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What Is Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person, or group of people, using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched soon after, in January 2009.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all transactions happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them. Bitcoin was created, according to Nakamoto’s own words, to allow “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
Some concepts for a similar type of a decentralized electronic currency precede BTC, but Bitcoin holds the distinction of being the first-ever cryptocurrency to come into actual use.
Who Are the Founders of Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s original inventor is known under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2020, the true identity of the person — or organization — that is behind the alias remains unknown.
On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published Bitcoin’s whitepaper, which described in detail how a peer-to-peer, online currency could be implemented. They proposed to use a decentralized ledger of transactions packaged in batches (called “blocks”) and secured by cryptographic algorithms — the whole system would later be dubbed “blockchain.”
Just two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the genesis block, thus launching the world’s first cryptocurrency.
However, while Nakamoto was the original inventor of Bitcoin, as well as the author of its very first implementation, over the years a large number of people have contributed to improving the cryptocurrency’s software by patching vulnerabilities and adding new features.
Bitcoin’s source code repository on GitHub lists more than 750 contributors, with some of the key ones being Wladimir J. van der Laan, Marco Falke, Pieter Wuille, Gavin Andresen, Jonas Schnelli and others.
What Is Cardano (ADA)?
Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that says its goal is to allow “changemakers, innovators and visionaries” to bring about positive global change.
The open-source project also aims to “redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins to individuals” — helping to create a society that is more secure, transparent and fair.
Cardano was founded back in 2017, and the ADA token is designed to ensure that owners can participate in the operation of the network. Because of this, those who hold the cryptocurrency have the right to vote on any proposed changes to the software.
The team behind the layered blockchain say that there have already been some compelling use cases for its technology, which aims to allow decentralized apps and smart contracts to be developed with modularity.
Cardano is used by agricultural companies to track fresh produce from field to fork, while other products built on the platform allow educational credentials to be stored in a tamper-proof way, and retailers to clamp down on counterfeit goods.
Who Are the Founders of Cardano?
Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson, who was also one of the co-founders of the Ethereum network. He is the CEO of IOHK, the company that built Cardano’s blockchain.
In an interview for CoinMarketCap’s Crypto Titans series, Hoskinson said that he got involved in cryptocurrencies back in 2011 — and dabbled in mining and trading. He explained that his first professional involvement in the industry came in 2013, when he created a course about Bitcoin that ended up being taken by 80,000 students.
As well as being a technology entrepreneur, Hoskinson is also a mathematician. In 2020, his technology company donated ADA worth $500,000 to the University of Wyoming’s Blockchain Research and Development Lab.
What Makes Cardano Unique?
Cardano is one of the biggest blockchains to successfully use a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is less energy intensive than the proof-of-work algorithm relied upon by Bitcoin. Although the much larger Ethereum is going to be upgrading to PoS, this transition is only going to take place gradually.
The project has taken pride in ensuring that all of the technology developed goes through a process of peer-reviewed research, meaning that bold ideas can be challenged before they are validated. According to the Cardano team, this academic rigor helps the blockchain to be durable and stable — increasing the chance that potential pitfalls can be anticipated in advance.
In 2020, Cardano held a Shelley upgrade that aimed to make its blockchain “50 to 100 times more decentralized” than other large blockchains. At the time, Hoskinson predicted that this would pave the way for hundreds of assets to run on its network.
What Is XRP?
To begin with, it’s important to understand the difference between XRP, Ripple and RippleNet. XRP is the currency that runs on a digital payment platform called RippleNet, which is on top of a distributed ledger database called XRP Ledger. While RippleNet is run by a company called Ripple, the XRP Ledger is open-source and is not based on blockchain, but rather the previously mentioned distributed ledger database.
The RippleNet payment platform is a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system that aims to enable instant monetary transactions globally. While XRP is the cryptocurrency native to the XRP Ledger, you can actually use any currency to transact on the platform.
While the idea behind the Ripple payment platform was first voiced in 2004 by Ryan Fugger, it wasn’t until Jed McCaleb and Chris Larson took over the project in 2012 that Ripple began to be built (at the time, it was also called OpenCoin).
