During the down-market the team at SynQ has been working to bring the crypto-community a feature-rich, dedicated experience, created explicitly for learning about everything crypto, sharing everything about crypto, and earning actually valuable crypto.
SynQ UP Profiles
Crypto-Twitter is great, however… wouldn’t it be nice if tweets showed up in chronological order and you saw every tweet from everyone you followed? We thought so. SynQ UP Profiles is a chronological, feature-expanded, Twitter-like, timeline experience that adds the ability for you to lock high-value posts behind your own subscription paywall to earn Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin.
Write posts for your timeline and share them directly to a SynQ UP Group
Reply in a dedicated, threaded conversation interface
Add custom-emoji reactions
Receive user-tips (KlinQ) in Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum
Enable “Premium Posts” to show high-value content to your subscribers
Edit posts after they’ve been published
Large format TradingView chart integration
SynQ WALLET
Yes, we added a native cryptocurrency wallet, directly integrated with Coinbase, and every user has a SynQ WALLET automatically. Deposit funds from anywhere and withdrawal funds at any time with the dead-simple interface on your desktop, your phone, your tablet… anywhere.
Currently Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin are supported, and we’ll be expanding this as things progress. Rather than creating an ERC20 cryptocurrency of our own, we chose to give our community the power of actually valuable, high-liquidity, proven, long-standing assets, free from all the elevated risk and speculation of 1UP, STEEM, or any of those other off-brand random coins that no one really needs or values.
Deposit funds via address or QR code
Withdrawal funds to any compatible wallet, any time
Powered by Coinbase
You control the WALLET completely
View all your transactions, anytime
Share with reSynQ
Creating posts on SynQ UP is wonderful, trust us, we know. But sometimes, a share is so good it should be spread. reSynQ allows users to link directly to a publicly accessible conversation page complete with comments (for logged in users). Spread your cryptocurrency knowledge from SynQ UP to drive more eyeballs to your subscription-based Timeline, gather more tips, get more engagement, and grow your SynQ UP presence effectively.
Embed as HTML anywhere
Share directly to Twitter
Share directly to LinkedIn
Share to any public SynQ UP Group
Copy the post link to send via Email
Add your own commentary
KlinQ! – Send Tips to Others
Ever see a post on Twitter and make a ton of money trading the charts posted by others? Ever wish you could shoot some gratuity over to a post author for giving you valuable insights into a coin you were interested in? We did too! Yes, you can add your BTC address to your Twitter profile and hope people click from your post, to your profile, copy the address, and send you crypto-coins for your published research content, however – wouldn’t it be easier to just click a button, set a tip amount in USD, select the coin and send a tip? Yes, yes it would:
Send Bitcoin
Send Ethereum
Send Litecoin
Instant transfer
SynQ WALLET to SynQ WALLET
Earn KlinQ!*
Instant web/app notifications
*KlinQ! will be later used to unlock SynQ UP customization features that we will be releasing at a later time. Earn KlinQ! now to start stock piling for when the KlinQ! Shop opens Q4 2020.
More to come in 2020!
All of these features are currently live and ready for showtime, and as the year progresses, we will be rolling out additional servers globally to enhance the SynQ UP experience for our friends in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Currently, SynQ UP is available to anyone (except China – due to the SynQ WALLET integration) on iTunes, Android, and here on the web. Go to https://synq.chat now to check it out!
Bitcoin selling down, Cardano fundamentals look strong, LINK is doing things, Nick Mancini sat down with Lin Dai from TAP Network, and more… on this week’s episode of Know Your Crypto!
Enrique went to CIS, eToro partnered with TheTie, Nick Mancini sat down with Alex Mascioli from Quantreq, and more… on this week’s episode of Know Your Crypto!
Welcome to the first of a few brand new shows from SynQ I/O! Know Your Crypto will introduce various players in the cryptocurrency market in the KYC:Hot Seat, discuss trending topics, and dip into what makes this space tick.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are 20 months beyond the greatest bull-run in crypto-history, with all time highs recorded and reported for nearly every single existing alt-coin and Bitcoin available at the time.
Fast forward to April, 2019; Brazil starts to buy Bitcoin en masse, on the heels of Venezuela opting for Litecoin just a few months earlier, as South American currencies experience waves of inflation on the global stage, driving no-coiners to the market at scale for a brief period of time. Cryptocurrency, seen as a safe haven against the politics of government-run fiat currency problems, is one of the best, if not the best, use cases for immutable digital-currency.
Bitcoin and Litecoin saw monumental bounce backs from the market downturn of 2018. Bitcoin is up nearly 400% in 2019, Litecoin hitting triple digits for the first time in what seemed like forever, and people all around the crypto-sphere start chanting “altseason, altseason… bull market”, but where’s the new money? Where’s the consumer adoption?
Outside of the BRL and Venezuela in the first 2 quarters of 2019, fiat currency pairs for Bitcoin volume, day in and day out, have been strikingly Tether/Stable coin-centric. More than 50% of all transactions in crypto have been from another “crypto”. Looking at data aggregates, such as coinmarketcap.com, tells a pretty clear story – the top 10 trading pairs for Bitcoin? Tether ($USDT).
