look if you’re interested in cryptocurrencies.

 

Important links and sources

https://medium.com/

https://coinmarketcap.com/

https://research.binance.com/

https://ftx.com/

 

Get deeper insights into the crypto market’s weekly trends discussed on our Spotify podcast.

Start your Crypto Investments with XMINT Bots today

Algorand Blockchain Overview

Algorand Report – 28th January 2021

Overview:

Algorand provides the foundation on which crypto networks, decentralized programs (DApps), and crypto coins can be built. It is one of the most well-known layers 1 blockchain on the market.

The CMP of ALGO on 28th January is $0.93

 

What is Algorand?

Algorand is a scalability-focused, decentralized blockchain-based network that can be used for a variety of purposes. It is smart contract enabled and uses a consensus mechanism based on proof of stake and a Byzantine agreement protocol (more on this below). These systems are safe, scalable, and efficient, which are all important characteristics for real-world applications.

It’s competing with the likes of Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot and has claimed to have solved the biggest problem, “The blockchain trilemma”, which is faced by all of its peers.  

It is currently #25 (based on Mcap) in the cryptocurrency market. Algorand’s native token “ALGO” has a fixed supply of 10 billion ALGOs and currently has 6.55 billion ALGOs (65%) in circulation. It is currently listed on all the major exchanges.

 

What problem does Algorand solve?

Security, decentralization, and scalability are three characteristics of the ideal blockchain. However, achieving all three characteristics is extremely difficult and often blockchain achieves only 2 out of the 3 characteristics. If you go for Security and decentralization, you are sacrificing scalability, if you are going for decentralization and scalability then you are sacrificing security and if you are going for security and scalability, you are going to sacrifice decentralization. 

Security: Blockchain is inherently secure, but is not entirely immune to hacking. If a hacker is able to secure control of more than half of the network (51%), they are able to alter a blockchain and manipulate transactions to steal from the network. In blockchain, the more nodes, the more security.

Scalability: In blockchain, scalability is similar to scalability in business; it refers to how large a network may expand in the future while keeping the current level of transaction speed and output.

Decentralization: The concept of decentralization is simple; it means that there isn’t a central authority that has power. When decentralization is taken out of the equation, we land back to the existing world of centralized organizations.  

Bitcoin targets decentralization and security but it has issues with scalability as the Bitcoin network’s limited ability to process huge volumes of transaction data on its platform in a short period of time. It has to do with the fact that the amount and frequency of records on the Bitcoin blockchain are restricted.

Iota consists of decentralization and scalability but lacks security because, on November 26, 2019, a hacker identified a vulnerability in MoonPay’s third-party payment service, which is linked into the IOTA Foundation’s mobile and desktop wallet. Over 50 IOTA seeds were hacked, resulting in the theft of nearly $2 million in IOTA tokens.

EOS has scalability and security but decentralization is its priority as the blockchain platform EOS has been embroiled in a crisis, with evidence showing that some verified transactions were reversed surfacing on Reddit. The company’s approach toward decentralization worried the crypto community.

The blockchain scalability problem has arisen due to the ever-increasing number of nodes. Even though blockchain has been available for more than a decade, scalability issues may limit its use. One of the biggest reasons, why Bitcoin and Ethereum are popular is due to the decentralization and security aspect but to get mass adoption, you need to be scalable. Ethereum and Bitcoin are far from that.

 

How does Algorand solve this problem?

Traditional cryptocurrency networks, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others, are often quite crowded. Transactions take a long time to process and are costly. The Algorand network tries to address this issue by lowering gas costs and speeding up transactions without comprising decentralization.

With only 5 TPS, Bitcoin is the slowest in this category. The Ethereum network has a maximum throughput of 13 TPS. Algorand can handle up to 1,000 TPS and hopes to reach 46,000 TPS in the near future. The blockchain is going to get “instant finality,” which implies transactions can never be challenged, amended, or reversed. This feature will considerably increase the network’s scalability.

Being a blockchain technology Algorand is prone to network partition but it tackles the problem as for instance when a group of Algorand users observes no progress for a period of time. About the time it takes to agree on one block, they enter partition recovery mode. Users are constantly sending out recovery messages in this scenario, these messages are not correctly transmitted during a partition.

However, these messages are swiftly spread after partition, and once a certain number of messages have been gathered, the users are synchronized, and the blockchain continues to move forward. Algorand can recover from partitions almost instantly.