How Does XRP Work?
XRP was created by Ripple to be a speedy, less costly and more scalable alternative to both other digital assets and existing monetary payment platforms like SWIFT.
RippleNet’s ledger is maintained by the global XRP Community, with Ripple the company as an active member. The XRP Ledger processes transactions roughly every 3-5 seconds, or whenever independent validator nodes come to a consensus on both the order and validity of XRP transactions — as opposed to proof-of-work mining like Bitcoin (BTC). Anyone can be a Ripple validator, and the list is currently made up of Ripple along with universities, financial institutions and others.
What Is COTI (COTI)?
COTI markets itself as the first enterprise-grade fintech platform that empowers organizations to build their own payment solutions as well as digitize any currency to save time as well as money.
COTI is one of the world’s first blockchain protocols that is optimized for decentralized payments and designed for use by merchants, governments, payment DApps and stablecoin issuers.
COTI Pay is the first application. It describes itself as a fully encompassing finance on the blockchain. The COTI Group launched in March of 2017, while the Staking Platform Launched on Jan. 1, 2020.
It is an ecosystem that is designed specifically to meet all of the challenges associated with traditional finance, including latency, fees, global inclusion and risks. This is done through the introduction of the DAG-based protocol as well as infrastructure that is completely scalable, private, inclusive and fast.
The ecosystem has DAG-based blockchain, proof-of-trust consensus algorithm, multiDAG, GTS (Global Trust System), a universal payment solution and a payment gateway.
Who are The Founders of COTI?
COTI was founded by Samuel Falkon and David Assaraf.
Samuel Falkon is the co-founder of COTI Group and works as the VP of business development at COTI Group. He is also the chief revenue officer at Paywize, as well as the founder of Gil Scott Ltd.
David Assaraf is the co-founder of COTI Group, and he also co-founded Frequants and was a member at the board of directors at an amusement park.
What Makes COTI Unique?
The thing that makes COTI unique is COTI’s platform.
This platform enables companies to effortlessly create advanced fintech products and save time, data and money. COTI pay can process every kind of payment type, both in terms of online payments as well as offline ones. This includes crypto and stablecoins, as well as credit cards and even native coins. It has built-in financing to boot, with interest earned on deposits and loans. This also connects with the white label payment network.
Traditional payment systems simply cost both merchants and customers amounts up to billions of dollars on an annual basis. As such, the white label payment network is a global payment network for users and merchants that make transactions freely throughout a digital wallet, coin and much more.
COTI is also the world’s first platform that is optimized for the creation of coins that are stable in price. As such, a user has the ability to issue their own stable coin and regain full control over both their money and their data.
What Is Theta (THETA)?
Theta (THETA) is a blockchain powered network purpose-built for video streaming. Launched in March 2019, the Theta mainnet operates as a decentralized network in which users share bandwidth and computing resources on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis.The project is advised by Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube and Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch.
Theta features its own native cryptocurrency token, THETA, which performs various governance tasks within the network, and counts Google, Binance, Blockchain ventures, Gumi, Sony Europe and Samsung as Enterprise validators, along with a Guardian network of thousands of community-run guardian nodes.
Developers say that the project aims to shake up the video streaming industry in its current form — centralization, poor infrastructure and high costs mean that end users often end up with a poor experience. Content creators likewise earn less revenue due to the barriers between them and end users.
Who Are The Founders of Theta?
Theta was co-founded by Mitch Liu and Jieyi Long in 2018. Liu has a long history in the gaming and video industries, co-founding video advertising firm Tapjoy, mobile social gaming startup Gameview Studios, and THETA.tv, the live streaming platform whose DApp was the first to be built on the Theta protocol.
Long is Theta’s second co-founder and CTO, following similar multi-year experience in design automation, gaming, virtual reality, and large scale distributed systems. He authored multiple peer-reviewed academic papers and holds various patents in video streaming, blockchain and virtual reality.
