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Crypto Market Recap: 04/02 Buckle up because the crypto market this week was a wild ride, even for seasoned investors. Bitcoin (BTC), fresh off its best monthly close ever, took a surprising 4% tumble, failing to recapture the glory of that milestone. This price swing highlights the ever-present tension in the crypto sphere: fear of missing out (FOMO) battling with the fear of losing money. So, what spooked Bitcoin this time? Imagine a tug-of-war between scaredy-cat sellers and optimistic buyers. This week, the sellers gained some ground, pulling the price down towards the $60,000 mark. That once-tempting $70,000 target suddenly seemed out of reach for BTC. But here's the twist: despite the early weakness, some investors saw an opportunity. These shrewd players, often referred to as "smart money,"  placed large bids (over $150 million!) at the $62,000 mark. Are they onto a bargain? Perhaps. Or maybe they're just overconfident, a bias we humans are all susceptible to. Overconfidence can cloud judgment, leading us to believe we've outsmarted the market – a dangerous trap in the ever-volatile world of crypto. Beyond Bitcoin: XRP Feels the Heat While Bitcoin grabbed the spotlight, other cryptocurrencies felt the heat this week. XRP, for example, took a 5.5% dive to $0.59. Here, it seems external factors might be playing a role.  Factors contributing to the drop included strong U.S. manufacturing data impacting the trajectory of the Federal Reserve's interest rate reductions. This is a classic case of how external noise can disrupt our investment decisions. We get bombarded with information, and sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy and forget about the bigger picture. Did the fundamentals of XRP change? Not necessarily. But the market reacted to the broader economic climate, reminding us that cryptocurrencies aren't isolated ecosystems. The Crypto Market Petri Dish The crypto market is a fascinating blend of innovation and human behavior. Regulatory battles, whale movements (those holding massive amounts of crypto), and even celebrity drama all add to the mix. It's a world where fortunes can be made and lost in a blink and where understanding our own biases is just as important as understanding the tech. This week, for instance, we saw the Tron Foundation push back against a lawsuit by the U.S. SEC, highlighting the ongoing regulatory uncertainty surrounding the crypto space. This is a crucial reminder that the rules of the game can change quickly, and investors need to stay informed about these developments. Further complicating the picture, Tether, a controversial stablecoin issuer, made a significant Bitcoin purchase, adding fuel to the speculation about its reserves. And as if on cue, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried chimed in, defending his actions after a prison sentence. Market Snapshot (April 2, 2024): $2,677,124,123,446.54 (reflecting the overall value of the cryptocurrency market) Total Market Cap: $98,682,935,541.67 (indicating the amount of crypto traded in the last 24 hours) Total Trading Volume: Looking at Major Cryptocurrencies: Downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -2.05%. Market cap of $1,365,266,570,137.60 and a trading volume of $35,060,909,934.35 suggest high liquidity and active trading, possibly indicating cautious or negative investor sentiment. Bitcoin (BTC): Downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -3.25%. High liquidity and active trading are suggested by its market cap of $419,551,638,720.56 and trading volume of $16,106,676,738.21, which may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. Ethereum (ETH): : This is on a downward trend, with a 24-hour price change of -4.57%. With a market cap of $86,279,700,831.28, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $2,143,468,824.95 indicates high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. BNB (BNB) : Is on a downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -6.25%. With a market cap of $84,561,539,794.19, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $3,828,077,113.58 indicates high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. SOL (Solana) : Is on a downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -2.38%. With a market cap of $33,820,280,805.71, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $1,784,375,678.55 indicating high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. XRP (XRP) Other major cryptocurrencies like USDC, DOGE, ADA, and AVAX all followed the downward trend this week, with price drops ranging from 4% to 6%. While trading volume suggests some continued activity, the overall sentiment seems cautious. Here's the takeaway: the crypto market is complex, but we humans are even more so.  The next time you're thinking about entering the crypto arena, take a deep breath, do your research, and remember:  beware of emotional impulses and focus on the fundamentals. The crypto world is a thrilling but  unforgiving frontier, and a little healthy skepticism can go a long way.

Crypto Market Recap: XRP Feels the Heat

*Note, SWOT is an analysis of operational/fundamental elements. This is not a model to be used for technical or trading purposes. (NFA, DYOR) Composed of four elements, and , a SWOT analysis framework provides excellent insight for evaluating the state of a project’s well-being through the lens of a birds-eye view. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats It can help formulate decisions on what areas require more attention, set performance goals, and organize a foundational understanding of where a project is headed. Rarely (if ever) used in crypto, it is time to apply this timeless method of evaluation to the digital asset space. Today, a layer one, EVM-compatible, 2017-era blockchain will get a SWOT. Tron , (TRX) 💪Strengths (Internal) (Helpful) High Preference by USDT USDT is the most popular dollar-based stablecoin in terms of user adoption, historic presence, and market capitalization. In fact, over 51% of all USDT in circulation is deployed to the Tron network. Considering that stablecoins are considered to be among the most desirable and adopted crypto applications with real-world utility and value, this brings a tremendous amount of flywheel value reflexivity to the Tron network. Resource Model Network fees are a part of every layer one blockchain’s architecture. Tron utilizes a novel approach to the costs of utilizing its network through a fee model which it calls “energy and bandwidth”. At a very high level, energy gas costs are attributed to the execution of smart contracts, while bandwidth is the base measurement of network utilization that facilities activity. Recently, as part of DAO proposal TIP-474, Tron revamped its Energy model with a dynamic parameter that essentially reduces low-value “spam” network transaction activity and increases revenue fees for node operators. By introducing a strong, dynamic dependence between the nature of a transaction and the amount of fees required in order to execute it the network itself has begun to burn more TRX on a rolling basis, in turn exerting deflationary pressure on the token. Dynamic Energy Model Justin Sun’s Affiliations While Justin is considered to be a controversial character within the industry, his reputation and deep connections throughout political, commercial, and technological sectors precedes him. Landing on China’s Forbes 30 under 30 list, receiving recognition from AliBaBa’s Jack Ma, and working with notable crypto companies such as Ripple (XRP) in the earliest days, Justin Sun seems to be positioned perfectly to spearhead such a product to its fullest potential. Interoperability has been a hot topic since before blockchain technology. Being EVM compatible means that both, developers and applications are able to be leveraged equally in both environments without excessive waste of effort. This opens up the door for cross-chain compatible infrastructure and potentially shared liquidity. EVM Compatible The vast majority of modern blockchains, especially EVM-compatible ones, are all based on an Account model. Account models are what Banks use due to their simplicity. Tron actually utilizes a UTXO model (similar to Bitcoin) for tracking its transaction activity. Both models have merits, however, UTXO models are superior to account models for two reasons; scalability and privacy. UTXO is more scalable because network operators/nodes only need to track transaction activity, not monitor the state of every single account. They are also more privacy-preserving because there is no implicit/explicit on-chain identity, UTXO models require the creation of new addresses after every single transaction. UTXO Transaction Model Considering that Tron was released in late 2017, it can be classified as somewhat of an OG blockchain that delivers high throughput than nearly all other networks from that generation. With the potential to handle 2,000 tps, negligible costs of a few pennies, and 3-second block time, Tron’s network can easily qualify as a more user-friendly alternative to Ethereum. Great Performance 😞 Weaknesses (Internal) (Harmful) Out of a total 17 protocols, 10 have more than $250,000 USD in value locked and the top 3 (Justlend, Juststables, and Sunswap) have 99.9% of all value. The Tron Foundation is well aware of this and is actively working on developing new protocols, such as liquid staking, to improve this. Lack of DEFI infrastructure A 90% Concentration of TVL within just two applications Justlend, a lending platform, and JustStables, a CDP stablecoin issuing protocol, collectively have 90% of all the Tron networks TVL. This introduces an extremely high-risk factor in the event any one of the two has any unforeseen technical issues (bugs/hacks). Low Developer Count Considering the amount of value at stake and the amount of high-profile activity taking place, it is counter-intuitive to see that there are only 16 full-time developers working on the project. While there are spikes in dev activity, there has never been a month that has even reached the 100 mark; to put things in perspective, Solana has >340 devs and Ethereum has ~2,000 devs full-time with monthly spikes bringing those numbers up 2–3x easily. 🧐 Opportunities (External) (Helpful) “ Owns” BitTorrent. BitTorrent, one of the oldest, most reputable, peer-to-peer, decentralized file-sharing protocols on the internet. Back in July of 2018, the Tron Foundation acquired BitTorrent for ~$140,000,000 USD. Shortly after doing so, BitTorrent launched its own BTTC (BitTorrent Chain) and began utilizing the Tron Network to facilitate its native token’s (BTT) activity. Why this is of extreme value to Tron is due to the fact that when acquired, BitTorrent had over 100 million users. Assuming those users were retained, their network contributions/activity with the protocol in some way is reflected on Tron. The commonwealth of Dominicana has recognized Tron as its official government network of choice. As part of the nation’s financial and technological initiatives called the “Virtual Asset Business Act” (drafted with the help of {ECCB} Eastern Caribbean Central Bank) the OCES (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States) has allowed for the Dominican Republic to launch a digital asset DMC to conduct economic activity that will promote the Caribbean nation’s culture and heritage. Adoption by the Caribbean Islands The Tron Foundation is actively pursuing development across a wide range of sectors including Gamefi, NFTs, and AI. Partnering with OraiChain, Tron looks to integrate AI into the functionality of the network to improve its operations and enhance security. Additionally, the Tron Foundation is constantly hosting Hackathons and promoting its DAO Grants program to help foster communities. Strong Cross-Sector Initiatives While the DPoS (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) consensus mechanism used by Tron is arguably “more centralized” than other alternatives due to the presence of only 27 SR (Super Representative) nodes that handle all key functions, there are now over 390 backup SR candidates (nodes that can replace current leaders) and a total of >7,600 nodes distributed across 76 countries. This provides regulatory cushion and resilience against any single government crackdown. Good Geographic Node Distribution 😳 Threats (External) (Harmful) Justin Sun (Owner) is currently in the middle of getting sued by the SEC for securities violations relating to the sale of unregistered securities in the form of TRX (Tron network’s native token) and BTT (BitTorrent Token). Additionally, the SEC has targeted 8 celebrities that have been involved with marketing/promotional activities relating to the tokens while not disclosing that they were compensated to do so. SEC Lawsuit Given the enormous amount of competition constantly popping up in the EVM-compatible segment of blockchain, all touting higher transaction capabilities, privacy preservation, and other technological breakthroughs, Tron might be losing out on potential developers that could have just allocated their efforts towards it. EVM Competition Takeaway: On an individual basis, nothing about Tron really presents itself as world-changing or existentially important for humanity. However, in aggregate, all of the initiatives, novel technological designs, and social nuances do give Tron more value than the echo chambers of maximalist crypto Twitter would like to admit. Conclusion: I must say that for a long time, I was skeptical, even cynical about Tron. However, after diving into this SWOT, my cynism has been totally removed, while some skepticism still remains. I will admit that I have definitely reconsidered my position on it to a more bullish one than ever before. Even though I admire the technology and have tremendous respect for Justin, I still don't know why, but I just can’t find a concrete source of confidence to commit any sizable portion of my portfolio to Tron. P.s. I will allocate 0.5% to TRX just to play around with some of the protocols. If you know something that I don’t or feel as though I might have missed something, please do share, I would tremendously appreciate some feedback. Thank you so much for reading, I hope this serves you well on your journey. Live long and prosper 🥂 Also published . here