For those who have used cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the issue of scalability is a nagging itch that won’t go away. Algorand uses its Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS) algorithm and the byzantine agreement protocol to tackle this problem.

What is Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS)?

It is a permissionless consensus mechanism unique to the Algorand Blockchain that enables full participation in a genuinely decentralized network, as well as blockchain security and fast transfer rates. The fact that validators are chosen to participate not only based on the consistency of their stake — that is, the quantity of $ALGO they hold — but also by random selection, regardless of how many coins they own, makes this protocol a version of Proof of Stake.

What is Byzantine agreement protocol?

Byzantine fault-tolerant protocols are distributed algorithms that are resistant to a wide range of failures. This task necessitates the use of the Byzantine agreement protocol. A protocol for distributed computing is the Byzantine Agreement protocol. It gets its name from a 1982 challenge posed by Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, which is based on a historical problem.

Multiple organizations have started noticing the value propositions of Algorand and have decided to collaborate with Algorand. Here are some of the collaborations,

  • Circle:- Algorand will be the first blockchain to create a stablecoin based on that technology, which will be powered by USDC. People will be able to effortlessly transfer money from traditional banks and card networks to digital dollars on the Algorand blockchain as a result of this.  Algorand is assisting Circle and USDC in laying the groundwork for a variety of scalable, secure, and compliant financial applications. Algorand also provides Stablecoins with unrivaled speed and minimal transaction costs.

  • IDEX:-  The Algorand platform is being used by IDEX to construct a Layer-1 solution with complete finality, asset tokenization, and programmable transfers. IDEX will be able to offload smart contract difficulties onto the Algorand platform’s native features thanks to Algorand’s upcoming unique and high-performing primitives. Algorand’s main offerings will provide significant value to IDEX.

  • Republic:- Republic is using the Algorand platform to power their profit-sharing token, the Republic Note, with its low-cost structure and large throughput volumes. Republic is also employing technology at the vanguard of open financial innovation with Algorand’s streamlined asset generation, quick financial exchange, and immediate transaction finality. Algorand allows the Republic system to meet the needs of a regulated security token that may be traded freely across a wide range of investments. The Republic Note will be issued as an Algorand Standard Asset (ASA), offering it the speed, scalability, and interoperability that its holders will expect.

  • Tether:- USDT may be transacted at over 1000 transactions per second using Algorand’s network in a scalable, safe, and decentralized manner. Tether is employing technology at the vanguard of open financial innovation with Algorand’s streamlined asset generation, quick financial exchange, and immediate transaction finality.

More collaborations with Algorand

 

Tokenomics

The Algo is the native coin of the Algorand blockchain network. 10 billion Algo were coined at the start of the Algorand blockchain, and this 10 billion Algo reflects the Algo’s fixed and unchangeable maximum supply. The mainnet of Algorand became operational in June 2019 and was capable of processing around 1 million transactions per day. It has a circulating supply of 6.53B tokens which is 65% of the max supply

It is used to promote network membership and power transactions or state changes. Users can stake their ALGO in return for inflation incentives by indicating whether they are offline or online in the system. The Foundation owns Algos in order to contribute to the Algorand blockchain’s stability, to encourage network involvement, and to assist the Algorand community, ecosystem development, and research. The Algos enter the ecosystem through a variety of routes, including donations for development and research, participation awards, and sales. All of these efforts are openly revealed to the Algorand community.

The Dutch auction ended on the same day as the mainnet launch of Algorand, which generated 10 billion ALGOs at genesis. To encourage further protocol development, the creators and the Algorand Foundation were given a total of 2.5 billion ALGO tokens (25 percent of the original supply). The remaining ALGO will be dispersed through incentives, grants, and auctions.

 

Competition Analysis

Algorand vs Ethereum

Smart contracts are handled by Algorand in two layers: on-chain and off-chain. On Layer-1, the technology enables smart contracts to function ‘on-chain,’ similar to how Ethereum works. This implies that each smart contract adds traffic to the network, and having too many of them might cause the network to slow down. In order to circumvent this, Algorand also provides layer-2 smart contracts, which are executed “off-chain.”

This implies that the smart contract does not add traffic to the network; instead, it is run outside of it and then recorded in the blockchain ledger. Ethereum is moving away from its PoW design and toward a PoS model. Algorand employs the more ‘democratized’ Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) process, which implies that only a small number of miners will be rewarded for putting their computational power to work on the blockchain.