Theta now has a modest team, and its official website lists strategic corporate investors as Samsung NEXT, Sony Innovation Fund, media investors BDMI Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, CAA Creative Artists Agency, and traditional Silicon Valley VCs including DCM, Sierra Ventures and the VR Fund.
What Makes Theta Unique?
Theta’s main business concept is to decentralize video streaming, data delivery and edge computing, making it more efficient, cost-effective and fair for industry participants.
The network runs on a native blockchain, with two native tokens, known as Theta (THETA), Theta Fuel (TFUEL), powering the internal economy.
Theta’s appeal is threefold: viewers get rewarded with better quality streaming service, content creators improve their earnings and middlemen — video platforms — save money on building infrastructure and increase advertising and subscription revenues.
Users have an incentive to both watch network content and share network resources, as rewards come in the form of TFUEL tokens.
The platform is open source, and token holders receive governance powers as with many proof-of-stake (PoS)-based blockchain ecosystems.
In addition to video, data and computing, Theta caters to developers looking to launch decentralized applications (DApps) on its fully featured EVM-compatible Smart contract platform.
What Is VeChain (VET)?
VeChain (VET) is a blockchain-powered supply chain platform. Begun in 2015 and launched in June 2016, VeChain aims to use distributed governance and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to create an ecosystem which solves some of the major problems with supply chain management.
The platform uses two in-house tokens, VET and VTHO, to manage and create value based on its VeChainThor public blockchain.
The idea is to boost the efficiency, traceability and transparency of supply chains while reducing costs and placing more control in the hands of individual users.
Who Are the Founders of VeChain (VET)?
VeChain is the product of creator and co-founder Sunny Lu, an IT executive who was formerly CIO of Louis Vuitton China.
Lu has since become a well-known name within the cryptocurrency industry. He has drawn attention to the ability of blockchain technology to solve transparency in particular, arguing that it can create “trust-free” structures which do not suffer from corruption as part of the supply chain.
Fellow co-founder Jay Zhang, who directs VeChain’s global corporate structure, governance, and financial management, previously worked for both Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the finance and risk management sphere.
Having launched in June 2016, VeChain is one of the oldest dedicated blockchain supply chain platforms on the market.
What Makes VeChain (VET) Unique?
VeChain exists to disrupt traditional supply chain models, an industry which before blockchain had remained little changed over the decades.
Using transparent technology with no single point of weakness or control allows for greater security, efficiency and ease of tracking products in a given supply chain, while reducing cost through trustless automation.
VeChain’s model thus appeals to businesses looking to reduce supply chain friction and give a more transparent impression to clients.
VeChain’s official literature notes that its unique proposition lies in its dual-token setup, among other features. In-house token fees combine with charges for various services to generate operating income for the company, while token holders can engage in activities such as staking, thus providing liquidity in return for rewards.
What Is Enjin Coin (ENJ)?
Enjin Coin is a project of Enjin, a company that provides an ecosystem of interconnected, blockchain-based gaming products. Enjin’s flagship offering is the Enjin Network, a social gaming platform through which users can create websites and clans, chat, and host virtual item stores.
Enjin allows game developers to tokenize in-game items on the Ethereum blockchain. It uses Enjin Coin, an ERC-20 token, to back the digital assets issued using its platform, meaning that items can be bought, sold and traded with real-world value.
Enjin Coin was first announced in July 2017, and it launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2018.
Enjin Coin (ENJ) is a digital store of value used to back the value of blockchain assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Every asset minted with the Enjin Platform contains ENJ, a minting resource which is locked inside NFTs and removed from circulation. Minting blockchain assets with ENJ provides a variety of benefits to creators and users:
- Infuses them with a reserve value
- Ensures their transparency and scarcity
- Gives them instance liquidity
- Provides utility in games and apps
- Anti-inflationary
- Enjin’s “melting” functionality allows users to destroy their blockchain assets at any time to retrieve the ENJ value from within.
The Enjin blockchain ecosystem aims to offer software products that make it easy for everyone to develop, trade, monetize, and market with blockchain.
