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Terms #
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is:
- Decentralized & trust-free finance that removes the need of a centralized 3rd party
- Decentralized Finance = Trust-Free Cryptocurrency + Trust-Free Financial Derivatives
- Cryptocurrency(Coin) is:
- Decentralized & trust-free digital currency/money/‘gold’ that removes the need of a centralized 3rd party
- Cryptocurrency is the most important subset & foundation of decentralized finance (DeFi)
- Cryptopennystocks(Token) include Utility Tokens/governance tokens/Subcurrencies/sub-tokens created on another blockchain, cryptoponzis, some small utility coins. They are actually not penny stocks, here it’s defined as such because they are very similar.
- Cryptopennystocks are not necessarily bad, they are a new type of digital assets enabled by blockchain. Some investors may be able to trade them profitably, but usually they are centralized and more risky..
- Most of the time, they have nothing to do with real decentralization. It’s not something we like, however the market like to trade them.
- Because it’s cost nothing to create sub-tokens, there are more scams in this category.
- Cryptoponzis is a subset of cryptopennystocks, they are smart ponzi schemes built on blockchain
- CeDeFi A term coined by binance ceo. CeDeFi is Semi-decentralized finance that is marketed as decentralized finance, but in fact has many central failure points. Currently CeDeFi might offer better user experience, and is non-custotial(which means users have control over their own funds offline.)
Criteria for evaluating cryptocurrencies: #
- Zack Hess - Trust_theory
- Proof of work vs proof of stake
- 2015.3.22 Andrew Poelstra - On Stake and Consensus(PDF)
- 2015.9.13 bitfury PoW vs PoS (PDF)
- 2015.8.14 Paul Sztorc - Nothing is cheaper than proof of work
- 2017.7.7 Paul Sztorc - Proof of Stake is Still Pointless
- 2019.8.6 Zack Hess - Proof of Stake
- 2019.8.11 Zack Hess - PoW/PoS Hybrid
- 2019.9.3 Zack Hess - The Defense of PoS
- Decentralization over centralization.
- Security over scalability. A more secure, less scalable currency is more valuable than a less secure, more scalable currency.
- Secure, trust-free currency without 3rd party. We most likely don’t need another clone of the fiat system.
- Innovation. Does the project have innovative design that might solve important problems? Is it just another ‘copycat’, ‘parasite’, or ‘clone of fiat’? We need to be clear on what we are actually supporting. Are we supporting thieves that might eventually steal everyone’s money, or real innovators that attempt to solve crucial problems?
- Utility Tokens/governance tokens/Subcurrencies/sub-tokens are digital assets that are similar to penny stocks, here they are not considered to be cryptocurrency
Proof of Work Crypocurrencies for decentralized finance (DeFi) #
Proof of Work coins (Coinpaprika)
Code Built From Stratch #
Bitcoin – trust-free currency/money/store of Value,digital ‘gold' without trusted 3rd party. Proof of Work with ASIC miners
- Currency exists to solve coincidence of wants problem.
- Bitcoin solves coincidence of wants problem in the same moment in time without trusted 3rd party.
- “Without money it would be very difficult to buy things, because you probably don’t have anything that the other person wants, so you can’t pay. This is called the “Coincidence of wants problem”.
- By solving the spacial coincidence of wants problem, money allows for career specialization. People can specialize in just fishing, because they know they will be able to sell the fish as long as someone else wants to buy them.” – Zack Hess Read More
- No ICO, known premine: 1 million BTC;
- It’s estimated that ‘Satoshi’ controls around 1 million bitcoins based on information publicly available.
- 2008.10.31 Satoshi Nakamoto - Bitcoin Whitepaper
- 2008.10.31~2014.3.7 Satoshi Nakamoto - All of Satoshi’s messages since 2018
- Zack Hess - bitcoin
- Zack Hess - bitcoin_without_block_rewards
- Zack Hess - Drivechain
Amoveo – trust free Financial Derivatives without trusted 3rd party, Prediction Markets, Futarchy,FPGA/ASIC friendly Proof of work, most trust-free Crosschain DEX on the market that is automatically compatible with all blockchains, sharding(sortition_chains)
- Coincidence of wants
- Amoveo solves coincidence of wants problem between different moments in time without trusted 3rd party.
- “Markets for goods is how people communicate their need for goods right now. Markets for derivatives is how people communicate their needs for goods across time.” – Zack Hess Read More
- “Money only solved coincidence of wants in space. Derivatives solves this problem in time, which makes it even easier for people to specialize their careers.” – Zack Hess
- Amoveo is the first and only cryptocurrency governed by futarchy.
- 2017.9.23 - “Access to stable currency and secure financial derivatives should be an unalienable human right. As critical for survival as sanitation.” – Zack Hess
- 2018.5.15 Demi Yilmaz - Amoveo Review
- 2018.5.20 Goktug Yilmaz - Amoveo Review
- 2019.5.9 - Ikigai - Amoveo: Peer-to-Peer Synthetic Derivatives
- 2019.10.8 Jungle - The Understory Series: VEO Amoveo
- Developer: https://twitter.com/zack%5Fbitcoin
- Community: https://t.me/amoveo https://discord.gg/h3NjQ6C
- Coincidence of wants
Snowblossom – Pure cryptocurrency - A backup plan for Bitcoin, payment currency, Proof of Work with Large RAMs & SSDs, flexible quantum resistant design, *Snowblossom Content Channels*(Decentralized web), decentralized patreon for content creators, Bitcoin’s economic model, Sharding
- The first and only cryptocurrency that use Storage IO based proof of work
- Launch
- Trustworthy origin
- Transparent launch with No ICO&Private Sale, no premine, no developer reward
- Donation:
- **Developers may get donation from miners, who may support the developers by choosing to mine with a mining pool with dev fee option enabled, or starting a new mining pool that have that option enabled) **
- Direct donation to support the growth of snowblossom cryptocurrency
- Donation:
- To get coins, the developer had to buy or mine himself. No one has any particular advantage.