The Tron (TRX) SWOT Analysis: A Look at the 2017-era Blockchain 

Hey Peeps! On March 22nd , the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced charges, via , against the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, and his three companies: Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. press release The official charges against Justin Sun and his three companies are: The “unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT)” For “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading” And for “orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation” Wash trading is a process where a trader buys and sells a security with the purpose of misleading the market into thinking that it is being actively traded, even though there is no actual change in genuine ownership. The SEC alleges that Justin Sun directed his employees to engage in 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two crypto asset trading platform accounts he controlled. “This case demonstrates again the high risk investors face when crypto asset securities are offered and sold without proper disclosure. As alleged, Sun and his companies not only targeted U.S. investors in their unregistered offers and sales, generating millions in illegal proceeds at the expense of investors, but they also coordinated wash trading on an unregistered trading platform to create the misleading appearance of active trading in TRX. Sun further induced investors to purchase TRX and BTT by orchestrating a promotional campaign in which he and his celebrity promoters hid the fact that the celebrities were paid for their tweets.” - , Chair of the SEC Gary Gensler The SEC’s press release also announced additional charges against eight celebrities for “illegally touting TRX and/or BTT without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so and the amount of their compensation”. The eight celebrities being charged are: Lindsay Lohan Jake Paul DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy) Austin Mahone Michele Mason (Kendra Lust) Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty) Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo) Aliaune Thiam (Akon) All of the named celebrities, except for Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone, have agreed to pay a $400,000 penalty to settle the charges “without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings.” I found this part a little humorous as it clearly shows different levels of justice for the rich and famous, where they can easily pay a simple fee and make the charges disappear without even having to admit guilt. Now, these celebrities can go on to influence more people and potentially do the same thing over again with barely any repercussions or accountability. “While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection. As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities. At the same time, Sun paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation. This is the very conduct that the federal securities laws were designed to protect against regardless of the labels Sun and others used.” - , Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement Gurbir S. Grewal Not sure what to make of this situation yet, but if what the SEC alleges about the market manipulation is true, then I would have to say I am okay with Justin Sun being charged for his role. I still need more consistency and information from the SEC before I agree with their allegation that crypto is a security. That being said, I am always open to having my mind changed if better and more convincing information is presented to me. What are your thoughts on this news? Are you a supporter of Tron (TRX)? If so, will you stick with it during this tough time? What are the chances Justin Sun will come out of this victorious? Do you think the celebrities should have been able to pay a fine and get off scot-free? See ya! :)

SEC Charges Tron Founder Justin Sun and Celebrities Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan, Soulja Boy for Fraud and Securities Violations

Justin Sun believes users of the internet should own it together, rather than it being used by the few who own its data. That’s one of the primary reasons he founded Tron — to decentralize the internet via blockchain technology and decentralized apps. Think about it. You wake up and check the weather, either on your phone or by asking your smart device. During breakfast, you scroll through the morning articles on some of your favorite news publications’ apps. At work, you send countless emails, research a new project, and maybe take a break by checking your social media pages. At home, you unwind by streaming your favorite television show. Justin Sun, a crypto diplomat and entrepreneur, continues to spearhead evolution in the realm of blockchain and the decentralized internet. Undoubtedly, the internet is seamlessly interwoven throughout our lives. More than just a resource for daily tasks and entertainment, the internet is a powerful tool that has become a basic necessity for economic and human development. The proliferation of uses for the internet has brought with it questions about who should be in control of it, and a growing number of people believe that it should be out of the hands of the government regulators and massive technology companies that currently hold much of the power. In recent years, this conversation has only gotten louder, as questions about who is tracking and selling our private data have emerged as well. , along with millions of others, wants a decentralized web. Crypto diplomat Justin Sun Sun is the founder of Tron DAO, a decentralized blockchain ecosystem seeking to create an efficient, scalable, and cost-effective solution through an open-source blockchain-based operating system. In just five years, Tron has become one of the most active open blockchain and smart contract platforms in the world, with over 122 million active user accounts and more than 4.2 billion transactions logged. During the past development of Tron, Sun worked hard to propel forward the concept of a blockchain-based, decentralized internet. He famously made a record-breaking $4.6 million bid in a charity auction to dine with Warren Buffett, and reportedly used the subsequent meal to educate the renowned investor on the value of cryptocurrency and the blockchain, gifting him one bitcoin and several Tron TRX tokens that corresponded with his 89th birthday. In December 2021, Sun stepped down as CEO of the Tron Foundation (which has also dissolved since his departure) in order to focus on his new role as the ambassador for Grenada to the World Trade Organization. Expressing his belief that the Caribbean is uniquely positioned to be particularly receptive to decentralized concepts, his acceptance of the position is the latest in a long line of efforts on his part to raise the worldwide profile of cryptocurrency and blockchain. (known as Web3 or Web 3.0) and believes it is a “revolutionary technology that will democratize the world of finance, art, and many others.” Justin Sun has said that blockchain is an essential aspect of the decentralized internet Defining Blockchain Technology While blockchain has certainly become a buzzword in recent years, for many, the concept itself is still shrouded in mystery. It is strongly associated with its applications in cryptocurrency, but in its simplest definition, blockchain technology is a system for recording information. A blockchain is often compared to a ledger, but unlike those used in the past — both analog and digital — blockchain technology stores its information in a way that makes it almost 100% impregnable. Traditionally, a database will hold its data in tables, but blockchain gets its name from its unique way of structuring data. Information is collected together in groups known as “blocks,” and once the storage capacity for each block has been reached, it is linked to the block previously filled before it, creating a “chain” of data. The analogy to a chain is a fitting one because just as chain links in the physical world are extremely strong and resilient, so too are blockchains in their ability to prevent changes, hacks, or cheating on the system. History of Blockchain Technology As with most technologies that have exploded onto the scene, iterations of have in fact been in the works for a number of decades. blockchain technology One of the first instances includes the Merkle tree, an approach to public key distribution and digital signatures that was put forward by computer scientist Ralph Merkle’s thesis in 1979. The rest of the century was filled with other small, yet significant, technological advancements that helped set the stage for blockchain technology, including the invention of digital cash and timestamping digital documents. As proof of how one business’s failure can still make way for the success of many others, it was the now-defunct Napster that originally popularized the peer-to-peer network, a system that sees one network benefit from the computing power and storage capacity of thousands of computers. It was in 2008 that blockchain got its true start when Satoshi Nakamoto — thought to be a pseudonym for either a single person or a group of individuals — first published a white paper on the ideas behind bitcoin and blockchain technology. A year later, Nakamoto mined the first bitcoin block, and throughout 2009, the concept was further refined with an exchange being established, as well as a forum for discussions. At the time, a bitcoin was worth less than one penny, but today, each bitcoin is worth over $16,000. According to Sun, his first encounter with bitcoin was in early 2010, and soon after, he began “heavily investing” in crypto. Rather than a way to make money, to bring positive change to the world because of its ability to create and even automate trust. Justin Sun said he saw the investments as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity In 2014, Ethereum was launched, carving a path for blockchain to be utilized for purposes other than cryptocurrency by introducing smart contracts and giving developers a platform for creating other decentralized applications. From that point on, financial institutions and other industries began to recognize the value of the technology and tentatively explored its potential. NFTs and Other Blockchain Applications Although finance was one of the first sectors to see blockchain technology applied to it through cryptocurrency, its broader applications have seen it applied to practically every other industry today. NFTs are one of the most recent applications to make headlines, and although much of the media attention has focused on the perceived absurdity of purchases (such as Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million), . Justin Sun has said that he believes NFTs are the most important component of the decentralized internet He has collected millions of dollars worth of NFTs over the past few years, and said that they have the ability to bring “a new mode of transaction and transparency to the art world.” The decentralized internet is a highly complex concept, but one that people like Justin Sun view as necessary to bring to the forefront of the conversation for a future that is innovative and egalitarian. Sun is quoted as saying, “I believe in the metaverse, which is an inclusive and empowering version of not only the next internet but also the future of how people will live their day-to-day lives. I hope I can be part of building a truly decentralized metaverse and make it accessible and available to everyone.” Published on by in , , , December 8, 2022, at 12:49 pm Insider Monkey Staff Bitcoin Ethereum and Other Cryptocurrencies News Tech