Founded in 2009, Enjin has roots in the gaming industry, with the company’s first product, a gaming community platform called the Enjin Network, growing to 20 million users over the course of a decade.
In 2017 following an ICO, Enjin established itself as a leading blockchain ecosystem developer, building a suite of software products that enable anyone to easily mint, manage, trade, distribute, and integrate blockchain assets.
Enjin’s co-founder Witek Radomski wrote the code for one of the first ever non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and is also the co-author of the ERC-1155 Ethereum token standard.
Built on top of an on-chain infrastructure, the Enjin ecosystem enables game developers and businesses of all sizes to use tokenized digital assets as part of their acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization strategies. The Enjin ecosystem is fueled by Enjin Coin (ENJ), a cryptocurrency used to back the value of blockchain assets.
Who Are the Founders of Enjin Coin?
Enjin was founded as a gaming community platform in 2009 by Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski, with Blagov becoming CEO and assuming responsibility for the creative direction of the company and Radomski serving as chief technical officer, responsible for the technical development of its products. Blagov has described himself as having experience in creative direction, marketing, and software project management and design.
The idea of introducing blockchain to Enjin was first proposed by Radomski after he became interested in Bitcoin (BTC) in 2012, eventually convincing the company to accept it as a payment option. After learning about Ethereum and smart contracts, he decided he wanted to create his own blockchain-integrated software. Radomski is also the author of the ERC-1155 token standard, a new standard for Ethereum-issued tokens that was introduced in June 2018, finalized in June 2019, and is used for minting both fungible and nonfungible tokens.
What Makes Enjin Coin Unique?
According to co-founder Radomski, Enjin Coin is unique in that every token minted with Enjin Platform, the company’s blockchain asset development platform that launched in February 2020, is directly backed by ENJ, giving in-game items real-world liquidity. Similarly, Blagov has stated that the company is focused on adoption, saying he imagines a future in which millions of gamers use digital items backed by Enjin Coin without even knowing it exists.
Enjin Coin uses a series of smart contracts to which game developers send ENJ to mint new, unique fungible or nonfungible ERC-1155 tokens. These tokens can be traded on the Enjin Marketplace, which launched in September 2019, or exchanged for their backing ENJ at any time. As more custom tokens are minted, more ENJ is removed from the ecosystem, thus making it scarcer.
According to its whitepaper, Enjin Coin uses a series of both on-chain and off-chain processes. When a transaction is completed within the Enjin ecosystem, a Trusted Platform contacts the users’ smart wallets, and the website or game is updated immediately with a placeholder or nontradable version of the digital item until the transaction has been validated by the Ethereum blockchain.
What Is IoTeX (IOTX)?
Starting as an open-source project in 2017, IoTeX has built a decentralized platform whose aim is to empower the open economics for machines — an open ecosystem where people and machines can interact with guaranteed trust, free will, and under properly designed economic incentives.
With a global team of over 40 research scientists and engineers, IoTeX has built their EVM-compatible blockchain from scratch using the innovative Roll-DPoS consensus and launched in 2019 April, which has been running by 100+ delegates worldwide and has processed more than 10 million transactions already. On top of the IoTeX blockchain, the team has built the essential blocks of infrastructures to connect with Ethereum, BSC, and Heco blockchains such as ioPay wallet (https://iopay-wallet.iotex.io/) and ioTube bridge (https://tube.iotex.io/), which serve ten thousands of users. IoTeX helps EVM-based DApps scale without concerning expensive gas fees!
Besides, middleware such as Decentralized Identity, Confidential Computing, and Secure Hardware has been built on top of IoTeX blockchain to enable self-sovereign devices such as Ucam real-world oracle such as Pebble. The former (https://ucam.iotex.io/) has been deployed to 3000+ households (http://iott.network/) and still proliferates. In contrast, the latter has been launched to 300+ developers initially and enables innovative Dapps that connect the physical world with the crypto world, such as real-world NFTs, weather derivatives, and machine learning-as-mining.