Algorand has a transaction speed of 1000 while Ethereum has only 13 which is way faster than Ethereum. The minimal transaction size on Algorand is 0.001 Algos, and it is determined solely by the transaction size which is less than a dollar, while Ethereum costs around $14.78 per transaction.

Algorand vs Cardano

The difference between Algorand and Cardano is that Algorand was created to use other technologies with pure proof of stake, which deals with scalability difficulties, whereas Cardano was created to solve issues relating to operability and simplicity of development. Cardano has a TPS of 257 while Algorand has a TPS of 1000. Cardano fees are 0.16 ADA per transaction, which is $0.4 while Algorand fees are $0.0085 which is cheaper than Cardano.

 

Team, Media & Community strength

Silvio developed Algorand in 2017,  Silvio is in charge of all research at Algorand, including theory, security, and crypto finance. Silvio has received the Turing Award (in computer science), the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science), and the RSA prize (in cryptography) (in cryptography). He is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Arts and Sciences, as well as the Accademia dei Lincei. Silvio holds a Laurea in Mathematics from the University of Rome as well as a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1983, Silvio Micali has been a member of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT.  Silvio is credited for co-inventing probabilistic encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Verifiable Random Functions, and a number of other protocols that form the backbone of current cryptography.

Steve is the CEO of Algorand and is in charge of the company’s overarching vision and strategy. Steve is a serial entrepreneur who most recently served as co-founder and Executive Chairman of Fuze, which has employees of over 700 people and serves over 1500 business clients across the world. Prior to joining Fuze, Steve was a co-founder of BladeLogic, Inc., a market leader in data centrer automation with Fortune 500 clients such as GE, Time Warner, Microsoft, Cable & Wireless, Walmart, and Sprint. Bladelogic had a successful initial public offering (IPO) and was eventually bought by BMC Software for $800 million. Prior to joining BladeLogic, Steve was the co-founder and CEO of Web Yes, Inc., an early industry leader in the Web hosting and application service provider space.

Sean is Algorand’s COO, in charge of product management, engineering, marketing, and worldwide community growth, as well as go-to-market execution and operations. Sean comes to Algorand after serving as the Chief Marketing Officer at LogMeIn. Sean worked for Avid Technology as a member of the company’s Executive Leadership Team, where he supervised global marketing strategy and operations. Sean graduated from Williams College with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business.

Algorand’s social media family is growing rapidly on Twitter and telegram. They have over 228.8K followers on Twitter and 43k members in telegram in just over 2-3 years. They have been in numerous news articles in 2021 and are already been in 2-3 articles in 2022 which states that Algorand is been closely monitored by the people, showing a lot of potential in the blockchain technology.

Conclusion

The pure proof-of-stake protocol developed by Algorand has resulted in a secure, decentralized, scalable, inexpensive, rapid, and environmentally friendly blockchain system, that is gradually being used by businesses around the world. If the Algorand ecosystem continues to grow, the value of its native token, ALGO, is expected to rise.

It is also one of the few projects that have its investment arm, called Borderless Capital. On November 30, the Miami-based venture capital company announced the launch of a new $500 million fund to invest in the Algo DeFi ecosystem.

It’s no wonder that Algorand has become such a hot project, with a devoted core team focused on creating the greatest technology possible in the decentralized field, as well as some of the most coveted partnership lists out there. Algorand, led by one of the world’s finest living cryptographers, has appeared out of nowhere and appears to be the most definite candidate to dominate the smart contract race.

Important links and sources

https://medium.com/

https://coinmarketcap.com/

https://research.binance.com/

https://www.algorand.com/

 

Get deeper insights into the crypto market’s weekly trends discussed on our Spotify podcast.

Start your Crypto Investments with XMINT Bots today

elrond-02

Elrond Blockchain Overview

Elrond Blockchain Overview

Overview:

Elrond is a blockchain-based platform designed for scalability, speed, and security. It creates a network powerful enough to operate at “internet-scale” by putting a new twist on existing technology.

The CMP of EGLD on 21st  January is $158.71

What is Elrond?

Elrond is a blockchain technology that uses sharding to provide incredibly fast transaction rates. Fintech, decentralized banking and the Internet of Things are all part of the project’s description as a technological ecosystem for the future internet.

What is Sharding?

Sharding is a database partitioning technique used by blockchain companies to increase scalability and the number of transactions processed per second. Sharding is the process of dividing a blockchain company’s whole network into smaller “shards.” When compared to other shards, each shard is made up of its own data, making it separate and autonomous.

What is Adaptive State Sharding?