Justin Sun Discusses Blockchain Technology and How it Can Impact the World

This is the official HackerNoon wiki for Tron. As part of our , this living wiki displays on . If you’d like to suggest edits to our official Tron wiki, please submit them in the comment field below, a real human editor will read and review your suggestions for accuracy and publication. coin price pages Tron crypto price page Tron is basically a digital platform, like a social media platform, that is based on a and has its own crypto token . Tron was founded in 2017, with the aim of enabling developers and content creators to sell and have value for their products without the use of middlemen. It uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) system to allow creators and developers to sell their work directly to their consumers. blockchain TRX History TRON was founded in 2017 by , which was followed by the launch of the TRON Foundation in the same year. This was in Singapore, the headquarters, and it was primarily marketed for the Asian market upon launch. Through its foundation, TRON was able to raise upwards of $70 million in the first round of initial currency funding done in 2017. Justin Sun In March 2018, TRON launched its that allowed testing of features and experimenting on capacity. Along with the testnet, TRON also released their Blockchain explorer and web wallet – this would set the pace for the TRON ecosystem. testnet After rounds of testing and improvements, the TRON Mainnet was officially launched in May of 2018 dubbed the Odyssey 2.0 which was a huge achievement for TRON. This release was based on the ERC-20 token. Later on, in June of 2018, TRON switched its protocol from the ERC-20 token to its independent peer-to-peer network which they use to date. Ethereum The TRON Foundation finished its first acquisition in July 2018, where it acquired the organization that focused on peer-to-peer file sharing. TRON would then go ahead to enable BitTorrent to establish its own token sale platform, which would be based on TRON. BitTorrent Despite being affected by the ban on digital tokens by the Chinese Authorities, TRON has been resilient and grew to become a global brand with a current capitalization of around $1 billion. Currently, TRON has offices in Singapore and San Francisco. Biggest Claim to Fame The promise of TRON, to empower content creators and connect their craft directly to consumers could be their greatest selling point yet. TRON is challenging and taking on established content distributors including Netflix, Hulu and the likes. It’s doing this with the full backing of the crypto industry. Upon launch in 2017, TRON was trading at USD 0.0021 per coin, after a few months of trading, the price jumped to USD 0.021 per coin, an almost 1000% price change. This set the potential of TRON and with its expected product improvements and partnerships, it is likely to soar even higher. The acquisition of BitTorrent was also a major boost for TRON in the creation of brand appeal for those who are into peer-to-peer content sharing. Biggest Criticism The biggest criticism of TRON has been in terms of the security of the system. In 2019, HackerOne released a report stating that the entire TRON blockchain could be rendered useless by a single CPU attack. According to Hacker one, sending a large number of requests to the blockchain could squeeze the power of the blockchain's CPU, overload the memory, and perform a . This security bug was labeled as critical and has since been dealt with by TRON. distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack Several other security bugs have been identified through TRON’s Bug Bounty program, whereby they pay and testers for identifying issues and threats to the blockchain. hackers Team Tron was founded by Justin Sun, the former Greater China chief representative of Ripple. Justin was featured in 2015/17 Forbes China 30 under 30, 2017 Forbes Asia 30 under 30 and was a member of the first cohort of entrepreneurs at Hupan University, an elite business school established by Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group. Justin has been a great player in shaping the crypto industry, especially in the Asian region. When TRON was launched, Lucine Chen was the CTO for two years before leaving to establish his own crypto platform. Lucien was involved in several critical aspects of TRON including the onboarding of developers of the platform. Marcus Zhao is TRON’s Head of Protocol and is involved in the platform in a lot of ways including development on BitTorrent. He keeps track of product development, and team management and gives insight into necessary changes. Conclusion TRON is a promising product in the crypto industry. Even though it doesn't pose features like low gas fees, and higher transactions like most other and tokens, its niche is interesting and quite promising. crypto coins TRON’s slogan is "Decentralise the Web" with the aim to eject the corporate middleman from the process of consuming media. The future and growth of TRON are reliant on its ability to provide and produce worthy products and services. Read more TRON stories This is the official HackerNoon wiki for Tron. As part of our , this living wiki displays on . If you’d like to suggest edits to our official Tron wiki, please submit them in the comment field below, a real human editor will read and review your suggestions for accuracy and publication. coin price pages Tron crypto price page

Tron $TRX Wiki: Coin History, Techstack, and Crypto News

Maverick Protocol raises $8 million in funding has raised $8 million in a strategic round of funding. It will use the money to launch its mainnet later this year, bringing its Automated Liquidity Placement mechanism and open asset listing model to market in the process. Maverick Protocol Maverick is being funded by a veritable who’s who of the crypto industry’s biggest VC names, including Pantera Capital, which established the first-ever crypto fund in the U.S. back in 2013, which led the round. Other participants include Altonomy, Circle Ventures, CMT Digital, Coral Ventures, Gemini Frontier Fund, GoldenTree Asset Management, Jump Crypto, LedgerPrime, Spartan Group, Taureon, and Tron Foundation. Maverick is a permissionless derivatives protocol previously operating in stealth mode, which says it’s aiming to revolutionize derivatives trading in DeFi. No serious derivatives trader can do so outside of centralized exchanges such as Binance because the options don’t exist. Whereas most centralized exchanges can offer over 100 derivative trading pairs, most DEXs provide less than 20, focusing exclusively on top tier coins. So it’s impossible to trade mid-cap tokens on perpetual markets. It means DeFi is missing a big opportunity, Maverick says, as more than 50% of the daily trading volume in crypto comes from the derivatives markets. Joey Krug, Co-CIO of Pantera Capital, said: DeFi needs someone to answer the demand for derivatives built on the mid-cap and long-tail assets that are underserved by existing exchanges. Pantera believes Maverick is the protocol to accomplish this. Its innovative market structure is poised to capture a significant chunk of the market by offering low slippage to traders and low-maintenance, capital-efficient staking to LPs. Maverick  will expand derivatives trading to DEXs with the aid of its Gaussian Automated Liquidity Placement vAMM, which is an entirely new mechanism that automates liquidity placement in markets more effectively than other methods. Not only does this mean more capital efficiency for liquidity providers, removing the need to manage their collateral, it also translates to less slippage for traders. ** ** The ALP protocol is based around the idea of capital-efficient, passive staking with high yield for LPs, Maverick says. It will enable open-asset listing, with traders able to stake any ERC20 token as collateral. ** ** Alxin Xu, the co-founder and CEO of Maverick, in an interview with Hackernoon, said: ALP makes it possible for new derivatives markets to be created entirely by the trading community. Up until now, he said perpetual markets have been unable to list most crypto assets due to the intense work need to create sustainable markets. Being a veteran in the crypto industry, you get to see many trends come and go. One thing that still holds true is a trading platform’s value comes from giving people access to the latest and greatest crypto assets. Maverick said the funding comes ahead of the planned launch of its mainnet later this year and that it will now build out its core business and machine learning teams to scale its protocol. It believes there’s a much bigger opportunity than just decentralized derivatives trading, saying its passive staking mechanism could potentially serve as the ideal composable model for dozens of other DeFi use cases. Crypto record-breaking month with nearly $5 billion in investments In January, venture capital funds continued to pour into the crypto business. The roughly $5 billion in additional funds set a new monthly high. Almost 200 crypto businesses received funding in January despite the overall crypto market slump. Bitcoin’s price has fallen from approximately $60,000 in early December to roughly $40,000 now. Despite this, fundraising rounds have continued to grow in size, particularly for later-stage startups. There were 15 mega-rounds of at least $100 million, with Fireblocks raising the most money at $550 million. Pantera Capital’s latest fund has garnered over $1 billion in total commitments. The fund’s initial target of $600 million has almost doubled to over $1 billion. The crypto trading, custody, and financial services sectors garnered the highest money overall. The NFT and gaming verticals also received a lot of money, although they have slowed down recently. VCs were also interested in the crypto infrastructure area. ** ** . Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Image credits: and Dylan Tan Hans Eiskonen

Maverick Protocol raises $8 Million from Pantera Capital, Circle Ventures and Altonomy 