Who Are the Founders of IoTeX?
The founders of IoTeX are Raullen Chai, Qevan Guo, Xinxin Fan, and Jing Sun.
Besides being the co-founder of IoTeX, Raullen Chai is also an advisor at BootUP Ventures and is a member of the Industrial Distributed Ledger Task Group at Industrial Internet Consortium. He used to work as lead of crypto R&D and engineering security at Uber.
Qevan Guo is also a co-founder of Hyperconnect Lab. He used to be a research scientist and engineering manager at Facebook.
Before co-founding IoTeX, Xinxin Fan was a senior research engineer at Bosch Research and Technology Center, North America. He has also worked as a research associate and project manager at the University of Waterloo.
Jing Sun also works as a managing partner at Sparkland Capital. She is an LP investor at Polychain Capital and an angel investor at Rippling.
What Makes IoTeX Unique?
IoTeX is the decentralized backbone for machine economics which serves machines ranging from smart home devices to autonomous vehicles. To this end, IoTeX has built and launched a fast, high-performance, and EVM-compatible blockchain that provides flexibility and scalability for various applications. Also, middlewares and Dapps are built on top of the blockchain to bring self-sovereign devices and real-world oracles into reality.
IOTX is the native coin that governs the underlying blockchain protocol while being used as the gas for the blockchain protocol. Burndrop (http://burndrop.iotex.io/) is a unique economical design that leads to deflation of IOTX while the number of devices orchestrated by IoTeX increases.
What Is Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR)?
Billed as the “trust layer of the internet,” Hedera Hashgraph is a public network that allows individuals and businesses to create powerful decentralized applications (DApps).
It is designed to be a fairer, more efficient system that eliminates some of the limitations that older blockchain-based platforms face — such as slow performance and instability.
It was funded through an initial coin offering (ICO) in August 2018 and first launched open access to its mainnet just over a year later in September 2019. As part of the ICO, investors were able to purchase the platform’s native utility token (HBAR) at the lowest possible pricing.
The HBAR token has a dual role within the Hedera public network.
First and foremost, HBAR the fuel that powers Hedera services, such as smart contracts, file storage and regular transactions. Second, it’s used to help secure the network, since HBAR users can stake their tokens to assist with maintaining the integrity of the platform.
Who Are the Founders of Hedera Hashgraph?
Hedera Hashgraph has two founders: Dr. Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon.
Dr. Leemon Baird is credited as the investor of the hashgraph distributed consensus algorithm and currently works as Hedera’s chief scientist.
Prior to founding Hedera Hashgraph, Baird accumulated more than a decade of experience in various computer science and security roles and previously worked as a senior research scientist at the Academy Center by Cyberspace Research. He also holds the position of co-founder and CTO at Swirlds Inc., a platform for building DApps.
On the other hand, Mance Harmon is Hedera’s CEO and an experienced technology executive and seasoned entrepreneur. Harmon has around two decades of experience holding executive roles at prominent firms — many of which are in the IT security industry. Like Dr. Leemon Baird, Mance Harmon also holds a second position at Swirlds Inc., as its co-founder and CEO.
In addition to the founders, the Hedera leadership team also comprises more than a dozen individuals, many of which have had distinguished careers.
What Makes Hedera Hashgraph Unique?
Unlike most other cryptocurrency platforms, Hedera Hashgraph isn’t built on top of a conventional blockchain. Instead, it introduces a completely novel type of distributed ledger technology known as a Hashgraph.
This technology allows it to improve upon many blockchain-based alternatives in several key areas, including speed, cost, and scalability. Hedera transactions have an average transaction fee of just $0.0001 USD and typically reach finality in under five seconds. Overall, Hedera Hashgraph claims it can handle more than 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) — compared to the around 5-20 for most popular proof-of-work (PoW)-based blockchains.
The platform offers several major network services. These include:
- A token service that allows users to easily configure and mint both fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Hedera with just a few lines of code.
- A consensus service that acts as a layer of trust for any application or network that needs a secure, verifiable log of events.