54% by our last measurement for the summer of 2019 thus far.
With alts consuming another 25-30% of the volume as they continue to bleed red more often than not as Bitcoin’s dominance stays above 65%, market-wide.
That leaves a meager, best case average, of just 21% for fiat currencies to consume the 24 hour volume in the cryptocurrency markets. During a market adoption cycle, Tether would be, easily 10 points lower, and fiat would account for well over a third of the influx of cryptocurrency consumption, but here we are.
Factoring in the breakdown of which fiats are responsible for what in their little slice of the cryptocurrency volume:
Of course, the US Dollar is reigning, hand over fist, above all others, with the South Korean Wan coming in second. It would be expected to see larger volumes of CNY and EU, AUD, and JPY in the mix, alas, these seem quieter than typically expected. It raises the question, where’s the adoption?
With Bitcoin being over $10,000 – without a higher stake of fiat injection, it begs a few questions, actually:
Where’s the actual adoption?
If new fiat isn’t coming in to consume Bitcoin, how is the price over $10,000?
Why is Tether so heavily seen as the primary driver of Bitcoin volume?
Personally, I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor, and the simplest solution is typically a path walked by a greedy few. Bitcoin needed to be over $10,000 USD for free press to hopefully entice new adoption, new no-coiners, making the flip into Crypto, injecting fiat currency at scale, therefore… it is. Thankfully a number of individuals who are “chums” in the space, like the owners of Tether, the owner/operators of exchanges, and payment gateways have things like smartphones where collaboration can occur with relative ease to fabricate market conditions at little-to-no cost to the makers of the market at scale, if things are done correctly, and by the looks of it… they are.
As for someone who tends to wield a consumer-trend-analysis hammer all day, the consumer class currently propping up the price of Bitcoin to help re-establish it’s reputation and power in the financial sectors is typical big kid with a magnifying glass over an ant-hill rubbish.
Granted, I’m not calling for a bull or bear market, the algo/bots being run right now to prop the market up make it pretty easy to spot a trend and a movement long-term in the space. It’s why the SynQ I/O team was able to project May 2019 with 88% accuracy for 192 consecutive 4 hour bars, day over day… and we did it again in June. Here’s the projection we published August 5th, 2019 to our SynQ UP community:
Amid the controversy surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election emerged a new phenomena propagated by social media and its reach: fake news. Prior to this, it was referred to as ‘click bait,’ used to draw in mindless content consumers in exchange for a small PPC (pay-per-click) charge. Through clever deception by centralized authorities, social media channels were used to inject bias via false reporting. By targeting small groups of supporters, “fake news” was organically spread – “shared,” in social media parlance – hiding its dark origins and demonstrating the power of information, be it valid or invalid.
Enter Sapien: “A highly customizable, democratized social news platform capable of rewarding millions of content creators and curators without any centralized intermediaries.” From the average user’s perspective, Sapien aims to reward content creators and gives them the decision to filter advertisements or remove them entirely. At the same time, Sapien will also use machine learning to identify potential fake news. In addition to this, Sapien will not be collecting any personal information, and any that is given is done so voluntarily. This is in direct contradiction to the current method employed by companies like Facebook and Google: to sell personal data to advertisers without compensating content creators (Facebook’s revenue model).
Sapien will also serve as a decentralized ecosystem/marketplace where content creators can exchange SPN tokens for not only physical goods and services but also virtual content, including but not limited to premium content, online tasks, and community specific items. This will allow users to set up and accept the native token, SPN, without having to worry about the “how.” With a community focus, Sapien is built to facilitate encrypted communications and other services. Traditionally, this has required an intermediary to handle sensitive information without exposing the uses clearly to the owner thereof. Another notable point about Sapien is that SPN will be usable on their platform immediately after the sale concludes. Though this is becoming more commonplace, at time of writing less than 5% of projects can truthfully make this claim!
Token Utility
STAKING
SPN tokens may be staked to access the social features on the platform. According to the whitepaper, staked tokens are “locked up” as a static period of 1 year. Similar to STEEM Power, staked tokens can be used to upvote content, but what makes SPN unique is that they can be used to submit new proposals, tip users, access premium content, and more. What is important to note however is how staked SPN tokens can be “frozen” if a user posts illegal content or violates the guidelines set by a specific community. What is not so clear however is if the user can have their tokens unfrozen in the event that they make an apology post or something along those lines. If this is an option, we could see a “true democracy” in play, because unlike with STEEM where the more Steem Power you have, the higher your influence on an upvote, one user receives one vote on the Sapien Network.
Rewards System
REPUTATION
Similar to an eBay trust score, actions by users on the platform such as publishing a post or making a trade can be voted on for having a positive or negative impact on the user’s reputation. All users will begin with one reputation point once their account is created; where it goes from there is entirely up to them. Users that have built more reputation over time will have a greater influence when they upvote or downvote another user. It appears that this reputation is unique to the community (think sub-reddit) in which the user is interacting. The reputation system being used by the Sapien network is arguably much more fair than the one STEEM uses. STEEM gives more voting power to the users that hold a greater amount of funds, creating an imbalanced system as more than 50% of STEEM currently being staked is in the hands of less than 20 individuals. One user equals one vote.