9 Best Crypto Hardware Wallets - Top Wallets to Store Bitcoin in 2021

Hi Johnny, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind KuCoin Exchange? Ishan Pandey: KuCoin was founded in 2017 and I joined KuCoin as a co-founder. Before joining KuCoin, I used to work in the auto and luxury industries for many years. Johnny Lyu: Though officially launched in 2017, actually the infrastructure of KuCoin was first developed in 2013, while back then most of us had a full-time job and didn’t have enough courage to resign and jump into crypto. In 2017, impressed by the industry’s fast-growing, we finally decided to go all-in on crypto. In the summer of 2017, I still remember Michael and I sat in a Starbucks talking about the potential of emerging public chains like NEO. As the key person driving the establishment of KuCoin, Michael is an early Bitcoin miner and believer who started mining in 2011. He told me that he used to have over 1000 Bitcoins at Mt.Gox, which was the biggest crypto exchange at the time and executed over 70% of the global transactions. But the user experience was a disaster, low speed, poor support, and lots of overloads. That is when Michael had the idea that we can definitely make an exchange that is much more user friendly than this, which leads to KuCoin today. With the federal reserve printing massive amounts of US dollars and Bitcoin breaching $40,000 this year. According to you, what trends are we going to witness this year? Ishan Pandey: Bitcoin will not stop at $40,000 for the continuous global inflation will further push up the price of Bitcoin to break a new record. But personally, I think ETH will perform better in 2021 thanks to the booming of DeFi. The total value locked of DeFi is over 30 billion and many top DeFi projects like UNI, AAVE has entered the CMC top 20. Johnny Lyu: Driven by the rise of DeFi, some believe that the total market cap of ETH may overtake Bitcoin. I think that’s very unlikely to happen, but it may be very close to that of Bitcoin in this bull run. Besides, another rising star in 2021 can be Polkadot and its ecosystem. After the Polkadot para chain slots auction, more promising DeFi projects may emerge on Polkadot. The KuCoin cyber breach shocked many in the industry as most investors have used KuCoin. How has the KuCoin exchange recovered from the cyber breach and what has the team learned? Ishan Pandey: Many security experts have identified the KuCoin security incident as one of the toughest cases in the industry, whether it’s regarding the total amount of affected funds, or the number of affected projects, it’s rare in the industry. The good thing is that we have received tremendous support from the whole industry - from exchanges projects to security agents. Johnny Lyu: With the efforts of all parties in the industry, we cooperated with exchange and project partners to recover $222 million (78%) and collaborated with law enforcement and security institutions to recover $17.45 million (6%). At the same time, KuCoin and our insurance fund covered the remaining part, about $45.55 million (16%). In the end, we ensured that no users sustained any loss in this incident. A few vulnerabilities of our system have been exposed in this incident, all of which have been fixed soon after the incident. Also, the incident reminds us again that security should also be our main priority. So a number of security measures have been implemented by our wallet team and security team to prevent a recurrence, including but not limited to all hot wallets being redeployed, a full security system upgrade, network security and architecture system upgrade. We have also reached close cooperation with top security and anti-APT agencies to improve the overall security level, and the results will be reviewed by one of the Big Four accounting firms later this year with a security standard certification. It is fortunate that as the incident broke out, we could respond before it developed to be too difficult to solve. The saying, “what does not kill you makes you stronger” resonates with us. I believe that KuCoin today is more robust than we have ever been. Please explain Pool-X and how the protocol provides liquidity? Ishan Pandey: Supported by KuCoin and the TRON Foundation, Pool-X is both a staking platform and an exchange that provides liquidity with staked crypto assets. Johnny Lyu: The staking service is relatively straightforward. Pool-X currently supports over 50 tokens such as DOT, ZIL, ETH and it has distributed over $7 million passive income to users. What makes Pool-X unique is the world’s first liquidity trading market, where liquidity can be traded. Previously, once you stake a token on-chain, you have to wait a few days to unstake it. While with the Pool-X liquidity market, you can sell your staked tokens and get their unstaked counterparts anytime. The amount of tokens you get will be the same, but you have to pay POL tokens (the native token of the Pool-X platform) to the other party since you get immediate liquidity. The service significantly reduces users’ liquidity concern for staking and contributes to the rise of assets staked on-chain. What are your views on Security tokens? According to you, how can the STO industry attract investors and increase trading volume? Ishan Pandey: The emergence of the Security token is quite natural in the progress of crypto regulation. KuCoin has supported two STO projects - STX and PROPS - These projects are highly attractive to institutional investors and conservative retail investors as they are fully regulated. In general, most STO projects also have an excellent background with plenty of use scenarios, allowing traditional investors to have a more positive attitude towards the crypto and blockchain industry, benefiting the mass adoption of crypto in the long run. Johnny Lyu: What are your views on Decentralised Exchange (DEXs)? Do you think that DEXs are susceptible to illicit activities? Ishan Pandey: As a believer in blockchain, I favour decentralisation and our team members in KuCoin share the same values. KuCoin is also working on our decentralised trading solutions. Johnny Lyu: Though DEXs can’t completely replace CEXs, they satisfy users’ needs who are highly concerned about security. However, it is doubtless that DEXs are more vulnerable to illicit activities. Many people have noticed that more and more hackers are prone to trading the stolen funds through DEXs and it’s harder to trace such behaviours due to the lack of KYC. No regulator worldwide has introduced any clear guidelines on the compliance of DEXs, which from my point of view will be one of the biggest challenges DEXs will face. What are your views on the FATF travel rule? Are cryptocurrency exchanges implementing VASPs solutions to comply with the regulation? Ishan Pandey: The combination of KYC and the Travel Rule is a major tool to help financial institutions comply with regulations worldwide. An example is a progress that the Japanese exchange platform SBI VC has made in 2019 to ensure that its KYC and Travel Rule measures meet regulators approval. Johnny Lyu: The Travel Rule will not be the final difficult hoop that regulators will force the crypto industry to jump through. It will be one of the most important and set the stage for a more mature regulation of crypto assets. Depending on how you look at it, each new AML/CFT measure such as KYC, the Travel Rule and other measures like Know-Your-Transaction (KYT) plays a vital part in helping to illuminate the blockchain gradually. While they are different in many ways, the Travel Rule and AML/KYC have a united goal: they aim to clean up and fortify cryptocurrency transacting to ensure their survival for the long haul. According to you, which public blockchain can compete with Ethereum in the coming years? Ishan Pandey: Many projects once claimed to be terminators of Ethereum, but so far, there has not been a successful case. EOS used to be considered as a strong competitor of ETH because of its ability to provide millions of TPS, but it turns out that a high TPS is not enough to prosper an ecosystem. Johnny Lyu: I believe the most strong challenger in 2021 will be Polkadot. On the one hand, the founder of Polkadot, Gavin Wood, was the former CTO of Ethereum. As one of the people who knows Ethereum best, Gavin knows very well where the weaknesses of Ethereum are. On the other hand, the current ecosystem of Ethereum is very mature. It is obviously not wise to compete with Ethereum head-on. So Polkadot chose a cross-chain bridge, preferring to coexist rather than replacing it. Ishan Pandey: With the GameStop mania and Robinhood limiting investors ability to buy shares on the market due to the SEC’s fear. How can DeFi position itself and cater to retail investors who are fed up with Wall Street? Johnny Lyu: Robinhood’s suspension of users trading in GME stocks exposed the problem of traditional financial institutions. Alternatively, many decentralised counterparts are emerging, building a more fair and transparent financial service ecosystem. Take Mirror Protocol, a DeFi protocol that is newly listed on KuCoin, for instance. The protocol allows users to issue and trade US stock assets, and many people see Mirror as the decentralised counterpart of Robinhood. As Robinhood stopped users from buying GME and AMC stocks, Mirror decided to launch GME and AMC. If it is approved, GME and AMC stocks can be issued and traded on this platform. These initiatives help Mirror attract lots of attention and users. According to the , 30K of transactions were completed on the platform in 24 hours with a fee of 100,000 UST (a stablecoin that pegged to US dollar), the locked value over $322 million and the price of MIR tokens reached an all-time high on KuCoin. latest data The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company. Interviewer - Ishan Pandey.

"It is Doubtless That DEXs Are More Vulnerable to Illicit Activities" - Johnny Lyu, CEO at KuCoin

Crypto visionary and founder of TRON, Justin Sun, says "the crypto market is still moving toward its equilibrium". There are few people with such an impressive background as Justin Sun. He is the protege to Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, listed by Forbes among the "30 under 30 in Asia", and founder of the TRON Foundation (TRX). I had the opportunity to ask Justin a few questions concerning Bitcoin's meteoric rise, breaking the $40,000 barrier with projections that it could reach $300,000 or more in 2021, and increasing %400 in Q4 of 2020. As one of the leading minds in the crypto space, it's perhaps not surprising that Justin is feeling bullish on BTC -- and on altcoins and the role of crypto overall in the global economy. Justin's responses are presented here with some editing for length. Justin Sun, Founder of and CEO of and CEO of BitTorrent and Peiwo TRON Where do you see BTC going in 2021? Bitcoin has been one of the top stories of 2021 everyone and their grandma is talking about BTC this year. Doomers, nocoiners, and bears like to use every opportunity to point to the death of bitcoin or to equate crypto to the dotcom bubble. In my opinion, the recent correction of BTC is a reflection of a healthy market with active traders and investors. BTC still has a ways to go in terms of price growth, In December 2020, a leaked Citi report revealed one of the bank's senior analysts thinks bitcoin could potentially hit a high of $318,000 by December 2021. Although it’s anyone’s guess what the price of BTC will be at the end of 2021, we know for certain that the bull market is here and it looks like it’s here to stay. "Altcoin Season" -- has this happened but not as dramatically? Do you expect it to happen for ETH or anyone else? Historically we have seen the altcoin season take off as Bitcoin achieves record-high prices. Notably, when BTC breached its all-time high in the past two bull cycles, altcoins have typically rallied in its wake. With BTC price skyrocketing alternative cryptocurrencies are now looking mighty cheap in comparison, this time around investors have a plethora of choices and the market is extremely bullish. Altcoins like ETH and LTC don’t need me to cheerlead on their behalf and have already seen significant gains during this bull run. However. with negligible transaction fees and a rapidly expanding DeFi ecosystem, TRON is quickly heating up as a hotbed for DeFi innovation. What are people NOT paying enough attention to -- there are so many factors, it seems you have to account for the global economy, buyer sentiment, regulation which is hard to predict, etc.? The average individual buying crypto during a bull run has minimal to no real grasp of cryptonomics, the impact of regulation, institutional investment, buyer sentiment, and the global economy impact the price movements of BTC. This is enough to scare most novice investors... ...one thing to keep in mind is that the crypto market is still moving towards its equilibrium and we are bound to see pumps and retracements. Another thing that most people don’t generally consider is the key differences between the different chains. Bitcoin and Ethereum are very slow and ETH especially has exorbitant gas fees which act as a barrier to entry. TRON, on the other hand, is extremely fast, cheap, and highly scalable which is a huge plus for mass adoption. These comments appeared in part in my recent Benzinga article and will also appear in a collected report by Bitbuy along with responses from other top crypto influencers. *Cover image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

2021 Bitcoin Predictions: A Brief Interview with Justin Sun

Cross-chain solutions are increasingly catching the attention of speculators within the decentralized finance ecosystem. As products and platforms grow in popularity, interoperability between separate chains is becoming increasingly important. With protocol layers often solving a range of legacy economy issues, connecting disparate solutions into one complete, homogeneous ecosystem could be the difference between cryptocurrency mass adoption and failure. We’ll start by examining the cross-chain marketplace as a whole, before taking a look at some of the exciting projects making blockchain interoperability a reality. Atomic Power Interoperability isn’t a new concept within the crypto-sphere. Atomic swaps across separate chains have been , with entire built to facilitate this functionality. Despite the buzz around the potential of the underlying technology, atomic swaps failed to capture the imagination of the wider market. As a result, crypto-asset swaps and its advantages were largely forgotten, with the lion's share of alternative development efforts captured by Ethereum. promised since 2013 layer 1 protocols However, history has a funny way of repeating itself. A new wave of cross-chain solutions are taking the market by storm, and have their sights set on unleashing the full potential of decentralized finance. Interoperability and Me , and kick off our cross-chain swap renaissance, having in order to launch the - a ‘heterogeneous interoperability protocol alliance.’ Designed to seamlessly integrate the , and Neo platforms into the larger cross-chain ecosystem, the Poly Network enables enterprises leveraging the Ontology blockchain to move seamlessly between multiple chains. NEO Ontology Switcheo recently combined forces Poly Network Ethereum Cosmos It doesn’t stop there. The is leveraging its novel blockchain agnostic oracle architecture in order to facilitate trustless cross-chain data communication, partnering with the as a result. is in the final stages of launching its unique Multi-Bonded Proof of Stake (MBPoS) technology and ecosystem  - giving near-unlimited access to liquid staking opportunities for crypto assets, digital fiat and commodities across multiple chains Band protocol Tron foundation KIRA Tier 1 scaling solutions are vying for the spotlight too. The helps developers and users avoid the sky-high gas fees associated with Ethereum network congestion by transferring ‘performance or gas-fee critical parts to NEAR while keeping their Ethereum-native user base’. NEAR protocol There’s more to cross-chain DeFi solutions than just facilitating blockchain transaction compatibility however, as we’re about to see. Scaling for the Future Decentralized applications often present clunky user experiences. On and off-chain technology stacks make complex processes difficult to streamline. Scaling for genuine mass adoption will only bring further teething problems with apps already stretched to accommodate moderate usage. To meet this demand, a growing number of communication solutions between different chains and Dapps are competing to alleviate computational bottlenecks. , a a cross-chain scalabilty network featuring decentralized computing, database storage and a DID framework, aims to do just that. Operating within what is often referred to as the ‘last mile of DeFi’, aleph.im is building a complete cross-chain scalability network in order to address and enhance the current drawbacks of distributed ledger technology. Aleph.im The network provides access to instant, low-latency global status updates, IPFS data pinning and replication, API service decentralization, virtual machine code execution and verification, as well as bulk content writing to facilitate fee-less commits. By creating a trustless messaging and application layer, aleph.im is aiming to unlock the true potential of interchain liquidity and cross-chain composability. This has caught the attention of companies like , and who have joined forces with the company, proving the growing demand for genuine solutions to off-chain over-dependencies. Currently, NULS, Ethereum, Binance Chain and Neo are all supported, with further cross-chain compatibility in the pipeline. Jarvis Orion Protocol Serum Conclusion As Michael Egorov from said: “DeFi will grow really big and will replace banks and power a whole new world of financial systems, but there’s a long way to go." While there is a lot of work remaining, cross-chain composability is a real and will help power DeFi into new levels of adoption and functionality. Curve It is safe to assume the industry will see challenges around legal and jurisdictional requirements, especially as regulators start to consider what the future of blockchain, decentralized finance, and stablecoins play in the global financial system. Until then, expect to see more innovative solutions around cross-chain compatibility hitting the market.