- Smart contract tools that let developers build powerful and efficient decentralized applications.
- Decentralized file storage services with features include proof-of-deletion, controlled mutability, and time-based file expiry.
What Is Ankr (ANKR)?
Ankr originates as a solution that utilizes shared resources in order to provide easy and affordable blockchain node hosting solutions. It was founded in November in 2017 and during its time on the market, it has built a marketplace for container-based cloud services through the usage of shared resources.
This in turn provides developers and enterprise clients with the ability to easily deploy blockchain nodes at a much cheaper price when compared to public cloud providers.
As such, hosting blockchain nodes on Ankr take away any centralization issues and single point of failure.
Furthermore, public blockchains are able to engage in communities and provide further assistance to their networks. Ankr aims to build an infrastructure platform and marketplace for Web3-stack deployment to enable resource providers as well as end-users to connect to blockchain technologies and DeFi applications.
Note that the Ankr proprietary cloud infrastructure operates independently when we compare it to public cloud providers, and that it is completely powered through geographically distributed datacenters to increase its stability and resilience levels.
Who Are the Founders of Ankr?
The Ankr Network was founded in 2017 at Berkeley University in California as a distributed computing platform that takes advantage of blockchain technologies.Co-founder Chandler Song worked as an engineer at Amazon Web Services and serves as CEO, while the other co-founder Ryan Fang worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.
Chandler Song introduced Ryan Fang to Bitcoin and blockchain during their freshman year back in 2014, where he talked him into buying 22 Bitcoin together. In 2017, those bitcoins became the seed that funded the Ankr project.
Together, they acknowledged the potential of the cloud computing market as an infrastructure that could drive global innovation. This led them on a mission to build a cheaper, decentralized cloud.
What Makes Ankr Unique?
The Ankr network is created to provide a new blockchain solution that leverages idle computing power from devices and data centers as a whole.
It is a platform that enables the sharing economy, where any customer can access resources at a more affordable rate, while also providing enterprises with the ability to monetize on their spare computing power that is not being utilized. It is unique in the way that it is the first one to use trusted hardware, and as such this ensures a high level of security.
What Is DigiByte (DGB)?
DigiByte (DGB) is an open source blockchain and asset creation platform. Development began in October 2013 and the genesis block of its DGB token was mined in January 2014 as a fork of Bitcoin (BTC).
A longstanding public blockchain and cryptocurrency, DigiByte uses five different algorithms to improve security, and originally aimed to improve on the Bitcoin blockchain’s security, capacity and transaction speed.
DigiByte consists of three layers: a smart contract “App Store,” a public ledger and the core protocol featuring nodes communicating to relay transactions.
Who Are the Founders of DigiByte?
DigiByte was created by Jared Tate, also known as “DigiMan,” who oversaw its metamorphosis from development to its current setup before announcing that he was temporarily retiring from his position in May 2020.
Tate has since returned, and as of September 2020 once again appears closely involved with DigiByte’s growth.
Tate’s biography states that he was involved with Bitcoin from 2012 onwards, and authored the first book written by a blockchain founder, “Blockchain 2035: The Digital DNA of Internet 3.0.”
DigiByte’s operations depend not only on developers, but also the DigiByte Foundation, a volunteer organization tasked with overseeing preservation of the project. A third group of volunteers, the DigiByte Awareness Team, is responsible for marketing and promotional activities.
What Makes DigiByte Unique?
DigiByte is a modification of Bitcoin which aims to diversify security, speed and capacity possibilities.
Its first incarnation was as an open source blockchain and associated cryptocurrency, DGB. The network has five separate algorithms which help to maintain security and help prevent ASIC miners from commandeering too much power.
Later, another offering, DigiAssets, appeared, with DGB as its native token. DigiAssets appeals to those developers looking to launch digital assets, decentralized applications (DApps) and encode the necessary corresponding smart contracts.
All governance structures for DigiByte are run on a voluntary basis, in line with the thesis that the network should be open source and publicly accessible. Transaction fees in DGB are paid to miners for validating the blockchain.