DEMOCRATIZED AUTONOMOUS PLATFORM (DAP) PROPOSALS
Due to the powerfully democratic way that the Sapien Network is designed, users are able to use SPN tokens to vote on proposed improvements to the platform. This will in theory enable users to self-organize and self-moderate the numerous communities on the platform. In the event that a user is repeatedly flagged for inappropriate behavior within a branch (community), a tribunal will be held where the members of said branch will collaborate and decide on whether the user should face disciplinary action and if so, to what extent. If Star Trek is anything to go by, this system is effective, yet very harsh on the individual being “tried.” But given the way that the Sapien Network is designed, it is truly a democratic way of handling the problem. Users can likely apologize and if accepted by the community, will possibly receive a minimal penalty, if any. And I’m sure nobody will be electrocuted here like Captain Kirk’s crew members, so relatively speaking, it can’t be all that bad!
Business Model
The whitepaper states that the primary goal of Sapien is to securely implement the proposed applications of the SPN token. They plan on bringing in revenue through multiple avenues:
MARKETPLACE
Users will have the ability to purchase both virtual and physical goods and services using SPN tokens. The aforementioned reputation model will enable either party in the trade to determine the reliability of the other. As these trades happen, Sapien will charge users a 1% transaction fee for both buyers and sellers separately unless they have staked at least $20 of SPN tokens. This staking requirement is adjustable by the team and will likely be adjusted to facilitate the growth of the platform as Sapien deems necessary.
ADVERTISEMENT PLATFORM
By default, no advertisements will be shown on the Sapien Network, but users can choose to have advertisements displayed to them using their personal data. The users will be able to earn SPN tokens for “selling” their personal data this way. Community/branch owners are also able to decide if their community can view advertisements and if so, which type of advertisements. For example, a religious community would likely not want to see advertisements that go against their values, and they can opt-out of these specific advertisements if they wish to do so.
Interesting to note however is that the more SPN tokens a user has, the higher their payout for enabling advertisements. Although some may argue that this is a “whale-friendly” feature, in reality it is paying the user relative to how much they are invested in the platform and themselves. One dollar is not valued the same to two people coming from two different financial backgrounds, and this system will incentivize all types of wallets to share their data to earn a number of tokens that they would be satisfied with.
Advertisers can purchase advertisements on the Sapien Network with SPN tokens, and these tokens will be paid out to the users that have chosen to enable advertisements. Similar to Facebook or Youtube, the advertisements will be strategically placed where they would be most effective on the audience. The difference with Sapien, however, is that the users themselves will receive the majority of the Advertisement revenue. At the very least, users will receive 50% of the advertisement revenue, but if they are staking many more tokens, they will receive a higher percentage of this revenue. The system is (according to the whitepaper) “dynamically adjusted to keep the platform afloat.”
Advertisement Revenue Sharing Percentages
Threats
Though Sapien has a self-regulating community focus in mind, they are essentially granting moderator privileges to the most respected members of each community. From a North American looking-glass, proof of value seems logical. In other areas of the world where freedom of choice / speech / religion are already completely or currently under siege (parts of Middle East, Mexico, Asia), having an entire community of people contribute on a regular basis is not beyond reach.
Remember that part of the reason fake news gained traction to begin with was the seemingly organic nature behind the original post/share. It seems the same tactic could thwart Sapien with advance notice.
Another consideration is that just because somebody has prominence or reputation in a group, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their intentions are good. As we often see today, it is the people in positions of power who oft take advantage of that power, after it has been attained.
Another issue that is growing at rapid pace are bots. In combination with technologies like Natural Language Processing and A.I. (especially as they develop), bots may be capable of building their own communities and upvoting themselves. Just because a community is self-governing, it doesn’t mean their intentions are good – racist groups, terrorist organizations, drug cartels. What makes this all possible is not requiring any personal data and therefore being unable to verify community members or their contributions (prior to their registration on the platform).
Note: The Sapien team has stated that Sapien will make use of captchas to reduce the presence of bots on the platform. But there are many services that pay real humans for solving captchas, so there are still workarounds if an individual or group is keen enough. However, it is important to note that this is a problem that all social media and news platforms have to deal with.
Adaptations will be made. They may require more expertise than is currently available, but as the bot and AI infrastructure develop, it will complicate the situation in the future without a mechanism for prevention.
Conclusion
Answer me this: Would you have joined Facebook if you had to spend over an hour learning how TCP/IP and IPFS function? The answer for most of you is probably no. Meanwhile, Steemit’s white-paper for example may as well be in Latin because truth is that we live in an era of instant gratification, and any platform that forces users to actually read a lengthy and complex tutorial will have trouble being adopted by the average consumer (who happens to be the same person that presses “skip tutorial” and then spends the next few hours trying to figure out what the hell they are doing). Sapien makes their platform experience dead-easy so even my technology illiterate grandmother could probably understand through intuition alone. Putting the problems pertaining to the pure democracy approach aside, Sapien could also be a platform that tackles the Net Neutrality issue head-on, allowing users to control their own data and to enable seamless peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.