The Importance of Cross-Chain Solutions in the DeFi Economy

A lawsuit filed against BitTorrent owner Rainberry Inc, TRON Foundation's Justin Sun, and one of his colleagues, is based in employment law. However, the allegations it contains could pique interest in Hollywood, with claims that movies including The Lion King were involved in a "fraudulent scheme" to "make a profit from the illegal piracy of those materials." In 2018, Justin Sun’s Rainberry Inc. BitTorrent Inc. successfully acquired While the name Rainberry is rarely used in public, company brands such as BitTorrent, TRON, and TRX are more easily recognized by the public, with controversy rarely far behind. Developments related to these various brands are usually followed closely by the cryptocurrency press, mainly due to Sun’s voluminous tweets that tend to focus on crypto matters, rather than the file-sharing activities of the uTorrent owner. This was also the case yesterday when sites including began reporting on an employment law dispute that was quietly filed last October by a pair of former Rainberry Inc. employees. However, this development also has an interesting copyright angle that hasn’t been explained in detail. Coindesk Richard Hall worked as a product manager at the company while Lukasz Juraszek was employed as an engineer, at least before they were dismissed. Their 70-page lawsuit is a trip through many serious allegations, including racism, threats, the witnessing of physical violence, and a number of closely related matters. However, concerns over Rainberry’s exposure to copyright infringement issues appear to lie at the root of the legal action. “Defendant Justin Sun and his hand-picked mainland Chinese-born subordinates were engaged in illegal piracy of copyrighted materials for defendant Rainberry Inc., in order to make a profit from the illegal piracy of those materials, as well as other illegal and unscrupulous activities,” the lawsuit reads. Both Hall and Juraszek characterize themselves as “whistleblowers” who were subjected to a campaign of harassment after they raised concerns over activity at the company. The lawsuit claims that their employment at Rainberry was terminated following their “outright refusal to engage in criminal violation of state and national statutes concerning piracy of intellectual property”, including Hollywood first-run films. Hall claims he was assigned by the company to work as Senior Director of Product Management on the emerging file-sharing product known publicly as . He says he raised concerns with his superiors that depending on the architecture and implementation of caching and delivery algorithms, users of BTFS might be monetarily rewarded (via crypto tokens, such as BTT) for “unknowingly storing and distributing inappropriate content” and/or copyright-infringing material. BitTorrent File System (BTFS) These complaints, Hall suggests, resulted in him being demoted in a manner that prevented him from overseeing the BTFS product. Nevertheless, he says he sought out proposals from two law firms specializing in copyright law to provide estimates for a legal review of what Rainberry and TRON were preparing to do, specifically for BTFS and another product called BTFS Movie or BT Movie (the lawsuit uses both). However, the lawsuit claims that following discussion with Justin Sun, it was determined that no legal review would be carried out. According to Hall, he advised that the ‘Movie’ product should be renamed, so that outsiders wouldn’t be given the impression that the company was encouraging the illegal sharing of movies on the BTFS network. Shortly after, his employment was terminated on the basis that he was “not a fit” for the company, Hall claims. “[I]t become clear that Richard Hall was terminated because he raised legitimate legal concerns about the actual or potential for BTFS and associated BTFS Movie projects to be engaged in illegal activity and pirating of copyrighted materials that Justin Sun did not want to have investigated because it would delay the launch and reveal the illegal and nefarious activities in which the company was engaged,” the lawsuit reads. In July 2019, Lukasz Juraszek reports that he realized that BTFS was no longer a “demo app”. As a result he began to step up his concerns over the application because the company had no control over the content being posted on BTFS “which at the time was entirely hosted on TRON’s infrastructure.” According to him, the Movie app was then “handed off” to Rainberry’s “Mainland China” office for implementation “by end of July 2019.” In August 2019, Juraszek says he again raised concerns that illegal content could be downloaded from BTFS, that he was uncomfortable working on the project, and that attorneys should be consulted before further work was done on BT Movie. He later carried out his own investigations by accessing the TRON “BT Movie” website to check if illegal content could be found. According to him, he found a Chinese-subtitled version of The Lion King (which was still in cinemas) along with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Hobbs & Shaw, Avengers: Infinity Wars”, and “many, many others.” On August 20, 2019, following what appears to be several strained interactions with management on a variety of topics, Juraszek was reportedly dismissed for “sharing company information” with a third-party. How the lawsuit will progress from here is unclear but the former Rainberry employees are demanding $15 million in damages. For his part, Justin Sun is mounting a vigorous defense, demanding that the complaint is dismissed in its entirety and the plaintiffs paying his costs. The complaint can be found with answers from Justin Sun and co-defendant Cong Li and (all pdf) here here here Originally published as “ BitTorrent Owner Accused of Profiting From Movie Piracy ” with the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license