- 2018 https://andrecronje.medium.com/c63aa420fe41
- 2019.3.25 Jens Ibsen - TEAMTALKS #24 — SNOWBLOSSOM
- Developer: https://twitter.com/Fireduck1209k
- https://discord.gg/as5tw6X
- Read more about bitcoin, amoveo, snowblossom
Kadena – PoW, “fast hybrid blockchain platform”
- Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform consists of a public blockchain, a permissioned network, and the Pact smart contract language.
- public blockchain is the sharded and scalable layer-1 PoW network in production today. It utilizes a Proof of Work consensus mechanism that improves throughput and scalability while maintaining the security and integrity found in Bitcoin. To achieve this breakthrough in scalability, Kadena has braided together multiple Bitcoin-like chains
- Private blockchain Drawing on the team’s expertise from working at JP Morgan and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Kuro permissioned network was designed to meet the strict requirements and business workflows that secure $100B order books.
- private blockchain delivers scalability and usability beyond any other private blockchain today. It can scale to thousands of nodes and has been proven to achieve up to 8,000 TPS with latencies below 100ms in real-world testing.
- The Pact smart contract language Pact already contains all of the features that other projects say they will develop eventually, including full Formal Verification of user code, error messages, contract upgradability, multi-signature, and support for interoperability.
- Telegram: https://t.me/kadena%5Fio https://discord.gg/EYmXvRY4kB
Conflux – “a Fast & Scalable Tree-graph based PoW Nakomoto Consensus protocol to enable higher throughputs and faster confirmations”
- Proof of work smart contract platform for DeFi, novel Tree-Graph consensus mechanism that optimizes security, scalability and decentralization
- The only state endorsed public, permissionless blockchain in China
- Telegram: https://t.me/Conflux%5FEnglish
Ergo
- “Ergo is a Resilient Platform for Contractual Money. It is designed to be a platform for applications with the main focus to provide an efficient, secure and easy way to implement financial contracts.”
- “designed for mass adoption. Its efficient blockchain protocol will allow it to be widely used while still remaining friendly to application protocols thanks to its unique transaction language.”
- Oracle Pools (ERGO + Emurgo + Cardano): https://www.ergoforum.org/t/oracle-pools-a-new-oracle-model/263
- Mixer: https://twitter.com/Ergobug/status/1292569319428300801
- https://t.me/ergoplatform
Hathor
- Funding
- Hathor Labs raised funds selling equity and pre-mined tokens.
- As the main network had not been launched at the time, tokens were sold through Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs).
- Hather made a seed investment round with Friends & Family and some selected private investors.
- The funds have been primarily used to support both the development of our technology and the launch of the mainnet.
- Hathor achieves consensus using proof-of-work and the same hash of bitcoin (sha256d).
- “Solve the problem of scalability with a novel architecture using both DAG and Blockchain intertwined”
- Achieving 200+ tps with no central coordinator or masternodes.
- An easier and safer implementation of Smart Contracts which connects real world data (oracles).
- Easy to use - any 13-years-old kid can create their own token for fun. You don’t need to know about “gas”, “solidity”, or “ERC 20” paraphernalia.
- zero fee for exchanging token
- Telegram: https://t.me/HathorOfficial
- Hathor FAQ
- Funding
Beam – POW, Mimblewimble Privacy Coin
Grin – POW, Mimblewimble Privacy Coin
- 2018.8.11 Kan Yilmaz - Grin Review
Dero
- Privacy Coin,similar to monero. A complete re-write of the CryptoNote protocol in Golang.
- PoW +DAG consensus combining a Proof of Work blockchain with a DAG block structure
- It combines the Cryptonote protocol with directed acyclic graph and Bulletproofs. ( Rocket Bulletproofs, leading to blocktimes of just a few seconds)
- Private Smart Contract: “Dero is the first CryptoNote blockchain to have smart contracts on its native chain without any extra layers or secondary blockchains”
- 2019.11.13 Jungle - The Understory Series: DERO
Nimiq – proof of work payment currency written in Javascript
Tera - Dapp platform that claims to have 1000tps scalability with sharding
Pascalcoin – POW, Payment Currency with Safebox, ‘Deletable blockchain'
Mochimo – POW, payment currency, claimed to be quantum resistant ( ‘Patented', Closed source, big premine)
Ixian - “a platform that enables encrypted data streaming and high volume of micro-transactions”
Cruzbit - simple cryptocurreny built from scratch with GO. A simple decentralized peer-to-peer ledger implementation.
- Cruzbit is like Bitcoin, but with most of the confusing, and extraneous implementation details removed.
- Built with developers in mind, cruzbit aims to make it easier to develop applications which interact with the blockchain.
- Application developers shouldn’t have to worry about complex transaction generation or signing, and instead with cruzbit can generate transactions with just a few lines of code in most languages.
- Multi-algo proof of work crypto currency.
- Fair release with no premine, no IPO and no ICO.
- Algorithms: SHA256D & SCRYPT
Forks #
Komodo – DPOW, Privacy Coin, Dapp platform, Zcash fork
Zcash – POW, Privacy Coin , Fork of Bitcoin
Ravencoin
- 2018.7.7 Demi Yilmaz - Ravencoin
Digibyte
Forks of ETH: Ubiq, Pirl, Ellaism
Monero – POW, Fork of Bytecoin, Cryptonote/RingCT Privacy Coin,
Forks of monero/cryptonote: Sumokoin, Conceal Network, Masari, Intensecoin
- Wownero
- a Doge-inspired, CPU-mineable, privacy-centric memecoin.