As per their roadmap, the application is scheduled to be decentralized in Q2 of 2018, but based on the same document, the “real magic” (as my colleague Steve puts it) doesn’t start happening until Q1 2019. Although that may be a decade away crypto-wise, we will have plenty of room for speculation. After all, tackling Reddit, a site commonly referred to as the front page of the Internet, is a big undertaking, even with a team of over 20 individuals who display pure dedication to the project and have a tenacious mentality. This will be an interesting David Vs. Goliath story to watch, and we at CryptoSyndicate are eagerly awaiting to see how this story unfolds.
Disclaimer: The Authors of this article are currently holders of SPN tokens.
As cryptographic technology advances, it’s natural for generational gaps to exist. Bitcoin is considered a 1st-gen cryptocurrency, Ethereum a 2nd-gen crypto. There will exist a group of modern cryptocurrencies that will be considered the 3rd generation – Cardano, Komodo, and EOS are three we covered in our Premium Syndicate Report for January. To show you the type of fundamentals break down these reports carry, we’ve extracted RChain from the Premium Report to release to our blog for free. We’re giving you insight into how we process the Fundamental and Market analysis in our Premium Reports and open the doors on the exciting RChain project to all.
RChain will undoubtedly be a very solid competitor in the league of 3rd-generation tokens. With the addition of all these powerhouses, projects such as Ethereum will have to work hard to maintain market relevance long-term.
Overview
RChain is an open-sourced project with the goal of building a decentralized and censorship-resistant economic blockchain platform to be used as a public computing infrastructure.
Powered by smart contracts, similar to EOS, ADA, and ETH, the platform aims to be trustworthy and scalable with a PoS consensus. Smart contracts enable dApps to provide features to the blockchain such as identity, tokens, timestamp, reputation, financial services, and monetized content delivery to form exchanges, private social networks, marketplaces, etc.
RChain contracts are written in Rholang, the platform’s programming language. Designed to support internal programmatic concurrency, it can formally express the communication and coordination of processes running in parallel. This is key to the internal mechanisms of the platform.
Due to the inherent internal concurrency of RChain nodes, each node is not required to run the namespaces of all blockchains, only those they want enabled. This feature improves the scalability of Rchain, and because the Rholang language was built from provable mathematics, it can also be considered trustworthy.
The structure of the platform is complex:
A visualization of Rchain’s architecture.
RChain is designed with JVM as the basic foundation. The Rho Virtual Machine Execution Environment (EE) will operate on the Trusted Java Libraries (JVM) to power the RhoVM instances. The RhoVM EE can support multiple individual RhoVM(s), with each running a smart contract concurrently and in a multi-threaded fashion. A multiplex of independently operating RhoVM instances will operate on nodes across the network at any given time, with each executing and validating transactions for their associated blockchains or namespaces.
RhoVM process structure as shown above.
The concurrent structure allows for independent processes to compose into complex processes without competing for resources. Along with the compositional namespaces, this architecture will enable a multi-chain (multiple blockchains per node) effect where transactions are performed on independently executing VM instances.
A system of these interconnected nodes form the RChain Network with nodes directly communicating P2P. Each node operates with a set of dApps on top and the included essential System Contracts, written in Rholang. These contracts facilitate system processes, including running RhoVM instances, load balancing, managing dApp contracts, tokens, node trust, etc.
The Data Abstraction Layer will provide monadic (functional programming) access to data and other nodes in the network. As an advancement of Synereo’s SpecialK infrastructure, the layer will provide decentralized content delivery, key-value database, inter-node messaging, and data access patterns to the platform.
RChain’s structural design.
A PoS protocol called Casper will be responsible for the chain’s replication and consensus. Comparable to Ethereum smart contracts, RChain nodes will receive signed transactions and the VM instances are to execute them to progress a contract’s state. Node operators, or bonded validators, will apply the consensus algorithm to verify that the log of state configurations and transitions of the VM instances are accurately recorded.
However, unlike Ethereum, the proof-of-stake protocol of RChain is unique in that it bets on logical propositions. A proposition is defined as a set of statements about the blockchain, determining which transaction should occur first. Validator nodes will compute a maximally consistent subset of propositions. Once consensus is reached, the next block can be generated by finding a minimal model under which the propositions are valid. Thanks to the transactional isolation per namespaces and instances, most blocks can be created in parallel.
TOKEN
The Rchain token system contracts include two types of protocol access tokens:
Staking tokens – These are the required tokens to run consensus. Phlogiston is RChain’s measure of the cost of resources and is comparable to gas in Ethereum. The Phlogiston token is multi-dimensional and is dependent on usage of computing, storage, and bandwidth resources. Additional staking tokens may be introduced through official releases.
Application tokens – On par with ERC20 tokens, application tokens are optional and could be required to access certain dApps. New application tokens are introduced by dApp developers of the platform.