Lawsuit Filed Against BitTorrent, The Company Accused of Illegal Profiting

The monthly retention rates of the six gambling dapps covered in this report demonstrate large variation; both between dapps and across months for individual dapps. Key takeaways Retaining users is a key factor in the long term success of any gambling dapp. Features such as dividends, airdrops, and prize jackpots enable developers to better retain their audience month-on-month. On this basis, the best gambling dapps can maintain monthly retention rates of 70% Yet during 2019, the monthly retention rates for gambling dapps proved to be highly volatile, ranging from 4% to 87% continued to build on its reputation as “ ”. A constant stream of as well as market leaders like 888TRON and WINk. has seen a decrease in gambling activity. Although the amount of value spent on has remained solid at around $4 million daily. Gambling is often overlooked on . Around $1 million is spent daily on gambling, around 11% of the category’s total value by USDIntroduction TRON Las Vegas on the blockchain new gambling dapps EOS EOS gambling dapps Ethereum As discussed in our . Gambling remains the largest single dapp category on DappRadar with almost 1,000 dapps tracked. high-level overview of the dapp gambling ecosystem However, because they are so simple and quick to make, it’s difficult for gambling dapps to sustain a loyal audience. Gamblers are always on the lookout for new and potentially better . opportunities to make money And that’s why the focus of this report is the retention metrics of six of the . top gambling dapps These dapps are concentrated on the EOS and especially the TRON blockchains. Although some gambling dapps also successfully run on the . Ethereum blockchain Methodology There are many ways of measuring retention and for the sake of clarity and timeliness, in this report. We’re considering the monthly retention of unique active wallets on a per dapp basis. This metric breaks down each dapp’s monthly audience into new users and retained users. Each compared to the previous month’s unique active wallets. From this, it’s simple to calculate the number of wallets that have stopped playing. This provides a snapshot of whether players are enjoying the experience and continuing to play month-on-month, or quickly churning out. Note, this methodology doesn’t attempt to measure the medium or long term re-engagement of audiences over two or more months. Gambling dapps retention overview The largest variation in retention rate was experienced by 888TRON. Although it’s important to note that its retention rate improved during 2019. As shown by the dark color of the dots at the top of the graph. (The darker the dots, the later the month.) Not all gambling dapps experienced this spectrum of retention rates though. RocketGame, another TRON dapp, maintained a high level of retention throughout this period. But this sort of behavior is usual for gambling dapps. In particular, the two dapps covered running on the EOS blockchain – Dice and BigGame. Both suffered from strongly declining monthly retention. In part due to the overall congestion impacting the EOS chain in late 2019. Ethereum gambling dapp Dice2.win had the lowest average retention rate of all the dapps covered. This is due partly to the restrictions of running a dapp on a blockchain that uses proof of work consensus. Hence has long block times – and partly due to the dapp’s lightweight features. Gambling dapps on TRON In terms of the total number of active unique wallets interacting with all gambling dapps. TRON dapps currently account for around 83% of monthly activity. However, this figure reduces to around 43% when taking into account TRON’s proportion of the total monthly spend in USD across all gambling dapps. Roughly $4 million worth of the TRX cryptocurrency is spent daily in TRON gambling dapps. (Note: For technical reasons, in this analysis, we can only track the interaction of the TRX cryptocurrency, not TRON-based tokens.) In this report, we cover three TRON gambling dapps: 888TRON; WINk; and RocketGame. 888TRON Launched in early 2019, 888TRON experienced a difficult early couple of months. Thanks to an immature token economy that was exploited by players. But the developer persevered. By the end of the year, 888TRON was one of the strongest gambling dapps on TRON. Both in terms of daily activity and daily value. This trend can clearly be seen when looking at the monthly flow of new and retained wallets interacting with 888TRON. There was a large inflow of new wallets in March, but the majority of these were not retained into April. In the final quarter of 2019, however, retention was much better, as demonstrated by the increasing blue line from November. During January 2020, attracted 3,462 active unique wallets. 888TRON As with many gambling dapps, a key retention mechanic within 888TRON is its custom 888Token. Used both to encourage players to spend TRX, as well as freeze (or lock) their tokens for long periods to gain greater rewards. This activity is reinforced with regular jackpot special events which provide the opportunity for even higher payouts. Looking more specifically at the monthly retention rate for 888TRON, the struggles the developer had to overcome during 2019 are obvious. The game retained fairly well for its first two months. Then retention declined to a low of 19% in July. But adding more retention features, especially large jackpots such as its current 50 million TRX event, has seen a steady increase back to a monthly retention rate of over 75%. WINk Previously called TRONbet, this gambling dapp rebranded as WINk in July 2019 following a strategic partnership with the TRON Foundation. As with many other gambling dapps, it has its own WIN token. Used to gamble with, or frozen for a period to time to generate dividend payments. It also lets users gamble with additional cryptocurrencies. Including the BitTorrent BTT token and the TRON version of the USDT stablecoin. Nevertheless, in 2019, WINk saw a steady decline in monthly activity. It peaked at over 16,000 active unique wallets during May, dropping to around 8,300 in January 2020. remained still the . WINk most popular dapp on TRON WINk maintained a fairly solid monthly retention rate of around 50% for most of 2019. Of course, this isn’t a particularly strong performance as it means half of the players during a month didn’t come back the following month. And retention fell significantly during January 2020 to 28%. Most likely driven by the rise of on TRON such as Dragon7. new gambling dapps This is something the developer is clearly aware of and is working on a new user loyalty and reward system. Due to be released as a beta during Q2 2020. RocketGame Compared to more traditional gambling dapps such as 888TRON and WINk, which have a strong casino component. RocketGame offers a much simpler set of gambling experiences. For example, there’s no live video poker or slots. However, it still has all the deeper retention features you’d expect from a blockchain gambling dapp. Including its own token – called RKT – as well as lotteries, dividends, and special events. More significantly, RocketGame has also integrated what could be considered game-style retention features. These include daily tasks, challenges, and leaderboards to drive engagement amongst its users. This approach appears to have been successful with RocketGame sustaining an audience of at least 3,500 monthly active wallets. It also has the highest retention curve of any of the in this report; averaging 80%. gambling dapps Gambling dapps on EOS In terms of the total number of active unique wallets interacting with gambling dapps. EOS dapps currently account for around 11% of daily activity. Historically, though, EOS used to make up a much larger part of the . gambling dapps ecosystem When it comes to value, EOS currently accounts for around 46% of the total monthly spend in USD across all gambling dapps. Roughly $4 million worth of the EOS cryptocurrency and EOS-based tokens are spent daily in EOS gambling dapps . Similar to spending in TRON gambling dapps . In this report, we cover two EOS gambling dapps: BigGame; and Dice, both of which experienced a declining audience in 2019. BigGame Much like RocketGame on TRON, BigGame isn’t a traditional gambling experience. For one thing, it only contains six games compared to the hundreds available in some . other dapps It does have plenty of blockchain-enabled retention features. Such as a strong VIP program that offers more rewards the more players spend. Players can also earn passive income through token mining and the game’s dividend plan. For the first half of 2019, this strategy appeared to work fairly well. BigGame retained more than half its monthly players. But over time, and as it attracted more new wallets, the dapp’s retention rate declined. Dropping particularly heavily from November onwards, which was when the EOS blockchain started to suffer from congestion. More generally, has never maintained a solid – far less a growing – monthly audience of retained wallets. New wallets always make up the majority of its audience. BigGame Dice Something of the volatility of the blockchain gambling economy can be seen by looking at Dice’s performance during 2019. Up until September, it retained a steady audience of at least 1,000 active wallets. Only a small number of new wallets were measured every month. This changed dramatically for the four final months of 2019. Dice gained more than 19,000 new wallets, including over 8,000 during September alone. However, the vast majority of these new wallets were immediately lost. Dice suffered from a monthly retention rate of 4% in January 2020. This was the lowest measured in this report. In combination with EOS’ congestion, one reason for this could be the dapp’s complex features. Combining simple gambling games like dice, blackjack, roulette and sports gambling with an overt investment angle. This is demonstrated by the prominent positioning of the earning rate. Users can get by either just depositing tokens into the dapp, and dividends that can be earned by staking the custom token. The dapp also has an inbuilt token exchange. DICE This sort of structure can attract a very large number of users. Looking for direct i.e. non-gambling – ways to generate a return on their tokens. Especially when driven by marketing and special promotions. Such inflows are very hard to retain, however, leading – as in this case – to a sharp collapse in activity. Gambling dapps on Ethereum Because the largest gambling dapps run on EOS and TRON, gambling activity is often overlooked on Ethereum. Currently, the combined monthly wallet activity on accounts for around 6% of the category’s total, and around 11% of the category’s total value by USD. This is around $1 million in terms of the daily value spent using ETH and other ERC20 tokens. Ethereum gambling dapps Because of the limitation of , these gambling dapps tend to be much simpler and less casino-focused than those running on EOS and TRON. Examples include peer-to-peer sports betting game Degens, lottery Lottoshi, and gamified ETH option trading experience . Ethereum’s proof of work consensus model YOLOrekt Dice2.win The most popular Ethereum gambling dapp is dice2.win. Although it only had an average of around 600 monthly active unique wallets during 2019. It only consists of four games: Coin flip; Roll a dice; Two dice; and Etheroll, a percentage-based game of chance. The only retention mechanic is a jackpot into which 1% of all bets are accumulated. In this way, Dice2.win offers by far the most stripped-down and simple gambling experience of the six dapps covered in this report. And this is most likely the reason that dice2.win has a steady but very low monthly retention rate of around 25%. This is the lowest sustained retention rate for all the gambling dapps covered in this report. Conclusion While audience retention is important for all dapps, it is particularly vital for gambling dapps. Which, because of low barriers to entry, suffer from intense competition. This is particularly true for gambling dapps on the TRON and EOS blockchains. Indeed, during 2019, TRON continued to build on its reputation as “Las Vegas on the blockchain”. This has continued into 2020, with a constant stream of new and innovative launching on the blockchain. gambling dapps In contrast, EOS has seen a falling away of gambling activity, especially due to its network congestion. The amount of value spent on EOS gambling dapps has remained solid, though. For this reason, the developers of the best gambling dapps focus as much on long term reward features such as custom tokens, dividend payments, jackpots, and special events as they do on their core gambling games. However, ensuring such complex economics are sustainable and not open to exploitation is very difficult. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by 888TRON, the good news is that even such serious problems can be overcome. It ended 2019 with a monthly retention rate of over 70% and a growing audience of almost 3,000 wallets retained month-on-month.

How Do Gambling dApps Retain Over 80% of their Audience [An Analysis]

If you are sitting somewhere eating popcorn and watching this scam fest we have performed for two thousand years, I have a moral obligation to tell you that the show isn’t as good as it may seem. In other words, you messed up… Pardon me if I am interrupting some serious business, but I do have some important information to share and a few questions to ask. You know… I always wondered if your remember that time you said: “let there be light”? I bet it was spectacular. When those words materialized, and infinity started to expand beyond itself, did you consider adding blockchain to the universe to prevent cheating, or was that idea far fetched and impractical at the time? To be clear, I do not care if you exist, nor do I seek confirmation of the opposite. I stand here today to take precautions just in case. If you are sitting somewhere eating popcorn and watching this scam fest we have performed for two thousand years, I have a moral obligation to tell you that the show isn’t as good as it may seem. In other words, you messed up… Based on my calculations, the exact fuckup happened the moment you gave me the right to evaluate your work. But then again, without it, I couldn’t have been able to debate the existence of another holy entity far greater than both of us. An entity so powerful it could reestablish trust on a cosmic scale and make your creation whole again. Legends say that your children have formed groups that count millions of members to promote an idea so revolutionary it will reunite families, nations, ideas, visions… The possibilities are endless and the correction of all your errors is seemingly unstoppable. The Last Supper Please, do not judge us, o Holy Father. We understand that big ideas take time. That is why we trusted you when you told us we are all part of the same thing, that we will eventually figure things out and stop scamming each other. But, your plan didn’t seem to work as we intended so we created capitalism, capitalism created big business and big business doesn’t have time for big ideas. You can consider our contract terminated because our business can’t wait for your outdated framework to catch up with such rapid progress. We have taken matters in our own hands and decided to handle our trust issues on our own terms. Let there be Blockchain! You shouldn’t be worried though. We have learned from you and sent a messenger among the people, just like you did. His following was of little numbers but with our superior techniques and technological wonders, he has gathered far more than just 12 disciples. Take notes o Holy Father, and remember that big ideas require a lot of shilling. This one was so good we didn’t even need an incentive for it. Our mentor didn’t perform wonders because we have grown out of entertainment. We wanted serious solutions for serious problems and he invited us to give us the ultimate answer. in for dinner He was so wise to understand that one meal isn’t enough. He trained us for months and years, prepared us for a monetary revolution but, just like your guy, he left without providing customer support. As soon as he turned his back on us, his disciples betrayed him. The first one told tales of false gods and inferior technology so he created a religion of his own. He was so sure in his superiority that he took the original name and used it for with no shame whatsoever. But there is no time for another rhyme. his domain Others soon followed and some went a step further by claiming parenthood over our only pure child. They wanted to be worshiped as Gods. While the two newly-born superpowers were measuring the height, length, and speed of their blocks, a storm was brewing out in the fields. Fear, Doubt and the absence of Common Sense By repeating your mistakes, our mentor left with no further guidance and no reassurance in this time of need. Followers started doubting their self-elected leaders and decided to take action. Out of fear of total collapse, new religions were born and more problem solvers have been sent down to Earth in the form of alternate currency also known as shitcoins. Financial freedom was raining down on mankind that had no time to read all those whitepapers. Saying “ ” is more than enough. buy my shitcoin Out of fear and doubt, the original disciples have taken their position in the financial revolution and decided to support only those who stay true to the creator's words. Different interpretations of those words created different religions that now serve as holy temples for millions of believers. Would you look at those numbers? My, my how things have blown out of proportion. In just a few years, millions have traveled far and wide to whiteness the birth of true freedom. Many have left after the spectacle, but the vast majority is still praying in the temples, as the numbers would suggest. Binance Twiter following — 1.1 MILLION Retweet engagement rate — % 0.018 Average likes rate — % 0.059 Most followers gained in one month — 334.65K in February 2018 Source YouTube Subscribers — 13.1K Average video views daily — 767 Source — CEO Twitter Following 489.5K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.031 Average likes rate — % 0.142 Most followers gained in one month — 76.57K in March 2018 Source Ripple Twitter Following — 946.3K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.037 Average likes rate — % 0.107 Most followers gained in one month — 294.26k in February 2018 Source CEO Twitter Following — 241.6K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.18 Average likes rate — % 0.47 Most followers gained in one month — 85.16k in February 2018 Source YouTube Subscribers— 37.6K Average daily views — 753 Source Tron Foundation Twitter Following — 500.2K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.027 Average likes rate — % 0.12 Most followers gained in one month — 180.27k in February 2018 Source CEO Twitter Following — 2 MILLION Retweet engagement rate — % 0.021 Average likes rate — % 0.062 Most followers gained in one month — 248.16k in February 2018 Source YouTube Subscribers — 12.5K Average daily views — 312 Source Ethereum Twitter Following — 452.3K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.022 Average likes rate — % 0.038 Most followers gained in one month — 77.55K in February 2018 Source CEO Twitter Following — 891.2K Retweet engagement rate — % 0.038 Average likes rate — % 0.15 Most followers gained in one month — 152.81K in January 2018 Source YouTube Subscribers — 28.1K Average daily views — 566 Source Looking at those numbers I started questioning my sanity. Could it be that one day we will have to prove the existence of an entire community? Is that day today? Is it possible that this new Babylon we have created is pure fiction? Did our generous saints accidentally create click-farms that were digging for free BTC through Earn.com? After all, I can still remember the days when I could join a Telegram channel and leave a shill comment on Reddit for a few easy bucks. I still keep those earnings as a reminder of the 2K gold rush. You could even donate to an unknown cause and force Tyler Winklevoss to read your message. Did you really think busy people have time for your nonsense? Donate or gtfo. These people are very busy and also very important. And, as we all know, “important” always equals “busy”. It was Heaven on Earth but as all nice things, the centralized forces of decentralization have taken it from us. New Religions For Sale! As you can see, we have learned much from our past without your help. We do not conduct crusades to spread our word. No, we are better than that. Even if we wanted to, our Twitter followers probably wouldn’t be up for it. Our engagement rates don’t really spark encouragement. Instead of forcing our religions upon non-believers, we promised them a part of our holy lands. Buy some coins and become a part of the first decentralized social platform where you get paid for expressing your opinions. Even if they don’t make sense. Buy cards for an unfinished card game and keep them for as long as you want (unless the whole project fails). If you are lucky you can sell them for a profit in a few years. Buy cards for an unfinished card game within a decentralized social media platform and try to figure out what to do with them afterward. We welcomed everyone to come and explore the new wonders of the world and have a say in every decision we make! Decentralized governance has arrived! Unless Justin wants to buy it. You see Father, we learned a lesson after all. Sharing is caring and there is nothing wrong with monetizing other people’s ideas. Selling a religion can be quite easy when your followers are imaginary. Except for one. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing As of today, we are still 100% sure that Bitcoin is the only safe haven for humanity. Fiat is inflationary, gold is for old people, banks are crooked and all banksters are mobsters! I do not know what our elders are planning to do about them but based on their activity, they are probably trying to destroy them from the inside. Many financial “experts” are still teaching us how we should invest responsibly and understand that adoption may take years or maybe even decades. Some are so corrupted that they want us to believe that BTC can one day crash and never recover. Thankfully, we have our own demigods on the line 24/7. If an owner of an exchange that profits directly from Bitcoin trades says we should go long, I see no reason why we should doubt him. is just a made-up term that the governments invented for no particular reason. Conflict of interest One of them actually took that term and exchanged his influence for a bag of gold coins. too seriously He was crucified rightfully for such a delusional move but it is hard to determine where his disciples stand on this matter today. Most of them seem to be imaginary as well. Whatever the case may be, you should know that there is a good intention behind all of this. By lying to the uninformed, they will trick them into joining our ranks, and once they are in they will understand the true value of decentralization. Earning cash on the side by staking coins created by the middleman himself was Satoshi’s idea since day one. What better use case could we possibly invent than free money? Thanks to reputable journalists that on a daily basis, we have invented this new thing called opinion journalism. This way, we can shill and publish press releases with no consequences whatsoever. get roasted by kids from Reddit It is to be understood that opinions have nothing to do with journalism but no one was complaining so we even made a , which legitimizes this new position in our society. A genius invention, you must admit. Wikipedia page about it As you can see Father, there is nothing wrong with shilling if it is for the greater good. They may ignore us for as long as they like, but we won’t stop putting the revolution in front of their noses. Our intentions are pure and our motives are purely monetary right now but that should change over time (so we hope). Why are ye fearful, ? O ye of little faith I am finding it hard to understand why so many of them are still unhappy with our achievements. So what if a whole by force if an exchange provides you with enough funds to do so? Our demigods are just friends and friends should help each other out. was issued in a timely manner after all. On top of that, a valuable lesson was learned that day — thy who holds power shall be tempted to use it. blockchain can be taken over A warning Is it a crime if we promote shitcoins on the side if it is for the greater good of the only coin that actually matters? Can we blame our excellent journalists for shilling their favorite projects in exchange for some tokens? How else would they fund their career development? Newcomers need top 10 lists, don’t they? Lastly, isn’t this what you always wanted? Individuals practicing free will in every corner of the universe? Holy Father, if you really are there, and if you are reading these words, you should know that we have everything under control. A few more lies here and there, a few more virus outbreaks and a big fat recession are all we need. And if you do end up being a fairy tale, it will be a shame because the show is just about to start. Sincerely yours Satan