- fork of Monero with a lite version of RandomX (1MB scratchpad), a ring size of 22, a faster difficulty adjustment, and dynamic coinbase unlock times.
- launched with no premine, instamine, stealth-mine, ICO, or dev tax.
- a Doge-inspired, CPU-mineable, privacy-centric memecoin.
- Wownero
Forks of zcash: Hush, ycash
Veriblock
DogeCoin
Verge $XVG – Fork of Dogecoin.
PrivacyCoin. Onion routing for anonymity
PoW,PoS/Masternode hybrid #
Horizen – PoW+Masternode, Fork of Zcash, Private Cryptocurrency and Sidechain platform, interoperable blockchain ecosystem
- Horizen’s sidechain platform focuses on scalable data privacy and enables businesses and developers to custom build their own public or private blockchains using its unique sidechain technology, Zendoo.
- Telegram: https://t.me/horizencommunity
Zano
- PoW+PoS, cryptonote, built from scratch, scalable and secure coin, designed for use in e-commerce
- Zack Hess - zano
- 2019.10.30 Jungle - The Understory Series: ZANO
Decred – PoW+PoS, Bitcoin Clone with On-chain Voting Governance + atomic swap DEX
Bismuth – PoW+Masternode. Built from scratch with python. Smart Contract Platform built from scratch with python
Webdollar - built from scratch blockchain, pure cryptocurrency. mining directly in browser, Hybrid Mining using PoS and PoW
Nervos $CKB built from scratch Dapp platform
Dash – PoW with masternode.
PrivacyCoin, Pivx – Dash Fork, Phore, fork of Pivx- 2021.1.2 Andrew Thurman - Following delisting, Dash pushes back against ‘privacy coin’ label
Zilliqa – PoW+pBFT, works on sharding, Dapp platform
Aeternity – Ethereum Clone. Aeternity Telegram: https://t.me/aeternity
- 2018.5.6 Demi Yilmaz - Aeternity
- 2018.5.19 Doruk Oguz - Aeternity
- “AE software is a non-compatible rewrite of Ethereum into Erlang. “
Enecuum – PoW+DPoS+Proof of activity masternode. built from scratch blockchain. “Blockchain mobile network for decentralized applications.”
Arionum - PoW+Masternode, PHP blockchain, a platform that’s easy to build blockchain based applications using PHP
Non-PoW Cryptocurrencies for decentralized finance (DeFi) #
(Proof of Stake & DAG etc.)
New Consensus Algorithm #
- Radix – non-blockchain cryptocurrency
- 2020.8.19 Radix Blog - Radix is the only real solution to DeFi’s issues – here’s why.
- 2020.8.21 Radix Blog - Breakthrough in Consensus Theory: Scaling DeFi Without Breaking Composability
- 2020.10.1 (Youtube) Boxmining - Taking DeFi to the NEXT LEVEL ? - Radix DLT Protocol overview
- 2020.11.16 (Youtube) - IvanOnTech on why Radix is technically superior to Ethereum and Polkadot
- 2020.12.4 Radix Blog - Radix Engine and Components: Reduce DeFi Hacks, Exploits & Failures
- Telegram: https://t.me/radix%5Fdlt
- NYZO – Medium of exchange Currency; Proof of Diversity
- Zack Hess - nyzo
- 2019.1.16 Jens lbsen - TEAMTALKS #19 — NYZO
- 2019.8.20 Jungle - The Understory Series: NYZO
- Telegram: https://t.me/NyzoCo
- https://discord.gg/KTXsP5T
- IDENA
- Burstcoin - bitcoin fork, First Proof of space of storage cryptocurrency
- 2018.7.1 Kan Yilmaz - Burstcoin
- Other coins that are similar to burstcoin or use storage device for mining or staking
- Snowblossom - The only storage device based pure proof of work cryptocurrency ; burstcoin/BHD/chiacoin/spacemesh’s consensus is more similar to proof of stake.
- Chiacoin (Testnet)
- Spacemesh (Testnet) - “A fair cryptocurrency designed to become a global means of payment.”
- Filecoin
- BHD
Proof of stake #
Proof of stake coins(Coinpaprika) Proof of stake coins(Coingecko) BFT Coins(Coinpaprika) Masternode Coins (Coinpaprika)
Ethereum 2.0 – ICO Platfrom, Non Fungible Token Platform, Smart Contract/Dapp platform, “DeFi” for sub-tokens
- Zack Hess - ethereum_casper_ffg
- Librehash - Ethereum is Not Decentralized, Distributed or Trustless - Nov 13, 2020
- Tuur Demeester - why I’m so “against” Ethereum
- Michael K. Spencer - Ethereum’s Demise as a Cryptocurrency is Foreseeable
- 2020.8.15 Librehash - Independence is Impractical Within Ethereum’s Current Ecosystem
- 2020.7.29 Librehash - Analyzing the Secret Shared Validator Scheme Proposed By Ethereum
Solana - built from scratch blockchain, “High performance blockchain based on Proof of History” “a high-speed single-layer blockchain, currently supporting peak capacity of 65k transactions per second and 400ms block times in a globally distributed network with more than 400 nodes. It’s explicitly built to scale transaction throughput with Moore’s Law (doubling GPU core count every ~2 years). There is NO SHARDING required to achieve this throughput.”
- Community: https://t.me/solanaio, Solana Discord
Oasis Network $rose built from scratch blockchain
- confidential smart contracts
- “Scalable, Private DeFi”
- “a privacy-first, proof-of-stake, decentralized network.”