The optimal approach to blockchain sharding needs to take into consideration advantages from all three sharding types: State, Transactions & Network. Elrond’s approach to increased throughput, called “Adaptive State Sharding”, combines all three sharding types into a solution that improves communication inside the shards and dramatically increases performance through parallel processing.

  •  

What is Secure Proof of Stake(PoS)?

Elrond has presented “Secure Proof of Stake,” a revolutionary approach to a consensus that removes PoW computational waste and combines eligibility via stake and rating with random validator selection and an optimal dimension for the consensus group. Through random sampling of the consensus group and random reshuffling of nodes into different shards, the BFT-like consensus process ensures a high level of security. The consensus relies on an unbiased randomness source that the block proposer generates by signing the preceding random source.

Why Elrond matters and its problem-solving capabilities  

Elrond builds on prior PoS models to provide a low-cost, easy-to-use, and low-barrier-to-entry staking infrastructure. Given the popularity of staking cryptocurrencies, blockchain platforms must be designed to allow high levels of scalability to maintain long-term viability. Elrond was intended to serve as the backbone of a new permissionless, borderless, and globally accessible internet economy. It is a highly scalable, fast, and secure blockchain platform.

  •  High Energy Consumption:- Bitcoin’s energy power usage is comparable to Finland’s demand. Slightly better, staking on Ethereum is comparable to the whole country of Ireland’s electricity consumption. Elrond’s energy production, on the other hand, is just 1:36,000 of Bitcoin and 1: 12,130 of Ethereum.
  •  Staking isn’t as simple:- Depositing money into a traditional bank account and watching it grow isn’t staking. Each cryptocurrency has its own set of laws, fixed terms, and returns on investment, not to mention the fact that the entrance hurdle is still fairly high. Elrond, on the other hand, has devised a simple staking method. You may quickly stake EGLD after you’ve accessed the Elrond Wallet by clicking the stake button on the main screen.
  •   Expensive Barrier to Entry:-  In order to become a validator on the ETH network, you will require a minimum stake of 32 ETH- which still imposes a serious barrier to entry. Depending on how much EGLD you wish to stake on Elrond, you have many alternatives. You can stake as a Validator (running a node + 2,500 eGold) or a Delegator (minimum 1 eGold per delegation) on Elrond, making it easy for anybody to participate. Each day, right after 14:00 UTC, the incentives for validators and delegators are automatically awarded.

Use cases:-

  • Mobility and the blockchain:- The automobile of the future is networked with service providers and external partners. The properties of the Elrond blockchain – security, decentralization, and speed – offer automotive manufacturers and mobility service providers scope for designing innovative mobility concepts.
  • Blockchain & Monitoring:- A vehicle’s life cycle may be tracked using the Elrond blockchain and smart contracts. If a car is broken, it can offer repair choices on its own, order spare components, negotiate repair charges, and find an appropriate repair shop. Self-driving car development is already aided by blockchain technology. Traffic data is collected in real-time during this procedure in order to enhance the system.
  • Blockchain & Security:- Accidents and unexpected occurrences, such as severe weather, can be communicated to other road users via car-to-car communication. This prevents (future) mishaps. Congestion management that is intelligent suggests other routes to crowded roadways. A transaction on the Elrond blockchain is used to charge the service. If the appropriate data, such as the driver, driving behavior, and so on, are kept on the blockchain, smart contracts can assist to explain who is to blame in the case of an accident.
  • Smart Accounts:- Elrond is designed to enable non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and includes a Smart Accounts NFT framework. Smart Accounts behave similarly to regular blockchain accounts, but with the added benefit of key-value data storage at the account level. They allow users to save a huge amount of data in their Elrond Network account, including emails, bitcoin addresses, private identification data, health data, proof of citizenship, Know-Your-Customer (KYC) information, and more.

Tokenomics

The Elrond eGold (EGLD) Token is native to the Elrond Network and is supposed to be used for everything from staking, governance, transactions, smart contracts, and validator rewards. EGLD token is deflationary. Elrond was first announced in August 2019, and its MainNet went live in July 2020. They have a max supply of 31M tokens out of which 20M tokens are circulating which is 64% of the total supply. The recently launched $1.29 billion liquidity incentive program to supercharge the launch of the Maiar Dex has also brought new attention to the chain recently. The recently launched $1.29 billion liquidity incentive program to supercharge the launch of the Maiar Dex has also brought new attention to the chain recently.