TEAM
GREG MEREDITH President of The RChain Cooperative. Previously worked as Principal Architect of Microsoft’s BizTalk Process Orchestration, Principal Architect of Microsoft’s Highwire, Principal Architect of ATM Network management solution for ATT/NCR and Co-designer and developer of MCC’s Rosette/ESS technology.
EVAN JENSEN Secretary of The RChain Cooperative. Evan is an attorney with special interests in progressing crypto-related law. Evan is also legal counsel for The RChain Cooperative.
IAN BLOOM Worked as a Microsoft Software Engineer for AEGON, Computer Security Specialist for Fortress Technologies & Kroll.
VLAD ZAMFIR Vlad is known for his R&D work on Casper, the PoS consensus protocol for the Ethereum project.
Analysis
RChain is an incredible project by design, and the team and support behind the platform are quite impressive. The Board of Directors is large (only a few members are shown above). However, each member is very well-educated with substantial credentials. By design, RChain is structurally and fundamentally unique, bringing innovation to an otherwise repetitive market.
Ticker: $RHOC
Total Supply: 870,663,574 RHOC
Circulating Supply: 344,086,289 RHOC
Current Market Cap: $654,465,885 USD
Available on Kucoin, EtherDelta
Flags on potential Binance listing of RHOC in the coming weeks may see positive price action on the asset in short to mid-term (2-7 weeks). Project progress, overall roadmap direction, and positive consumer sentiment – including the enthusiast demographic, puts RHOC at a 2018 prospect for a large upside once the project becomes less synthetic (currently an 87ss on the Synthetic Valuation Scale due to age of the project and progress against the roadmap).
Entries under 20,000 per RHOC at the supply levels are sound, if RHOC can get a stable valuation in the markets above a $1.0 Billion USD market cap in the coming months. Trend analysis against RHOC and its buying patterns shows a 0.895 Pr on a $1.25 – $1.54 Billion USD market cap in the foreseeable future (Q2 – Q3 2018).
100 out of 196 countries in the world serve as home to 2,000,000,000 unbanked people, who use cash only, do not have any credit history, and do not have access to any financial services. It is essential to note that most of these people use their smartphones and social networks on a regular basis. This provides a tremendous amount of a new data and a substantial number of new potential clients. Financial institutions lack information about these clients and their creditworthiness; thus they do not want to take the risk to serve these people. However, these individuals still need funds and surely businesses would enjoy having new customers to survive during competition.
Banking the over 2 billion unbanked worldwide
The solution AMM has implemented is an open source and meta data bureau that can connect these “fiat only” markets to existing financial services. AMM has a platform that utilizes A.I and can help these people apply and receive their very first loans from a smartphone. This platform allows the new user an opportunity to establish credit and a credit history, which will be stored on the blockchain. This will not only improve the lives of the new user but give an opportunity for existing businesses to access a new client base. The way that AMM has done this is by creating a smartphone app. This app, which utilizes the AMM token, uses 10,000 parameters to gather the “creditworthiness” of new users. This is done by using their AI platform to analyze metadata which is collected 24/7. AMM gives the user the ability to apply and receive loans, or setup bank accounts easily and within minutes. The loans that will be made available are backed by smart contracts. These contracts will be transparent in nature. This will allow both user and potential business to see the credit histories and worthiness, and give the user a financial digital identity.
The other side of this App is used by Businesses that will have access to these new people in the marketplace. The data available to businesses will be collected from the users’ smartphones and smart contracts. As businesses are always looking for customers, they will now have access to an “untapped” market of billions of potential customers. Some of the businesses that will be interested in this data will be:
Banks
Finance, Micro Finance, and Insurance companies
E-commerce and retail businesses
Credit Companies
The target locations of these unbanked people start in southeast Asia. This area has been statistically shown to be an emerging market with a majority of people being “unbanked.” This market has widely been available to the internet and accounts for over 50% of the social media users worldwide. These folks have been using technology to better themselves. This would lead one to believe that the ability to establish a banking/lending/credit history would bring these people further out of poverty. Also, it would bring a large increase of “users” to the global economic market.
Overall goals for MicroMoney:
Solving hunger and poverty by providing the unbanked with access to financial services and the possibility to build their initial credit history on a Blockchain.
Helping unbanked small entrepreneurs grow their businesses by offering online loans.
Enabling banks, financial companies, institutions ,and retail businesses worldwide to efficiently scale and serve customers who previously had no access to their services.
Creating an extensive micro-financing ecosystem by providing a franchise to local partners.
Raising financial awareness among clients by offering consulting services and educational materials. Enabling Blockchain companies to efficiently scale their customer base by getting access to our open source Credit Bureau with millions of under-served people.
Bringing financially excluded people to the new global crypto economy.
AMM
The native token for this platform is AMM and is profiled as a utility token. The coin is used as payment for the use of MicroMoney’s platform and services.
Total supply is 17,422,798 ERC20 based coin with a 100% premine. Any tokens unsold at ICO were burned.
Token And Platform Relationship
The AMM token will be use in these ways on the platform
Partnership access – AMM ownership will give access to advanced platform features. For more details, please see the MicroMoney Partnership Program section below.