- “A network designed to give users back control and ownership of their data, while supporting new applications in open finance and open data”
- Overview of the Oasis Network
Cardano – Proof of stake, built from scratch blockchain, Smart Contract/Dapp platform
DFINITY – Proof of stake, decentralized cloud platform
Avalanche – built from scratch blockchain, leaderless, metastable, and PoW-free BFT protocols
- “an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem”
- Zack Hess - avalanche
- Zack Hess - Emin Gun Sire
- Paul Sztorc - “When AVA was pitched to me in 2018, it was described as a new alternative to “Old PAXOS consensus” and to “Proof-of-Work”. AVA’s consensus measured the quantity of nodes it was connected to, and their opinion on the state of the network, making it obviously vulnerable to Sybil (ie, an attacker creating many nodes so as to have more influence). I asked “is AVA for cryptocurrency”? “Yes”. I calculated the weekly block reward value of BTC (~ $60,000,000). I asked, “how will AVA resist Sybil, given that an attacker can spend millions per week on Sybil and still make a profit”? The answer was “AVA is keeping that part secret, because rivals will copy us.” (8/27/2020)
- Telegram: https://t.me/avalancheavax
Algorand – built from scratch blockchain, Pure proof of stake blockchain platform
- Zack Hess - algorand
- Yongge Wang - Another Look at ALGORAND
- Telegram: https://t.me/algorand
Near protocol built from scratch blockchain, dapp platform
- “A scalable, developer-friendly blockchain powering the new open web.”
Elrond built for scratch blockchain, “a scalable, fast and secure blockchain platform for distributed apps, enterprise use cases and the new internet economy.”
Tezos – Smart Contract/Dapp platform
Ardor – POS, Dapp platform
NXT
NEM – Proof of Importance
Icon $icx dapp platform
Rchain – Proof of stake, Dapp platform
- 2019.3.6 Dovey Wan - https://archive.is/86jwU
Free Ton
- 2019.10.11 sec.gov - SEC Halts Alleged $1.7 Billion Unregistered Digital Token Offering
- 2020.6.26 sec.gov Telegram to Return $1.2 Billion to Investors and Pay $18.5 Million Penalty to Settle SEC Charges
- This project was abandoned by telegram. It’s no longer associated with telegram.
Stratis
- “a enterprise-grade Blockchain development platform offers end-to-end solutions for native C# blockchain applications and Smart Contracts”
Cloakcoin – Proof of stake Privacy Coin. Onion routing for anonymity
Quantum Resistant Ledger $QRL - a ‘fully quantum resistant blockchain, using PQ-CRYPTO recommended/IETF standardized cryptography’
QuarkChain – Dapp platform
Blacknet
Taraxa Consensus: Block DAG and Proof of stake.
- built to make informal transaction data clear and trusted.
- Taraxa closes the trust gap for informal transactional data with audit logging
Deepbrain Chain $DBC
Delegated Proof of Stake/Tendermint BFT #
Delegate proof of stake coins (Coinpaprika) Delegate proof of stake coins(Coingecko) Consensus Compare: Tendermint BFT vs. EOS dPoS
Cosmos $ATOM – Tendermint BFT, Blockchain for interoperability, Crosschain Decentralized Finance
- Cosmos Ecosystem Marketcap
- Zack Hess - cosmos
- Telegram: https://t.me/cosmosproject
- Projects built with Cosmos
- All projects built on cosmos ecosystem
- Binance Chain
- Secret Network $SCRT(Enigma $eng)
Polkadot – Delegated Proof of Stake, built from scratch Blockchain for interoperability, Crosschain Decentralzied Finance
ARK – built from scratch dapp platform
Lisk – built from scratch dapp platform
- 2018.7.1 Kan Yilmaz - Lisk
Lamden – dapp platfrom
- “smart contracts are in Python so you spend 4-5x times less time programming smart contracts when compared to Ethereum”
IoTeX
- IoTeX started in 2017 as an open-source project, built completely from scratch (no forks) and is tailor fit to support Internet of Things (IoT) use cases.
- To support the high scalability required for IoT use cases, IoTeX decided to use a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) design. IoTeX randomly selects 24 of the top 36 Delegates to mine blocks every hour.
- The IoTeX platform enables builders to easily launch privacy-preserving IoT devices, apps, and networks.
TRON – DPOS, Smart Contract/Dapp platform, Ethereum clone
- 2018 Jane Lytvynenko - https://web.archive.org/web/20180324014323/https:/twitter.com/JaneLytv/status/977320655883587584
- 2018.7.25 Andrew Ancheta - Tron Plagiarism: Are Investors Prepared For Lawsuits?
Steemit
- 2020.3.3 Cointelegraph - Samuel Haig - Binance Reverses Vote in Apparent Steem Takeover, Steemit Comms Head Resigns
EOS - DPOS (delegated proof of stake) Smart Contract/Dapp platform
- 2018.7.14 Kan Yilmaz - EOS
- 2018.9.30 Michael K. Spencer - EOS Huobi Collusion Rumors Spread More Controversy
- 2018.5.30 Jacob Franek - https://twitter.com/panekkkk/status/1001627755736322048 https://archive.is/UoNDv
- 2019-9-30 sec.gov - SEC Orders Blockchain Company to Pay $24 Million Penalty for Unregistered ICO
$NEO dapp platform
- 2018.7.14 Kan Yilmaz - Neo
Ontology
- 2018.7.1 Kan Yilmaz - Ontology
NULS - “The MicroServices Blockchain Platform”
- “a highly customizable blockchain infrastructure that features a microservices architecture, and offers a chain-building product, including smart-contracts and cross-chain consensus.”