Competition Analysis

Elrond vs Ethereum 

Ethereum and Elrond are similar in many ways. EGLD, like ETH, allows the development of many applications on its blockchain. It is a development space for DApps, smart contracts, and many other things. Elrond is faster and cheaper than Ethereum. It has a speed of 15,000 transactions per second whereas Ethereum has 15 transactions per second which make Elrond 1000 times faster and it costs over $0.001 per transaction which is way cheaper than Ethereum. It’s easier to make money passively with Elrond with PoS. The security of the Elrond Network is stronger.

Elrond vs Solana

Solana is restricted by hardware. Elrond solved all three aspects of sharding. They are the only ones who have done so. Solana has proof of history in which data is outsourced to another company and only uses one epoch. Elrond has the same but more advanced it used 4 epochs of history and was done all in-house and data isn’t dependent on a 3rd party.

Team, Media & Community strength

Elrond was created in late 2017 by brothers Beniamin and Lucian Mincu, as well as Lucian Todea, as a solution to the problem of blockchain scalability, which they saw as the industry’s most serious issue. Prior to joining Elrond, Beniamin and Lucian Mincu co-founded MetaChain Capital, a digital asset investment company where Beniamin served as CEO and Lucian served as CTO. ICO Market Data, an aggregator of information on initial coin offerings, was also co-founded by the two.

In addition to being an early investor in companies like Zilliqa (ZIL), Tezos (XTZ), Brave, and Binance, Beniamin Mincu was also responsible for the product, marketing, and community for blockchain platform NEM from 2014 to 2015. Lucian Mincu has also worked with Uhrenwerk 24, Cetto, and Liebl Systems as an information technology engineer and security specialist.

Todea is a serial digital entrepreneur who previously developed and ran Soft32, a software review and download site, as well as being a partner in mobilPay, a mobile payment service. He’s also an angel investor, having backed TypingDNA, a biometrics startup, and SmartBill, an accounting software.

Elrond’s social media family is growing rapidly on Twitter and telegram. They have over 443.7K followers on Twitter and 59k members in telegram in just over 2-3 years. There were featured in almost 5-6 articles in the past week which shows that Elrond is been tracked on a regular basis as it has a lot of scope and potential to offer. Through regular AMAs and open debates, the team has aided the growth of this community. Furthermore, any application developed by the Elrond team, such as Maiar DEX, is entirely owned by the community. Elrond also runs trade competitions and stress tests to actively connect with the community and reward them for their involvement.

In less than 9 months after its launch (January 21), a large proportion of Maiar’s 500,000+ users have downloaded the app thanks to community initiatives.

Conclusion

The Elrond Network has been in development for three years and has joined the mainstream blockchain projects with the introduction of the mainnet. The fact that Binance Launchpad funded the project is a positive indicator, showing that Elrond was thoroughly evaluated by Binance and judged to be a viable idea. Certainly, the crew appears to be quite capable, with a diverse skill set. They’ve done a great job so far, meeting deadlines and delivering on promises. In the blockchain world, this is priceless.

The project offers speed and scalability that few other projects can match, because to its innovative Adaptive State Sharding and Secure Proof of Stake features. And the inclusion of support for multiple smart contract languages can only help as Elrond moves into the decentralized application space.

With the sort of decentralized universe Elrond is creating, it will inevitably evolve into a comprehensive blockchain platform in which every active network participant will benefit in some manner. Elrond should be on your radar if you’re a long-term investor who likes to invest in a crypto project’s excellent foundations. Elrond is growing at an incredible rate and is on course to bring billions of people into the blockchain world, putting them in a position to become one of the top three (or maybe the top) layer-1 platforms this decade.

MintingM rating for Elrond: 3.95/5

CriteriaScore
Industry3.05
Opportunity Size4.00
Competitive advantage4.10
Tokenomics4.50
Team4.15
Overall Score3.95

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Fantom Blockchain Overview

Fantom Blockchain Overview

Overview:

Fantom is a decentralized, permissionless, open-source smart contract platform for decentralized applications (dApps) and digital assets

The CMP of FTM on 14th  January is $2.89

 

What is DApps?

Decentralized applications, commonly referred to as “dApps” or “dapps,” are computer programs that operate on a blockchain network of computers rather than on a single computer. The protection of user privacy, the lack of censorship, and the development freedom are all advantages of dApps. Prime examples of DApps would be Decentraland, Uniswap, OriginTrail, and IDEX.

 

What is Fantom?