Encouragement and rewards – First, borrowers in MicroMoney are rewarded with an AMM bonus for paying back their loans on time, while delays cause the AMM bonus to decrease depending on the overdue time. Second, if a borrower has others vouching for him or her and all the payments are made on time, the co-signers will receive AMM tokens as a reward as well.
Data Sales – Every time MicroMoney receives a payment for personal details, credit history or Big Data, the customer will be rewarded with AMM tokens. This is part of the client’s digital reputation. MicroMoney respects personal details of all clients and will never disclose any information with third parties without consent of the client.
A collateral – AMM can be used as collateral to secure a loan application, allowing customers to access the lower rates and other possible privileges and discounts.
Getting payable access to customer big data & credit histories – Banks, financial and insurance companies, e-commerce, retail, and telecom businesses should use tokens to pay for accessing personalized information in the Big Data & Credit Histories Bureau.
Getting payable access to the Decentralized A.I. Neural Network Scoring system – Banks, financial and insurance companies, e-commerce, retail and telecom businesses should use tokens to pay for accessing the Decentralized A.I. Neural Network Scoring system.
The right for any contribution to the system to support Sustainable Development Goals – AMM supports SDG programs of the United Nations, namely: No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reducing Inequalities.
Holding AMM tokens will also give users the ability to:
Franchise partnership – AMM ownership can allow tokenholders to become MicroMoney’s partner in a specific country/region on an exclusive basis.
Access to the Decentralized A.I. Neural Network Scoring System – Banks, financial and insurance companies, e-commerce websites, retail outlets, telecommunication companies, and other corporates can access our Decentralized A.I. Neural Network Scoring system.
Access to customers’ Big Data – Customers of our Big Data Bureau (banks, financial and insurance companies, e-commerce websites, retail outlets, telecommunication companies, and other corporations) can get access to customer data, which can be mined.
Access to customers’ Credit Bureau Histories – Banks, financial and insurance companies, e-commerce websites, retail outlets, telecommunication companies, and other corporations can get access to AMM’s Credit Histories Bureau.
MicroMoney has plans to integrate the following projects down the road:
Civic – To improve borrower’s identification & verification
Hive – Providing funding for our SME (small-medium enterprise) customers
GOLEM – Decentralized supercomputer. Deploying AI for our scoring and risk analytics solutions
Tether – Alternative Payment system
Uport – Global, unified, sovereign customer’s identity system
COSMOS – Network and a framework for interoperability between blockchains
Everex – Cross-border payment system. Getting crypto-cash for our borrowers
The current energy industry is rapidly evolving. Centralized power authorities were responsible for creating the connections to consumers, deciding where and when to build a generating capacity and how to bridge the distance between generators and loads. This gave them major leverage to influence the cost of energy consumption. But as markets around distributed energy resources like solar panels, batteries, microgrids, and embedded networks grow, the adoption of these sustainable, energy-generating technologies will shift the power balance from the central authorities to the consumers.
With the introduction of distributed energy resources, or DERs for short, the current energy distribution system is being defined by bi-directional flows of energy by millions of active prosumers. Individuals who utilize DERs are able to generate their own energy, regulate power consumption, even trade, export and provide excess energy. A network of linked prosumers would create a more reliable energy ecosystem than the current traditional network.
Solar panels: A prime example of renewable energy source.
In order to fully utilize the available modern technologies and to break away from traditional platforms, consumers need a decentralized energy trading platform for use as the market ecosystem. Power Ledger aims to provide the necessary foundation required. The ecosystem will allow users to monetize their energy production and realize the full value of their investments. It is similar to how Uber and AirBnb have allowed users to monetize their cars and spare rooms — a fact which the Power team point out in the whitepaper.
By utilizing blockchain technology, Power Ledger can provide this trading market platform, allowing the prosumers to export energy to their peers in a trustless environment. The decentralized nature of blockchain allows for more efficient reliable network communication processes without a centralized authority with lower costs and fees.
The proposed POWR platform is described as a trustless, transparent and interoperable energy trading platform that will support a variety of energy applications.
Listed are some of the key classes of Platform Applications, which were developed by Power Ledger for their ecosystem:
P2P Trading (Fusebox):
Allows consumers/retailers the ability to trade electricity and receive payments in real-time in an automated, trustless reconciliation and settlement system.
Other benefits include options to select a clean energy source, trade with neighbors, export excess power, trade transparency, and low settlement costs.
Neo-Retailer:
Neo-retailers will be provided with smart demand and supply management.
Near instant remuneration and payment settlements is also a benefit while managing consumer exposure to the risk of non-supply.
Microgrid/ Embedded Network Operator/ Strata:
Electricity metering, big data acquisition, rapid micro-transactions and grid management are enabled using this application.
Value can be derived from an investment in DERs.
Wholesale Market Settlement:
Rapid low-cost transparent dispatch optimization and management, data aggregation, reconciliation, and settlement for wholesale energy marketplaces are offered through this application.
Autonomous Asset (AA) Management:
This application will define shared ownership of renewable energy assets and trading renewable asset ownership. The AA is able to buy and sell its own electricity as well as distribute its income to assigned wallet addresses.