Aergo - BFT+DPOS “The Blockchain for Business”
BUMO - DPoS+BFT model, has voting, built from scratch commercial blockchain
Aelf - “Decentralized cloud computing blockchain network”
- claims to have “unlimited scalability, cross-chain collaboration mechanism and multi-level main-chain side-chain system”
- “designed as a complete business solution. The structure of ‘one main chain + multiple side chains’ allows developers to independently deploy or run DApps (Distributed Applications) on individual side chains to achieve effective resource isolation”
- “By adopting parallel processing and the unique AEDPoS consensus mechanism, aelf’s technology achieve high throughput.”
- “Based on the cross-chain technology of the main chain index and verification mechanisms, aelf achieves efficient and secure communication between the main chain and all side chains & direct interoperability between side chains.”
Raicoin – built from scratch blockchain, payment currency. Block-lattice with Staking Reward,Distributed DPoS (DDPoS)
Phantasma $soul - blockchain for Gaming, NFTs & dApps.
DAG #
Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Coins(Coinpaprika) Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Coins(Coingecko)
Hashgraph – Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), Smart Contract/Dapp platform
Obyte(Byteball) – Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), payment currency
Nano – Block Lattice, payment currency, instant, zero-fee, scalable
IOTA – Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), (Centralized)
- Zack Hess - iota
- MIT Researchers found a critical vulnerability in the /curl/ hash function that IOTA created.
- Erinn Atwater - https://archive.is/Puuuh
- Sarah Jamie Lewis - https://archive.is/29NXP
- Nic Carter https://archive.is/lNemG
Vite – a general-purpose platform for decentralized applications
- “A High Performance Asynchronous Decentralized Application Platform”
- Vite advantages
- implement smart contracts within a DAG structure.
- introduces asynchronous sending/receiving of transactions, resulting in fast transaction speeds with transaction confirmation in seconds and low-cost smart contract creation.
- fee-less transaction model.
- utilizes a unique snapshot chain model that greatly strengthens the transaction security by eliminating the inherent security flaws associated with DAG.
- “built-in decentralized exchange.”
COTI – “DAG-based blockchain protocol optimized for use by payment dApps, merchants and stable coin issuers.”
Constellation $DAG “Constellation allows you to implement security and auditability for complex datasets without changing existing IT infrastructure. It’s secure, cost-effective, scalable, and easy to integrate.”
- Constellation is decentralized protocol standard HGTP (Hypergraph transfer protocol) that enables standardization, connection, validation and exchange for data streams.
- As such the network acts as a software infrastructure tool that removes the financial and organizational cost of insecure data pipelines and bad data.
- It provides a secure and tamper-proof audit trail that simultaneously validates your data, allowing early visibility for data management teams into downstream issues – preventing bad logic across automated systems.
- Constellation is working with the USAF under the SBIR framework and several enterprise and blockchain partners to drive adoption of the Constellation Hypergraph network.
Other consensus algorithm #
- Stellar – FBA(Federated Byzantine Agreement), payment network, cross-border payments
- Ripple – cross-border payments (centralized)
Forks & Utility Coin #
- BNB – Utility: Users are incentivized to hold BNB to get trading fee discounts, IEO privileges, referral bonus benefits from binance. BNB is probably one of the most widely used ‘utility coin'.
- Opinions:
- 2019-7-12 https://archive.is/exS2g
- Opinions:
- Shift DPOS Coin, Utility Coin for Decentralized Web
Crosschain Decentralized Exchange(DEX) #
- Amoveo Crosschain DEX
- Atomic Swap Crosschain DEX
- Komodo DEX
- Decred DEX
- Blocknet
- comit.network
- Zack Hess - Review of Atomic swap DEXs
- Incognito
- Serum
- 2019.10 - Reddit-u/Loooong_Loooong_Man - 6 Reasons Why Serum Won’t Succeed
- Zack Hess - Serum crosschain swap review
- Bisq - a decentralized exchange based on 2-of-2 multisig addresses
- Cosmos
- Chainflip
Cryptopennystocks - “DeFi” / CeDeFi
#
Here utility tokens/governance tokens/Subcurrencies/sub-tokens created on another blockchain are classified as cryptopennystocks, because they are very similar.
Marketcap
- “Top
DeFiCoins” (Coinpaprika) DeFiCoins (Coinpaprika)- Top
DeFiCoins (Coingecko) DeFiCoins (coingecko)DeFi(Coinmarketcap)- Yield Farming (by marketcap)(Coingecko)(Yield farming means deposit funds to earn yield)
- Yield Farming (by value locked)(Coingecko)
- Yield Farming (Coinmarketcap)
- Exchange Tokens (Coingecko)
- “Top
Decentralized exchanges built for trading sub-tokens & cryptopennystocks
- AMMs(Automated market makers)
- Uniswap
- Zack Hess - uniswap $uni
- 2020.8.20 Peckshield Uniswap/Lendf.Me Hacks: Root Cause and Loss Analysis
- Balancer
- 2020.7.29 Peckshield Balancer Hacks: Root Cause and Loss Analysis
- 2020.8.15 librehash - Dissecting How the ‘Balancer’ Protocol Operates
- Curve
- Bancor
- Uniswap
- Orderbook DEX
- Etherdelta & Forkdelta.(centralized orderbook and order matching, settling trades on chain via smart contracts)
- Idex
- 0x settles trades on chain, while orders reside off-chain in database
- Gnosis
- Kyber $KNC - on-chain liquidity protocol powers decentralized token swaps in any application.
- Kyber is a blockchain-based liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from a wide range of reserves, powering instant and secure token exchange in any decentralized application.