What Is Bitcoin Gold (BTG)?
Bitcoin Gold was founded in 2017 to become a user-friendly alternative to Bitcoin. The BTG network aims to combine the security and sturdiness of the Bitcoin blockchain and its characteristics with the opportunity for experimentation and development.
BTG enhances and extends the crypto space with a blockchain closely compatible with Bitcoin but without using resources like Bitcoin hash power or vying for the “real Bitcoin” title. The company aims to present a coin with the implementation capabilities of Bitcoin, however, expanding on the opportunities for DeFi and DApp developers to use the coin.
Who Are the Founders of Bitcoin Gold?
Bitcoin Gold was founded by a group of enthusiasts with diverse backgrounds and skills. Hang Yin is a co-founder and lead developer at Bitcoin Gold. He graduated with a degree in computer science from Fudan University in 2015. His professional career started right after he graduated. In late 2015, Yin became a software engineer for Google. After three years with the tech giant, Hang Yin decided to venture into entrepreneurship by starting Bitcoin Gold. In 2018, he also participated in the founding of HashForests.
Martin Kuvandzhiev is the second co-founder of Bitcoin Gold, and he is also a board member at the company. He graduated with a degree in computer software engineering from the Technical University of Sofia, and his professional path started as a food service worker at McDonald’s. In 2015, he became an assistant professor at the Technical University of Sofia, and in 2016, he started a job as a lead iOS developer at phyre JSC. Since co-founding Bitcoin Gold in 2017, he has also launched another company called GoStartups.net. Currently, Kuvandzhiev is also the CEO of Assetify.
What Makes Bitcoin Gold Unique?
Bitcoin Gold is a unique combination of the inherent properties of the original Bitcoin blockchain and an innovative approach to blockchain development and applications. As a hard fork of the original Bitcoin token, BTG aims to revolutionize the mining process by introducing a new proof-of-work algorithm that combats the scalability issues Bitcoin struggles with.
As an open-source protocol, Bitcoin Gold allows developers to participate in the governance and development of the blockchain freely. According to the company, this is a must-have requirement for pushing decentralization and one of the major points where Bitcoin struggles.
Bitcoin Gold is one of the first hard forks of the original cryptocurrency, which has attracted institutional and enterprise investors’ attention. BTG is available on a wide variety of exchanges, as well as swap services and wallets. Lastly, Bitcoin Gold has been actively adopted by several online browsers and service providers.
www.bitcoingold.org
Audius is a decentralized music-sharing and streaming protocol that facilitates direct transactions between listeners and creators, giving everyone the freedom to distribute, monetize, and stream any audio content.
The protocol consists of:
- Discovery nodes that index the Audius content ledger and provide an easily query-able interface for retrieving metadata;
- Content nodes to host content and permission access to content on behalf of artists;
- Content ledger as a single source of truth for all data accessible within the Audius protocol, anchoring references to content hosted by content nodes;
AUDIO is the native utility token for:
- Participating in protocol governance voting
- Staking for running discovery or content nodes so users will get a share of network fees
- Staking to unlock features like artist tokens and badges and receive voting power from fans
What Is Reef (REEF)?
Reef is a Reliable Extensible Efficient Fast Layer-1 Blockchain for DeFi, NFT & Gaming. Built using Substrate Framework, it provides high scalability, enabling almost instant low-cost transactions, and supports Solidity and EVM, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their DApps from Ethereum without any change in the codebase.
Reef Chain is the most advanced EVM-compatible blockchain. It’s self-upgradable and has on-chain governance. Its infrastructure also allows for EVM extensions which allows for native token bridge, scheduled calls (ie. recurring payments), and smart contract in-place code upgrades. In the near future, it will support additional VMs which will allow developers to write code in multiple programming languages. The network runs on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which offers scalability and low fees.
REEF is the native token that is used for:
- Fees for processing transactions and storing data.
- Running validator nodes by staking REEF tokens.
- Nominating which validator nodes should be part of the network.