Fantom is a decentralized finance (DeFi) smart contract platform that uses its proprietary consensus algorithm to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers. Fantom attempts to overcome challenges connected with smart-contract platforms, notably transaction speed, which developers claim to have lowered to under two seconds.

 

What is DeFi?

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is a mechanism for making financial goods available on a decentralized blockchain network that is open to the public. As a result, instead of going via intermediaries like banks or brokerages, anybody may utilize them. Unlike a bank or brokerage account, DeFi does not require a government-issued ID, Social Security number, or proof of address.

 

Why Fantom matters and its problem-solving capabilities  

Fantom targets what most blockchains lack in them which is speed, security, and scalability. Fantom’s aBFT consensus algorithm is called Lachesis. Simply explained, the blockchain is propelled by a consensus process. Lachesis is speedier, more scalable, and secure. Lachesis allows developers to construct peer-to-peer apps without having to design their networking layer.

  • Speed and cost:- According to Fantom’s website, the network can execute thousands of transactions every second for a fraction of a cent. This is quick, but not quite as quick as Solana, which can handle over 50,000 transactions per second.

  • Technology:- Fantom claims to have addressed Ethereum’s scalability issue by providing each application its blockchain, thereby turning it into a network of networks. Its directed acyclic graph (DAG) distinguishes it from other blockchains in that transactions may be handled in parallel rather than using a single processor as in more typical cryptos.

 

What is Directed Acyclic Graph(DAG)?

Vertices and edges make up directed acyclic graphs. Unlike a blockchain, there are no blocks. Transactions are instead stored as vertices, which are stacked on top of one another. Nodes, like nodes on a blockchain, submit transactions to the DAG.

  • Security:- Fantom also provides superior security by securing the network with a leaderless Proof-of-Stake protocol. Unlike many other current projects, Fantom does not prioritize scale above security and decentralization.

 

What is Proof of Stake(PoS)?

Proof-of-stake is a cryptocurrency consensus mechanism for processing transactions and creating new blocks in a blockchain. A consensus mechanism is a method for validating entries into a distributed database and keeping the database secure. In the case of cryptocurrency, the database is called a blockchain—so the consensus mechanism secures the blockchain.

  • Scalability:-  Fantome guarantees that each of the blockchain-powered networks operates independently of the others, allowing these networks to grow for performance without having to worry about congestion.

 

Use cases:-

Staking:- Fantom uses a proof-of-stake model. Transactions are verified by nodes made up of people’s Fantom tokens. By staking crypto this way, you help secure the network and earn rewards.

Governance:- Since Fantom is decentralized, token holders make decisions regarding its future. By holding and staking Fantom, you can propose and vote on changes.

Network Fees:- The Fantom network charges fees in the form of its coin. These costs apply to transactions, smart contract deployment, and the creation of new networks.

Payments:- Fantom is a handy way to transfer payments to others because of its rapid transaction rates and inexpensive costs.

Compensating Validators:- Validators are compensated in FTM tokens for participating in different FTM activities like preventing transaction spam, validating transactions, and so on.

Providing network security:- FTM already employs the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, which necessitates the possession of FTM tokens by validators. Through their validator node, any validator with at least 1,000,000 FTM tokens can receive incentives. Staking benefits are available to FTM holders who delegate their tokens to other validators.

 

Tokenomics

There are 3.175 billion FTM available in total. There are presently 2.5 billion in circulation which is 80% of the total supply, with the remaining set aside for staking rewards. If the incentives remain unchanged (depending on governance actions), it will take more than two years to distribute all of the awards and circulate the whole supply. To facilitate trade, the total quantity is spread over many token standards.  FTM is now accessible in three forms: native mainnet token, ERC-20 token, and BEP-2 token.

 

Competition Analysis

Fantom vs Solana

When compared to FTM coins, SOL coins are around eight times cheaper to transmit. It also confirms transactions around 10 times faster (reach a high level of certainty a transaction is complete). Solana is around 20 times more decentralized, making it more trustworthy and potentially secure. Decentralized contracts may be connected to Solana and Fantom’s blockchains, allowing developers to construct decentralized apps on top of their protocols, such as DeFi (decentralized finance). Both Solana and Fantom are fully deployed, meaning they are completely functioning in terms of their particular capabilities.

Fantom vs Ethereum

Fantom has a speed of up to 20,000 transactions per second(tps) whereas Ethereum has a speed of around 30 transactions per second. Fantom has a very low gas fee compared to Ethereum which makes it a strong competition to one of the big projects.