Forgive me, Father, for I have Shilled

We have all heard of Bitcoin. Maybe even Ethereum or Litecoin. But, today, I am here to show you the three most underrated cryptocurrencies in the industry right now. These digital assets have clearly defined goals and the potential to break the stratosphere. Let’s see the contestants. Tronix (TRX) Launched by the TRON Foundation to create an effective cost reduction in digital content sharing, Tronix is one of the three most underrated cryptocurrencies in the industry right now. TRON is a decentralised, blockchain-based platform. The foundation introduced a global digital content entertainment platform that encourages sharing of digital contents by banning intermediaries in 2017. TRON was launched to connect content consumers and content producers, reducing cost on the consumer side. Users pay using Tronix, and this exchange is received by the producer. Because of this, the producer can decide to withdraw by exchanging to another currency. Established in September 2017 by Justin Sun, the aim of TRON is ‘the construction of a global and free entertainment content ecosystem, in which creators have the power to freely publish, store, and own their content, interacting directly with consumers thanks to the decentralised issuance, circulation, and trading of digital assets,’ which can be found on their landing page. Also on their website, the TRON Protocol offers ‘scalable, high-availability and high-throughput support that underlies all the decentralised applications in the TRON ecosystem.’ TRON network has built consensus mechanisms, which use minimal cost to solve personal credit issues and identification in online transactions. Using point-to-point transactions, TRON avoids a traditional centralised settlement structure. TRON network can play the host role between users and developers, to ensure authenticity and compliance of info credit. TRON is currently trading at $0.023324 (as of March 29, 2019) with an available supply of 65 billion. Zcash (ZEC) Zcash is an open-source, decentralised cryptocurrency. One of the most underrated in the industry, Zcash offers maximum security for users and provides transparency of transaction. Zcash surprised many in October 2016 when it traded above $4000. It is expected Zcash will surprise once again when the market resuscitates from recession. Aimed at using cryptography, Zcash provides enhanced user privacy to other cryptocurrencies on the market. Transactions are able to be ‘transparent’ and similar to Bitcoin transactions where they are controlled by a t-addr, or can be a zero-knowledge proof called zk-SNARKs. The transactions are then ‘shielded’ and controlled by a z-addr. Coins are in either a transparent or shielded pool. As of December 2017, 4% of Zcash coins were in the shielded pool. Zcash offers private transactors the option of ‘selective disclosure,’ which allows a user to prove payment for auditing purposes. One reason is to allow private transactors choice of compliance on anti-money laundering or tax regulations. ‘Transactions are auditable but disclosure is under the participant’s control.’ The company has hosted various meetings with law enforcement agencies around the US to explain these and has gone on to state ‘they did not develop the currency to facilitate illegal activity.’ Zcash is trading at $57.46 (as of March 29, 2019) with an available supply of 5 million. Monero (XMR) Authored by Nicolas van Saberhagen, Monero is an open-source cryptocurrency created in April 2014. Previously named BitMonero, the coin focuses on fungibility, privacy and decentralisation. Monero uses an obfuscated public ledger, so that anybody can broadcast or send transactions, but no one outside of the transaction can know the source, amount or destination. The untraceable asset’s strength lies in the community it’s built for itself. Monero is a community-driven currency, fully developed through donation. Monero uses a Proof-of-Work mechanism to issue new coins and incentivise users to validate transactions and secure the network. The privacy afforded by Monero has attracted use by people interested in evading law enforcement during events such as the WannaCry Ransomware Attack, or on the dark web buying illegal substances. Despite this infamy, Monero is encouraged to those seeking financial privacy, as payments and account balances remain hidden, unlike many cryptocurrencies. Unlike many derivatives of Bitcoin, Monero is based on the CryptoNight proof-of-work hash algorithm, which comes from the CryptoNote protocol. CryptoNote has significant algorithmic differences to blockchain obfuscation. The ring signatures mix the spender’s input with a group of others, making it exponentially more difficult to establish a link between each subsequent transaction. The ‘stealth addresses’ generated for transactions impossibly complicate discovery of the address of a transaction by anyone other than the sender and the receiver. The ‘ring confidential transactions’ mechanism conceals the amount transferred. Monero is designed to be resistant to application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) mining, which is commonly used to mine other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The coin can be mined on consumer grade hardware such as x86, x86–64, ARM and GPUs. Monero has an available supply of 16 million XMR and is trading at $53.82 (as of March 29, 2019).