Distributed Market Management:
Optimized metering data, the collection of big data, right to access and dispatch of assets, rapid transaction settlement and network load balancing, frequency management, demand side response and demand side and load management data are provided through this application.
Electric Vehicles:
Designed to accommodate electric vehicles, this specific application will facilitate and collect real-time metering data by interfacing with the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP). Data will be used for user identification and rapid transaction settlement.
Power Port:
Virtual energy pipelines as well as roadside assistance type assets can be automated using the platform (e.g., EVs) and provide a mobile storage discharge facility to maintain energy supplies.
Carbon Trading:
The application offers smart contracts for carbon traders to assure transparent and auditable digital transactions across organizations using blockchain ledger technology. Reports and records of carbon credits as well as certificates for regulatory authorities will be supported.
Transmission Exchange:
Utilizing data collected in the management of transmission networks, the platform can offer real-time metering data, data collection, as well as facilitate rights to access and dispatch assets. The platform also offers rapid transaction settlements and network load balancing in responding to non-stationary energy.
Applications for the platform can also be developed by third parties using the platform’s designs and services. It is suggested in the whitepaper that the POWR to Sparkz ratio for third-party developers may be adjusted depending on customer feedback and reputation in support for consumer innovations.
The Power Ledger platform operates upon a dual-token ecosystem:
The ERC20 Power Ledger token, called POWR, is used to access the Platform and can be compared to a “limited software licensing permission.” Bespoke private trading applications will create Sparkz in exchange for POWRs. The tokens are also used as incentive towards energy producers. All prosumers generating as well as the consumers purchasing energy are rewarded POWR tokens. This loyalty-rewards program is funded by charging a small fee for all P2P transactions on the platform. Part of the fee is then used to purchase POWR tokens on exchanges and distribute them through the program.
Sparkz are specifically limited to representing the tokenized value of a unit of electricity. They are issued against escrowed POWR tokens, via a smart contract, and are used by a host to onboard its customers. The tokens are already being purchased and redeemed using fiat currencies with individual trading platforms hosting closed-loop exchanges for energy.
The two tokens are exchangeable and will cooperate to allow for interoperability among diverse market management, pricing mechanisms, and units of electricity (kWh).
Platform System Process
Using the POWR ecosystem application Fusebox in conjunction with tokens, consumers and prosumers are able to buy and sell energy. They are settled with Sparkz tokens and may redeem the Sparkz for cash via their Application Host. Entities that run an application on the POWR platform are the Application Hosts. They can range from utility companies to EV-charging services or even a decentralized autonomous organization.
Provided is a diagram demonstrating dynamic flow in the POWR platform.
To operate, an Application Host is required to possess an adequate amount of POWR to generate the necessary Sparkz for their consumers. Once a POWR token supply is exhausted, platform access is revoked. A smart contract is in place to ensure consumer protection in the event an Application Host fails. P2P consumers will be able to redeem their Sparkz directly against the POWR tokens previously provided and port to another Host.
However, in a deregulated P2P market that has no need for Application Hosts, providers as well as consumers are able to convert and trade POWR and Sparkz tokens directly without the need for intermediaries.
Trading
Power Ledger has also developed its own unique trade matching algorithm which will distribute and transact available power equitably without favoring any participants. Consumer orders on both sides of the market are filled in equal increments and cycled continuously to ensure equal allocation of the available energy in the area, while minimizing the distance between each user.
Participants are also grouped by either pre-configured network conditions or by proximity-based priority collectives. Users are limited to trades within a specified trading group configured by their host (regulated) or by Power Ledger (unregulated). Individuals with remaining import/export kWh orders to trade move up the priority groups until depleted.
To maximize efficiency, Power Ledger’s Trade Engine 2.0 is being designed to geo-locate participants and prioritizes proximity to assist in network load balancing at efficient intervals across the network.
Shown above is a visualization of POWR’s hierarchy, used to determine energy allocation priority.
Blockchain Layers
Similar to other blockchain projects, the Power Ledger platform consists of different layers. It is planned for POWR tokens to be on the public Ethereum blockchain and a fee-less consortium blockchain will handle the high transaction volume of p2p energy trading.
The public blockchain layer will interface the ecosystem with token exchanges. This layer also provides the most advanced security and decentralization available to the token and is a mechanism for interacting with the Consortium and Application layers of the platform through the POWR token.
Next is the core POWR layer, providing the public smart contracts which provide the conversion of POWR/Sparkz tokens. It also facilitates the exchange of POWR/Sparkz and smart bond contracts for Application Hosts. Oracles are also utilized to gather information external to the blockchain protocol required for internal operations and communicating with the consortium chain.
For the consortium layer, Power Ledger is currently using the EcoChain blockchain, a private PoS blockchain. EcoChain has been stress-tested in high-load environments and is now being transitioned to a modified fee-less Consortium Ethereum network for POWR while retaining the benefits of the existing EcoChain system for specific platform application services such as Sparkz creation and management, fiat payment processing, and storage and verification of data. Both the Ethereum Consortium and original EcoChain blockchain are currently running in the Consortium layer to provide these benefits.
A representation of POWR’s blockchain layers.