- a fully permissionless Kyber Dynamic Market Maker (DMM)
- Multi-quote pairs, stablecoin-stablecoin trades for better liquidity
- KNC is the first deflationary staking token where staking rewards and token burns are generated from actual network usage and growth in DeFi
- Loopring Layer2 orderbook storage and trade-matching with zkRollups.
- DEX Aggregators - DEXs that also aggregate orders & liquidity from multiple DEXs
- AMMs(Automated market makers)
Derivatives
- Zack Hess - perpetual_swap
- Syntheix - Onchain Synthetic assets (Similar to CFDs)
- dYdX - onchain leveraged trading, perpetual contracts (perpetual swaps).
- bZx - Tokenized Margin Trading and Lending
- Augur prediction markets
- Opyn On-chain options trading for eth & erc20 tokens
- 2020.8.5 Peckshield - Opyn Hacks: Root Cause Analysis
- Nexus Mutual on-chain insurance for smart contract hacks(Users decide whether an insurance claim is legitimate)
- Cover
- 2020.12.29 Peckshield - Cover Incident: The Unlimited Token-Minting Vulnerability
Lending
- AAVE
- Compound
- Salt lending (use cryptocurrency as collateral to borrow fiat)
- 2020-9-30 sec.gov - SEC Charges Blockchain Lending Company in Connection with Unregistered ICO
Tokenizing real-world assets
- Polymath
Stablecoins
- Maker
- Using ETH as collateral to mint DAI,which is in turn pegged to the US dollar.
- The Maker depot created to mint DAI is called a “collateralized debt position” (CDP).
- Zack Hess - makerdao
- 2020.7.23 librehash Breaking Down the Maker Protocol and Explaining its Positive Correlation With Ethereum’s Price
- Kava similar to maker, built Cosmos platform,
- A cala similar to maker, built for Polkadot platform.
- mStable integrating stablecoins, lending and swapping into one standard.
- Maker
Portfolio management:
- TokenSets on-chain portfolios with regular automatic or manual rebalancing.
- Enzyme $mln On-chain Asset Management
- 2020.8.29 librehash - Melon Protocol Review (Tech-Side Only): Part One
Ray The Robo Advisor for Yield, smart contracts that optimize yield by automatically allocating assets to the highest yielding fixed income opportunities
Yearn $YFI
- 2021.2.5 decrypt.co Jeff Benson - $11 Million Gone in Yearn Finance Exploit
- 2021.2.5 Peckshield - The yDAI Incident Analysis: Forced Investment
NFTs(non-fungible tokens)
More Hacks Analysis
- Zack Hess - Feb_2020_defi_hack
- WarpFinance
- 2020.12.18 Peckshield - WarpFinance Incident: Root Cause Analysis
- Pickle
- 2020.11.22 Peckshield - Pickle Incident: Root Cause Analysis
- 88mph
- 2020.11.20 Peckshield - 88mph Incident: Root Cause Analysis
- Akropolis
- 2020.11.13 Peckshield - Akropolis Incident: Root Cause Analysis
- Value DeFi
- 2020.11.15 Peckshield - Value DeFi Incident: Root Cause Analysis
- YAM
- 2020.8.14 Peckshield - YAM Incident: Root Cause Analysis
Risk with “DeFi” / CeDeFi
#
- Long term risks: Fundermentals of projects change quickly, only hold digital assets with strong fundermentals to reduce risk. ‘
DeFi’ sub-tokens have weak fundamentals in the long term, one of the reasons is most of these projects can work perfectly fine without sub-tokens. - VC exit pump risk: VCs might be able to get tokens for free or next to nothing, while retail traders are lured into buying at as high as 100Xs higher than VCs' price. Many retail traders prefer investing in VC backed project because:
- a. They believe VCs will “pump their bags” to entice more “greater fools”, and
- b. They believe VC backed project is easier to get listed on exchanges and will have better marketing.
- This strategy will probably work for some people under 2 conditions:
- a. The project has been designed correctly and is able to survive and be successful in the long term. In this case the long term trend is always going higher despite short term corrections. Currently we don’t believe
DeFisub-tokens belong to this category of projects. - or b. In an overheated market, there are more greater fools. In this case if market conditions or fundermentals of project change, those buy at 100x or 1000x higher than VC’s price will have high risk of being fleeced if they do not get out in time.
- a. The project has been designed correctly and is able to survive and be successful in the long term. In this case the long term trend is always going higher despite short term corrections. Currently we don’t believe
- Volitity Risk
DeFisub-tokens will be manipulated & pumped and dumped. Price swings of digital assets will be much larger than the ROI you get from staking/yield farming - Regulatory risks
DeFiapps on ethereum for example, in fact are semi-decentralized(not truly decentralized), regulators can easily shut them down if they are not legally compliant, which is not unlikely, e.g. some projects are offering certain financial products/services without approval from regulators - Centralization risks/3rd party risk centralized control of the protocol by developers that allow them to change anything
- Governance Risk - Voting with governance tokens. Voting does not work & is insecure.
- Economic risks design has flaw that can be abused & funds can be drained by attackers.
- 2020.3.11 Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Benjamin Livshits, and Arthur Gervais - Attacking the DeFi Ecosystem with Flash Loans for Fun and Profit
- Network fees risk Fees become too high for regular users to do anything meaningful
- Technological risks bugs and hacks in the smart contract systems, not uncommon in ethereum ecosystem
- Platform Risk the blockchain that sub-token is created on have fundermentally flawed design.