 

Team, Media & Community strength

Dr. Ahn Byung Ik, a South Korean computer scientist, created the Fantom Foundation. Michael Kong is the platform’s current CEO. Fantom was created by a team with vast expertise in full-stack blockchain development, with the goal of creating a smart contract platform that prioritizes scalability, decentralization, and security. Specialist engineers, scientists, researchers, designers, and entrepreneurs make up Fantom’s team. Employees are spread around the globe, in keeping with the dispersed platform’s concept.

Andre Cronje is a prolific developer best known for his contributions to high-profile DeFi projects such as Hegic, Pickle, Cover, PowerPool, Cream V2, Akropolish, Sushiswap, and others. Cronje has 20 years of development expertise as a software architect. He was requested to remain as a lecturer after finishing his three-year computer science study in just five months. Before moving into mobile security and cryptography, he worked in telecommunications, designing large data and high transactional infrastructure.

Fantom’s social media family is growing rapidly on Twitter and discord. They have over 313.6K followers on Twitter and 40k members in discord in just over 4 years. They even have a YouTube page with 22K subscribers just to keep the users updated with what is going on in the network and which also provides assistance if needed it is called Fantom Alerts. They were frequently featured in news articles on coindesk on Jan 8, 2022, which highlighted how well fantom was doing compared to Avalanche as fantom processed over 1 million transactions while avalanche processed just 780k transactions. It has a lot of media presence which means that it’s been on the radar for its potential.

 

Conclusion

The FTM blockchain trilemma refers to the balance of speed, security, and decentralization – something that most blockchains (even big ones like Bitcoin) do not supply to their users. Fantom addresses this void, and this is the key to attracting crypto users to migrate from other blockchains to the FTM network, thus driving up the price of the FTM token.

Having someone like Andre Cronje in the team, the creator of DeFi it is safe to say that Fantom is in very good and potential hands. As Fantom pays the developers to invent applications and keep the users engaged, there is going to be a lot of growth in this project as the developers would keep attracting the users.

Compared to Ethereum, one of the very strong projects fantom is a few steps ahead of it compared to its transaction speed and cost of transaction which is to say for itself that it has a lot of potentials.

The mania for smart contracts and Defi is spawning lots of new so-called “Ethereum killers,” making this a very competitive industry. It’s difficult to predict which initiatives will thrive and which will fail, but Fantom checks a lot of the boxes that a network with such lofty goals should.

Fantom is pivoted to establish its place in the wider crypto and blockchain ecosystem and provide head-to-head competition to other similar alternatives with its speed and interoperability benefits.

 

MintingM rating for Fantom: 4.11/5

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Dusk

Dusk Network Overview

Dusk Network Overview

Overview:

The Dusk Network is a privacy blockchain focusing on the issuing of digital assets, with the goal of automating trade compliance while protecting user privacy and auditability.

The CMP of Dusk on 7th  January is $0.75

What is Dusk Network?

Dusk Network describes itself as a blockchain for programmable and private assets, with Zero-Knowledge proofs and a new Private Point of Sale (PoS) leader extraction-based consensus mechanism. Dusk Network is a financial blockchain with a focus on anonymity. It’s a layer-1 blockchain that supports native secret smart contracts and powers the Confidential Security Contract (XSC) standard.

What is Zero Knowledge proofs?

It is a way of enabling one party to prove to another that a (typically mathematical) assertion is true without disclosing anything other than the statement’s truthfulness.

Why Dusk Network matters and its problem-solving capabilities  

The use cases and value of DUSK, which include providing a private and secure environment for enterprise-grade financial services and its XCS standard for tokenizing security assets, give it a distinct identity. Enterprises, as well as the network’s commercial partners, may issue and manage tokenized assets in a highly secure and private environment that delivers a permission-less blockchain with Dusk Network.

Users may also enjoy transactions with privacy features and near-instant finality on the DUSK Network, which is the first blockchain infrastructure to enable confidential native smart contracts that allow privacy. The whole network is designed to take advantage of the potential for financial applications and services to be adopted by businesses.