Reef is backed by multiple leading funds and venture capitalists including NGC, QCP, Bitcoin.com, Kenetic Capital, LD Capital, TRG Capital, Krypital Group, Genesis Block, Woodstock Fund and others.
Reef Chain development tools include:
- Remix and EVM integrated development environments for uploading and deploying smart contracts.
- Reefscan blockchain explorer to assist with deploying validators, bonding and nominating validators, debugging contracts, and understanding network performance.
- Reef command line tools that allow developers deploy applications from local environments.
- Reef wallet for accessing and interacting with the blockchain
How Many REEF Coins Are There in Circulation?
Reef Chain is a smart contract blockchain, backwards compatible with EVM and Solidity, designed to make DeFi, NFT and Gaming easy for everyone. At present, REEF has a circulating supply of 14,807,552,172 tokens while 38.2% of the Reef Chain supply is staked. Reef Chain today has over 23 validators. The current inflation of the supply is 8.3%
Who Are the Founders of Reef?
Reef was founded by Denko Mancheski. His motivation was to build the most advanced blockchain for retail investors who want to get involved with DeFi, NFTs and Gaming.
Mancheski wanted to help cryptocurrency newcomers overcome the complexities associated with interacting with a blockchain and understanding new concepts such as DeFi and NFTs. Additionally, the ability to give access many bridges to other blockchains so that funds and liquidity can easily be ported to Reef Chain, allowing retail investors to take advantage of high scalability and low fees.
Born in Macedonia, Mancheski said that his passion for FinTech led to him being introduced to blockchain technology. He has described forming a competent team as the biggest challenge associated with bringing Reef to life.
When asked about the personal attributes that will help him become a successful entrepreneur, he added: “I have a very addictive personality — I just can’t stop doing something until I get to the goal that I set for myself.”
What Is The Graph (GRT)?
The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.
To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of The Graph.
To date, over 3,000 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers, for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland and many others. The Graph usage has been growing at over 50% MoM and hit over 7 billion queries during the month of September 2020.
The Graph has a global community, including over 200 Indexer Nodes in the testnet and more than 2,000 Curators in the Curator Program as of October 2020. To fund network development, The Graph raised funds from community members, strategic VCs and influential individuals in the blockchain community including Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Framework, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DTC, Multicoin, Reciprocal Ventures, SPC, Tally Capital and others. The Graph Foundation also successfully completed a public GRT Sale with participation from 99 countries (not including the U.S.). To date as of November 2020, The Graph has raised ~$25M.
Who Are the Founders of The Graph?
The Graph team includes professionals from the Ethereum Foundation, OpenZeppelin, Decentraland, Orchid, MuleSoft leading up to the IPO and acquisition by Salesforce, Puppet, Redhat and Barclays.
The initial co-founding team includes Yaniv Tal (project lead), Brandon Ramirez (research lead) and Jannis Pohlmann (tech lead).
The founders have engineering backgrounds and have worked together for 5-8 years. Tal and Ramirez studied electrical engineering at USC and worked together at MuleSoft, an API developer tools company that underwent an IPO and sold to SalesForce.
They previously co-founded a developer tools startup together and have spent a significant portion of their careers working to optimize the API stack. At their last startup, the founders built a custom framework on an immutable database called Datomic. The Graph was born from this vision to create immutable APIs and data access, using the GraphQL query language.
What Makes The Graph Unique?
The Graph is working to bring reliable decentralized public infrastructure to the mainstream market. To ensure economic security of The Graph Network and the integrity of data being queried, participants use Graph Token (GRT). GRT is a work token that is locked-up by Indexers, Curators and Delegators in order to provide indexing and curating services to the network.
GRT will be an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, used to allocate resources in the network. Active Indexers, Curators and Delegators can earn income from the network proportional to the amount of work they perform and their GRT stake. Indexers earn indexing rewards (new issuance) and query fees, while Curators earn a portion of query fees for the subgraphs they signal on. Delegators earn a portion of income earned by the Indexer they delegate to.
Source for the information upon my positions: http://www.coinmarketcap.com
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