- Taxes: users may need to pay income tax for staking/yield farming reward in some countries
Cryptopennystocks - “decentralized” apps ("Dapp") & Centralized apps
#
- All Tokens (Coinmarketcap)
Utility Tokens/governance tokens/Subcurrencies/sub-tokens created on another blockchain are classified as ‘crypto penny stocks’ here, because they are very similar.
- Imagine every application selling their volitile digital tokens that’s created out of thin air and claimed to have utility within the app.
- Imagine every online computer game making their in-game currency tradable like a penny stock. Will that be something we want?
- That is what’s offered by many
Dappsthat don’t have much users yet.
- OmiseGO $OMG
- NuCypher - Cryptographic Infrastructure for Privacy-Preserving Applications
- 2020.10.04 - librehash - NuCypher Review: Vaporware Top to Bottom
- Quant Network
- Power Ledger
- Quantstamp $QSP,
- Ocean Protocol
- 2020.8.9 librehash - Ocean Protocol Review
- Tornado cash Non-custodial anonymous transactions on ethereum
- TenX $PAY
- 2018.11.17 Larry Cermak - https://archive.is/8ZHuC
- 2018.12.05 David Z. Morris - New Video Appears to Link TenX President to Lyoness Pyramid Scheme By David Z. Morris
- Kik
- 2019.6.4 sec.gov - SEC Charges Issuer With Conducting $100 Million Unregistered ICO
- Tierion $tnt
- BitClave $cat
- Unikoin Gold $ukg
- Paragon $prg & airfox(airtoken) $air
- Gladius Token $gla
- 2019.2.20 sec.gov - Company Settles Unregistered ICO Charges After Self-Reporting to SEC
- Munchee ICO
- 2017.12.11 sec.gov - Company Halts ICO After SEC Raises Registration Concerns
- Health Nexus
- 2019.8.12 sec.gov - SEC Charges Blockchain Company for $6.3 Million Unregistered ICO
Exchange tokens - Best use case? #
- Tokens issued by exchanges that have large user base.
- This is best example because currently exchange tokens have more users the any other use case.
- And these users are already traders that know how to trade tokens.
- Some exchange tokens may have more inherent value than many cryptocurrencies.
- They are backed by real world utility
- For example, exchanges might incentivize users to hold these tokens with various benefits such as reducing trading cost.
- e.g.
- BNB (Binance)
- HTB (Hotbit Token)
- e.g.
- For example, exchanges might incentivize users to hold these tokens with various benefits such as reducing trading cost.
- They can also be similar to stocks.
- It’s like buying a share of the exchange business.
- They are backed by real world utility
- It’s not without risk. If the exchange fails, then the token will die.
Decentralized web(web3.0) #
Storage Coins(Coinmarketcap) Storage Coins(Coingecko)
- Snowblossom Proof of work, Snowblossom Channels (blockchain + torrent)
- Websites are seeded peer to peer like torrent. It’s one of the most practical solutions for decentralized internet, but user acquisition might be a problem.
Arweave built from scratch blockchain,Proof of work coin, “Arweave makes information permanence sustainable.”
- “Arweave enables you to store documents and applications forever.”
- “Arweave is a new type of storage that backs data with sustainable and perpetual endowments, allowing users and developers to store data forever”
- “A new data storage blockchain protocol based on a novel proof of access consensus mechanism that creates truly permanent data storage”
Skycoin – built from scratch blockchain, Consensus Algorithm: Obelisk, Skywire mesh network,permissioned dapp platform, utility coin for decentralized internet,
MaidSafe – autonomous and decentralised data network
NKN - token, “decentralized data relay network built on Blockchain & incentivized by a native token.”
FileCoin – “a decentralized storage network” proof of space (not proof of work)
Handshake Proof of work, “an experiment on collaborating to create a decentralized network which results in a global allocation of names”
- The Internet currently relies upon a single trust root DNS zone and an amalgamation of private companies providing trusted Certificate Authorities to secure the internet, Handshake is an experiment and exploration in alternatives.
- By providing a way to do decentralized lookup of name records, one can produce hashes and keys to identify resources over decentralized networks without a trusted Certificate Authority corporation
- https://t.me/handshake%5Fhns
Elastos code built from scratch, “Smart-web powered by Blockchain”
- “Elastos is an open-source project building a decentralized internet powered by blockchain.”
Holochain – a cloud hosting market for distributed applications
Helium – built from scratch blockchain for peer-to-peer wireless network
- Helium was founded in 2013 with a mission to build a peer-to-peer wireless network, “The People’s Network”, to simplify connecting devices to the Internet.
LBRY – built from scratch blockchain for decentralized publishing
Shift DPOS Coin, Utility Coin for Decentralized Web
Siacoin – Proof of work, decentralized cloud storage platform
Placeholders – Proof of work, utility coin for decentralized VPS
- 2019.7.26 Jungle - The Understory Series: PHL Placeholders
Livepeer $LPT - sub-token on ethereum. Livepeer is a decentralized video streaming network built on the Ethereum blockchain
Oracles #
- Amoveo - Oracle designed by zack hess
- API3 - API3 is a DAO dedicated to build, manage and monetize decentralized APIs at scale. Decentralized APIs will provide data to blockchain projects and dapps with quantifiable and trustless security guarantees.
- Ergo Oracle Pools
- UMA - “A decentralized financial contracts platform built to enable Universal Market Access.”
- Zack Hess - UMA (Sub-token)
- Augur – Sub-token on Ethereum, Prediction markets.