Use cases:-

  • Confidential Smart Contracts:- The Dusk Network is the world’s first blockchain with built-in private smart contracts. This allows parties to take use of our extremely scalable infrastructure (one of the fundamental advantages of public blockchain) while maintaining the security of their data. In other words, businesses may utilize the secure smart contracts with confidence, knowing that their transactions will remain secret and safe.
  • Zero Knowledge Utility Token:- Most blockchains disclose spending patterns, balances, and other sensitive data with the whole network in an unencrypted manner. Enterprises have been hesitant to use public blockchain solutions because of the lack of privacy. The Dusk Network directly tackles these privacy problems. Advanced cryptographic primitives are used in Zero-Knowledge Utility Tokens to ensure that data transfer is private, safe, and secure. Use cases like digital identification / self-sovereign identity become a distant reality thanks to this layer of secrecy and the adaptable zero-knowledge proof system PLONK.
  • Smart Bulletin Board:- Smart Bulletin Boards may be used to connect eligible buyers and sellers of security tokens in an indirect manner. If both parties agree and an agreement is reached, they may execute the trade trustlessly on the Dusk Network blockchain utilising the XSC-based security token contract to settle the transaction instantaneously. Eliminating intermediaries and market friction while providing new opportunities for shareholders to sell their stocks at faster and more equitable prices.
  • Self-Custody:- The ‘XSC’ Security Token Contract, which regulates security tokens on the Dusk Network, is built to optimise security while minimising fraud and theft risks. Shareholders have the option of exercising self-custody and relying on a variety of safeguards. One of these safeguards is the use of whitelists, which enable only registered and thoroughly vetted people to trade security tokens. Other safeguards include the capacity of the issuing business to freeze and force-transfer ‘misplaced’ security tokens at their discretion, as well as threshold and multi-signatures enabled by wallet software.

Tokenomics

The native token of the dusk network is DUSK. Out of a total of 1Billion DUSK tokens, there are now 389Million in circulation. The capped maximum supply of DUSK indicates that there is a restricted number of coins. Many cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, employ a fixed maximum supply to control the long-term value of tokens. A restricted supply functions as an anti-inflationary mechanism, keeping the overall quantity of DUSK tokens under control and preventing inflation.

Competition Analysis 

DUSK is disrupting a multi trillion dollars financial services industry. Above Image shows the competition and their size in terms of the team size and Revenue. Dusk is currently sitting at a market cap. of $286Million, Revenue of $4.7Million and team size of 24 people. We can expect more players catering to this space and will have the potential to grow depending on their execution capabilities as the whole industry is at the size of an ocean. Dusk has a early mover’s and cutting edge technology stack to their advantage

Team, Media & Community strength

Inventor of the Segregated Byzantine Agreement consensus technique and the Dusk Network blockchain. Author of the whitepaper on the Dusk Network, Emanuele Francioni (Tomtom, Commerzbank, and Vitrociset) has spent 20 years working on Byzantine Fault Tolerance systems, distributed computing, sensor networks, and cryptography in R&D, tech leadership, and software development. He co-authored four patents with Fulvio in the areas of IoT, sensor networking, positioning systems, and blockchain. At Dusk, Jelle Pol is in charge of operations. He began his career with Mendix, an aPaaS platform recently bought by Siemens. He went on to play a crucial role in the Technical Innovation department at Shell, where he formed the blockchain team, after learning what it’s like to work for a startup.

Dusk Network’s the social media family is growing gradually. They have over 38.4K followers on Twitter and 9.9K in telegram in just over 4 years. They were frequently featured in news articles in 2021. The last article was about how the dusk network opened a $5,000,000 grand program.

Conclusion

DUSK Network is a leader in enterprise-scale financial services, providing a distributed financial market infrastructure with strong privacy. As a result, DUSK might serve as a stepping stone for businesses to implement blockchain-based financial services.

DUSK might become one of the most significant initiatives in the distributed finance sector, with near-instant finality and a wide range of forthcoming features and financial services. Because of the relevant utility and powerful technology, the price of DUSK tokens may climb in the long term.

The DUSK Network’s worth is based on its technical capabilities, the project’s technology, and its utility. These factors determine the intrinsic, or real-world, worth of DUSK as a project, which frequently differs from its market value. The market value of DUSK, being a tradable token in the cryptocurrency market, is susceptible to frequent and drastic variations.

The intrinsic value of DUSK, as well as its market value expressed in price, may increase as demand for financial services available on the DUSK Network grows, which is how the real value of the project can be reflected in the market price of DUSK in the future as the project grows in adoption and mainstream use.

MintingM rating for Dusk Network: 3.75/5

Criteria Score 
Industry 3.75
Opportunity Size 4.00
Competitive advantage 3.75
Tokenomics 3.50
Team 3.75
Overall Score 3.75

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