Blockchain transactions will also be executed in an off-chain process by the use of state channels. The blockchain state will be locked using multi-signatures or smart contracts. In order to update the state, a specific set of participants must agree with the decision. Eventually, the state is closed and sent to the blockchain record.
Lastly, the ecosystem’s Application Layer is called the Fusebox. As briefly mentioned before, Fusebox is an advanced application developed by Power Ledger to facilitate P2P trading. Designed not only for direct peer-to-peer trading, it can also be configured to adapt to market structures and regulations and is able to reconfigure seamlessly as market changes are applied. By utilizing the benefits of blockchain, the ecosystem also gains the adaptability to conform to any existing, or future, regulatory environment. The scalability provides stability for users positioned in the ecosystem and preserves market power in transactive arrangements.
Investments
Aside from being able to monetize DER investments, Power Ledger platform offers users the opportunities to finance for shared ownership and trading of renewable assets. The Autonomous Asset management module provided by the platform will be able to buy and sell its own electricity then distribute its income to assigned wallet addresses. Communities will be able to collectively invest in an energy infrastructure and become co-owners and beneficiaries of the asset’s POWR generation and production.
An example is shown describing possible investments and returns.
Review
Power Ledger has recently emerged as one of the most promising blockchain projects of 2017. Not only are the fundamentals very applicable, but there is also a quickly growing demand for sustainable energy worldwide. No doubt the market will receive the POWR platform positively. It is also encouraging that the development have been in the process of working on POWR for a while, with notable achievements so far. Fundamentally, I personally have high expectations for this project.
Disclaimer: This is the result of research done from the outside only. We have not interviewed anyone internally, nor do we have any solid proof from individual portfolio accounts. We are merely raising the question from a compelling stack of evidence as a result of mounds of comparative analysis for activity in the market for the last 24 hours.
Edits have been made of our own volition to help improve the accuracy of the conjecture surrounding our findings. The data and conclusions still stand that these market movement anomalies originated from Bittrex.com in some fashion. Whether it was an “inside job” or someone executed a manipulation from the outside is not going to be determined by SynQ I/O. We leave that to the journalists.
It has been one very convoluted morning. A large number of alts found themselves in the gutter within the last 24 hours, and very little of the volume was seen moving to BTC as we all expected. The usual pattern during the last BTC hard fork found traders pulling out of alt coins and parking their monetary values into BTC, yet today has been an exception. There hasn’t been a solid reason that gives a clear explanation, but the team at SynQ I/O has a lead. Basically, every single cryptocurrency (alts) listed on Bittrex has fallen in a very similar pattern in relation to one another. Not every coin, but coins that are listed on Bittrex. Between the hours of 1200 and 0900 at UTC-4 on October 8, 2017, a large number of alts experienced a mass dump executed within minutes of each other. Coincidence? We’ll let the charts speak for us.
Figure 1: Comparative Analysis
Our speculation is that an entity at [leveraging] Bittrex made a monumental mistake. Comparative analysis, completed by Syndicate.Enrique, Syndicate.Duy and Syndicate.Evan, shows that only an entity/group with a massive (nearly complete) diversification of alt-coins would have been able to create a uniform sell-off, within the exchange, in the same time frame, for the same percentages.
Bittrex: Whenever fees are assessed from Bittrex, they aren’t transferred away from Bittrex, and are more than likely not swapped to different coins (BTC or other) unilaterally when the fees are acquired. At some point, Bittrex needs to convert these fees into BTC – should they be motivated to stack their BTC bags. Considering this, it’s probable – though still speculative – that this crash was an attempt to automate offsetting their load. The result: [Someone leveraging] Bittrex dumped their bags too quickly, all at the same time. Typically, shielding this kind of activity would be the aim, using a much longer time frame to avoid creating market panic, with the side goal of also keeping prying eyes like ours from being able to dissect the market manipulation performed against investors.
We would like to give Bittrex the Bittrex System [or team / or users within in it] the benefit of the doubt, but this is way too much of a coincidence. No other exchange has experienced these patterns in their assets. Cryptocurrencies that were NOT listed on Bittrex were not affected in the same way. Every other exchange we looked at, Binance, Kraken, Bitstamp, Coinbase, GDAX, Coss, Cryptopia, Yobit – all experienced patterns that were indicative of market reaction stemming from a single source of flash sell-down: Bittrex.
Who else has a portfolio of alt-currencies so diversified that they could sell off volume in uniform succession in a limited time frame?
Argument: People are moving alts to BTC
This is mainly false. Though it is true, it didn’t happen at the scale that matches with the volumes moved from alts to BTC across any other exchange. This wasn’t a market-wide movement like we saw with BIP91 activity between June and July.
Argument: It’s just whales
If it was just whales, you wouldn’t have seen this level of diversification and havoc in every page of Bittrex. This pattern is everywhere, from page 1 through page 7. This pattern doesn’t show up on any other exchange in this fashion. Whales don’t buy LGD, come on…
Again – we are not journalists, we are analysts. We are open to discussion or other raised insights in any of our Social platforms (Facebook, Twitter or Slack).
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