- Chainlink - $link (sub-token)
- Zack Hess - chainlink
- Paul Sztorc - “Chain.link is an oracle service, which purports to solve “The Oracle Problem”. Last I checked (2019), it established a “a platform for oracles to compete” – I joked that it was “as if SpaceX hired no engineers, but made ‘a platform for Reusable Rocket Companies to compete', and then claimed to solve the problem of reusable rocketry”. Blockchain Oracles have an inherent “opportunity cost of honesty” which is akin to gravity in the SpaceX analogy (or, more precisely: escape velocity) – for the rocket to work, someone needs to generate a force stronger than the gravity; abstract “competition” won’t necessarily guarantee it. When the smart contracts control small $, the gravity is weak, and anyone with two working legs can make it into space by jumping (thus, the contracts are “secured via indifference”)– but when the $ grows, the gravity gets stronger. Moreover, chainlink seems to implicitly endorse two theories: [1] “more oracles = safer and diversified”, and [2] “we don’t need to look into it if everyone’s doing it”. Those errors contributed significantly to the 2008 financial crisis. Finally, chainlink oracles seem to be mostly used for frequent ‘price check-ins' – as I wrote in Jan 2015 this overworks an oracle, for basically no reason (degrading its security).” (8/27/2020)
- Tellor
- Tellor is an oracle system where parties can request the value of an off-chain data point (e.g. BTC/USD) and miners compete to add this value to an on-chain data-bank, accessible by all Ethereum smart contracts.
- The inputs to this data-bank are secured by a network of staked miners.
- Tellor utilizes crypto-economic incentive mechanisms, rewarding honest data submissions by miners and punishing bad actors, through the issuance of Tellor’s token, Tributes (TRB) and a dispute mechanism.
- Zack Hess - tellor_oracle
- Zack Hess - parasite_contracts
- Zack Hess - town_crier
- Zack Hess - bribery
- Zack Hess - fast_oracles
- Zack Hess - Aeternity
- Zack Hess - witnet
- Wagerr
- 2018.5.11 Kan Yilmaz - Wagerr
Scam #
2017.12.4 sec.gov - SEC Emergency Action Halts ICO Scam
AriseBank
- 2018.7.30 sec.gov SEC Halts Alleged Initial Coin Offering Scam
- “The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a court order halting an allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) that targeted retail investors to fund what it claimed to be the world’s first “decentralized bank.”
- 2018.12.12 sec.gov Executives Settle ICO Scam Charges
- 2018.7.30 sec.gov SEC Halts Alleged Initial Coin Offering Scam
Centra $ctr
- 2018.4.2 sec.gov SEC Halts Fraudulent Scheme Involving Unregistered ICO
Shopin $shop
- 2019.12.11 sec.gov - SEC Charges Founder, Digital-Asset Issuer With Fraudulent ICO
2020.8.13 sec.gov - SEC Charges Issuer and CEO With Misrepresenting Platform Technology in Fraudulent ICO
2018.10.11 sec.gov - SEC Stops Fraudulent ICO That Falsely Claimed SEC Approval
2020.9.11 sec.gov - SEC Charges Film Producer, Rapper, and Others for Participation in Two Fraudulent ICOs
2020.1.17 sec.gov - SEC Charges Convicted Criminal Who Conducted Fraudulent ICO Using a Fake Identity
Reviews of Coin listing websites #
- Coindab.com
- best because it emphasize and list built from scratch original blockchains first and foremost
- Code completely built from scratch is a very good indicator of quality, but not all built from scratch blockchains are good and not all forks of another project are are copycat that don’t have any new innovations. It’s not the only factor we should consider.
- Github dev activity is not the best metric to evaluate projects, because if the design of a project is fundermentally flawed, more development activilty is meanlingness. And dev activites measure quantity, not real quality of work which is what really matters.
- Developer activities are only available to public repos hosted on GitHub
- Cryptomiso.com Useless
- 2020 reddit-u/Sajjon - Stop using number of git commits as any metric for anything, it’s idiocy
- 2018.4.18 Santiment.net, Valentin Mihov - Tracking GitHub activity of crypto projects — introducing a better approach
- SANbase – Currencies
- Coinpaprika.com
- Coingecko Problems:
- Misclassifying centralized sub-token as cryptocurrency
- Misclasssifying CeDeFi as DeFi
- Overemphasizing ‘penny stock’-esque sub-tokens
- Coinmarketcap - All Coins
- Owned by binance, not independent source of information
- Misclassifying centralized sub-token as cryptocurrency
- Misclasssifying CeDeFi as DeFi
- Overemphasizing ‘penny stock’-esque sub-tokens
- 2020.3.15 decrypt.co Tim Copeland - CoinMarketCap updates exchange metrics, Binance now ranks first
- Messari Screener
- Privacy Coins (Coingecko)
- DeadCoins
- Fiat Currencies:
- All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization
- Live Coin Watch
- CoinCheckup
- Coinlib
- World Coin Index
- Coincodex.com
- Nonfungible.com
- Visualization
- Coin360 (Cryptocurrency Market State Visualization)
- Coin Dominance Charts
- Bitinfocharts.com
- charts.cointrader.pro allows you to make TradingView charts of all possible cryptocurrencies for free.
Which Exchange? #
You will find almost all of the original blockchain projects listed on hotbit (Hong Kong) and qtradeio (US).
With any exchange, it’s important to send long terms holdings to offline wallets. “Not your keys, not your coins.” Read this guide to learn how to make your digital assets absolutely secure.
Note
- FX-C.COM want to promote the technology of disintermediation/decentralization and support it by holding some of the most innovative cryptocurrencies that have the potential to move us closer to a trust-free world.
- FX-C.COM currently hold $BTC, amoveo $VEO, Snowblossom $SNOW. Average Users like the convenience of (semi-)centralized technologies. More decentralized projects might fail due to lack of UI&Marketing, but we still support them because their potential impact to the world. Content on FX-C.com should not be interpreted as investment advice.