The 3 Most Underrated Cryptocurrencies in the Industry Right Now

In 2018, the initial coin offering (ICO) as we knew it in 2017 was pronounced dead several times. While the ICO gold rush definitely helped increase the cryptocurrency market capitalization; the project valuations, hype, pump and dumps, scam projects and ICO project’s/company’s un-accountability attributed to the industry’s damaged reputation. Having invested in a great deal of ICOs, I would like to see a shift in funding method as the traditional utility token-based ICO is not beneficial to individual investors anymore. Especially in this continuing bear market, the risk of investing in an ICO is almost never worth it for individual investors, who are usually served last when it comes to buying tokens. Binance launchpad Last week, something slightly unexpecting happened. People got excited about an ICO again. The marketing efforts of , founder and CEO of the TRON Foundation and , the co-founder and CEO of digital asset exchange Binance, enabled a surge in users trying to purchase BitTorrent tokens (BTT) on Binance re-introduced token sale launchpad. BitTorrent was the token sale that launched on Binance after TRON, Bread and Gifto all successfully conducted their public sale on the digital asset exchange dedicated token sale launchpad. According to Binance, the launchpad is an exclusive token launch platform, and they are right. It is exclusive as we could see with their most recent BitTorrent (BTT) token sale. Only 962 were able to get in because the platform faced continuous errors and defaults during the 15-minute-long flash token sale. The token sale could have sold out in seconds, had it functioned properly. BTT launched on Binance just two days after the token sale, establishing a 4x ROI for investors selling on the first day after the launch on the exchange. Justin Sun Changpeng Zhou While the re-launch of the Binance launchpad was successful for the digital asset exchange, in my opinion, this is not a good way to continue for the majority of Binance users. The launchpad will pretty much only make Binance and the ICO project richer while individual investors, that hold on to the token for too long or buy the top are most likely being dumped on sooner, rather than later. One of the things I would like to see them change is making a shift to a more fair distribution scheme. For instance, set a maximum cap per participant. By the amount of KYC applicants, they might be able to give a rough estimate of token sale investors. There were a lot of disappointed people after the BTT token sale. The first-click, first-serve format leaves too much to just luck of clicking at the right time, so they might want to change that to give more people a chance of actually buying tokens on the launchpad. On February 1st, Binance announced the Public Sale of Fetch.AI tokens will be launched on its launchpad on February 25. Interested investors that want to participate in the sale need to apply KYC first. As usual, some countries are excluded from the sale. Fetch architecture according to the whitepaper Fetch.AI Fetch (FET) proposes an open-source distributed ledger technology framework that is comprised of three architectural layers. Layer one is reserved for the digital entities called Autonomous Economic Agents (AEA). These agents are third-party implementations. Agents live in the second layer’s Open Economic Framework (OEF). To support the digital world, Fetch introduces a scalable smart ledger, in layer three, that provides collective superpowers to support agents’ individual power. Layer two and three form a network node. All three layers support Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionality. Fetch’s distributed ledger project is initially open-source and permissionless, but it can be permissioned if needed. For instance, delicate healthcare or IoT data is best suited to be processed on a permissioned blockchain. Two of Fetch’s proprietary features are its useful proof of stake (uPoS) consensus system and a high-performance machine learning oriented virtual machine. Fetch is working on solutions for the transport sector, the supply chain industry and the energy market. Fetch.ai is a project of venture capital firm Outlier Ventures, that is managed by CEO Jamie Burke, that is also one of the project's advisors. In March of 2018, Outlier Ventures its newest venture, Fetch AI. At the time it had been in for 14 months. The core team has been working on the project for two years now. announced stealth mode Partnerships - Fetch is a founding partner of the Blockchain for Europe association. Other members are Ripple, NEM and the Cardano Foundation. The goal of the partnership is to foster the understanding of upcoming regulations in the DLT and blockchain industry in Europe. - UK-based, online sharing platform for scientists, , engaged in a transformational scientific equipment venture with Fetch. Clustermarket will be one of the first platforms to deploy autonomous economic agents and thus demonstrate a primary use of the network, maximizing the value of the asset. According to , Clustermarket has raised 250,000 GBP in two previous funding rounds. The company is comprised of four employees. Clustermarket CrunchBase - Other partners include: Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, MOBI, Warwick Business School (WBS), TokenMarket and ULedger. Tokenomics According to the token overview paper on the website, a total of 1,152,997,575, ERC-20 based FET tokens will be minted. The pubic sale was initially planned for Q3/Q4 2018. Only 20% of the tokens will be available for the private and public token sale. At this moment, it is unsure if all the Public sale tokens will be offered at Binance’s launchpad. The amount of money that is being raised in the initial fundraising round is $30 million, for the previously mentioned 20% of total tokens, which means a fully diluted market cap of $150 million, which in this market seems a bit outrageous to me, for a utility token offering. Another thing worth mentioning is that the team consists of 33 people, according to the fetch.ai website (38 according to ), of which they state three co-founders. A total of 20% of the tokens is allocated to the founders. They have a vesting scheme that will last for 3 years with an evenly unlocked token amount each year, starting after the first year. Five advisors are listed on the website. Advisors are allocated 10% of the total token supply, following the same vesting period of three years. LinkedIn I suspect with a team of 33 people the monthly burn rate will be very high. The Binance labs showed Fetch liquidated some ETH SAFT funds into GBP, at a rate that was much lower than the amount raised converted into GBP at the time of conducting the private sale. report If they manage to raise their intended hardcap they could go on for a few years, but I am curious to know how they intend to survive in the long run. What is their business strategy? How will they ensure continuity? Roadmap The initial roadmap estimated the mainnet launch in the summer of 2019. In the updated version the mainnet launch has been set back to the end of 2019. Old roadmap Fetch AI Updated most accurate roadmap Fetch.ai legal disclaimer The posted on the website states very clearly that by purchasing Fetch Tokens you will get absolutely no rights of any sorts. That’s important to know because a case of bad management or poor business decisions will not give you any recall or complain options. legal disclaimer They basically tell you to do your own research, before investing, they are not implying you should buy their tokens, investors should take into account that the token might depreciate in price, and they will not be liable before, during and after you buy FET tokens. Smart contract In the past, there were some allegations against the fact that Fetch did not have a smart contract while conducting their ICO private sale. Cryptocurrency advocate Filip Poutintsev wrote about it in two . Fetch has since come up with a smart contract that has been audited and deemed safe by smart contract auditor . Medium articles Hosho Smart contract audit by Hosho: https://token.fetch.ai/publications/hosho_smart_contract_audit_report.pdf ICO pools for Fetch AI Fetch started their private sale in April of 2018. During a time that the investor's interest in ICOs was quickly decreasing. A lot of ICO pools offered Fetch on their platform. Many pools did not succeed in raising the allocated amount in ETH, due to bearish market conditions and a lack of interest in investing in an ICO. Winterwolves Fiat Dave Cryptopools Participation capital managed to raise 1,000 ETH in exchange for FET, at a 33% and 25% bonus. All pooled funds have a lockup period, which means that private sale pool participants will not be able to sell their tokens on the exchange if FET tokens are launched on Binance or another exchange soon after the launchpad token sale (keep the initial supply low, right). Concluding remarks When BitTorrent initiated their ICO on the Binance launchpad, for a second (or 15 minutes) following the process took me back to those exciting times in 2017 when ICO investing was a highly competitive industry, that was often based on good preparation and a large dash of luck. However, I don’t think that ICO investing will ever become a big thing again, and I hope it won’t because it will not bring value to the industry, if anything it has a pretty destructive nature, because of the lack of accountability. Pros: - They have a large team of industry professionals and are backed by a well-connected VC-firm - Launch on Binance launchpad, which attracts the majority of individual token sale investors - They allow the smaller investors to be able to invest in their project, not only available for institutional investors - Higher probability of listing on Binance, which will benefit the token liquidity, if Binance continuous to be a top volume exchange Cons: - Fetch proposes a very high valuation ($ 150 million) on a fully diluted basis - They are not liable in any way shape or form after purchasing Fetch Tokens, according to the legal disclaimer - Very low initial supply, great for price manipulation, thus high risk Personally I will not be investing in this ICO. The traditional ICO conducted in this way has no long-term viability in my opinion. For small time individual investors, the risks are too high, under these bearish market conditions. I do however think this ICO can perform well after it is listed on Binance during the first few days. My guess is that after a few days the hype will fade away and the token price will be decreasing at a rapid pace. The mainnet is set to launch in Q4 of 2019, so there is not much, besides new exchange listings and the announcement of interesting partnerships to hold up the price. I think this project is in line with some other projects that are competing for a slice of the cryptocurrency market pie, but I have yet to discover something that sets it apart from the other projects. The project is still in its test-phase and in this phase, the uPoS consensus method has not been tested yet on a large scale. I am curious to know why Binance decided to launch Fetch on their launch pad. Maybe the low initial supply, as Binance’s CEO stated he liked in a recent . Tweet Final remarks The overall conclusion as to why I will not be investing in this ICO: — This ICO has been in execution phase for almost a year, first private sale, soon to be public sale. Private sale investors have a lockup and a bonus of 33% or 25%. — The private sale didn’t attract many investors, the team is about six months behind on their initial roadmap, mainnet is planned for EOY. In the meantime other than exchange listings and partnerships probably not much news. — The project might run out of funds soon if the token becomes illiquid or doesn’t raise additional funds, as 85% of private sale SAFT funds have already been converted into fiat currency (approximately $3.5 million). A large staff that needs to be paid, estimated burn rate between $200k and $500k a month.  — Only 20% of the total tokens will be offered in the token sale, 11.62% in the private sale (locked), which leaves 8.38% for the public sale. Fully diluted, the market cap is too high for an ICO that has no liability to its investors. What are your thoughts on Fetch.ai? Do you think it will perform well? Please let me know any remarks or questions in the comment box below. Website: https://fetch.ai/#/ Smart contract audit by Hosho: https://token.fetch.ai/publications/hosho_smart_contract_audit_report.pdf Fetch Technical paper: https://fetch.ai/uploads/technical-introduction.pdf Fetch bluepaper: https://fetch.ai/public/pdf/Fetch-Token-Overview.pdf Disclaimer : I would like to state that I am not being rewarded or incentivized to write this project overview of Fetch.ai. This article is not intended as investment advice. You should always do your own research. All the information provided in this article is based on my own personal opinion. During these challenging market conditions I strongly urge everyone to thoroughly research projects to potentially invest in. If you do decide you want to invest, only invest money you can afford to lose. If you like my content about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, you can give me a follow. I also have an account on and . You are welcome to follow me there as well. On my page you will find a bit more personal information. You can ask me questions on Telegram: @LindaCrypto. Steemit Twitter LinkedIn I hope you have enjoyed this article, and please comment in the allocated section below if you have any further questions. Thank you! LindaCrypto

Fetch.AI: a Project Overview of the Next ICO on Binance’s Launchpad

Anyone who has been following the latest happenings in the world has definitely come across the new buzz: TRON. blockchain If you haven’t heard of TRON, . You will learn something new today! (yay) This article will cover everything you need to know to stay in the game. don’t worry The focus of this article will cover the following pieces: What is TRON and What do they want to do Future of TRON: Project Atlas The inner working of TRON Future of TRX (the cryptocurrency of the TRON blockchain) > What is TRON and What do they want to do The foundation is an open source foundation, established in Singapore in July 2017 by The mission of TRON foundation is to truly decentralize the web. The decentralized web is also referred to as Web 3.0. We are currently striving really hard to migrate from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. TRON Justin Sun. When TRON thinks of Web 3.0, they are targetting content sharing at the moment. We know how the internet disrupted content sharing by first-principles. I think now its time to revisit the principles. Let’s see how TRON is “healing” the web and massively about to disrupt the entertainment industry. The rationale lies in the idea of shifting the profit back to the real creators of the data so that they can profit off of their creation. This can only happen by eliminating the middle companies. There are some articles which focus exclusively on this point. They can be read . here Technical capabilities of TRON which equip it to reshape the Web Source: https://tron.network Source: https://tron.network > Project Atlas TRON foundation is not about “all talk and no action”. TRON bought BitTorrent recently for $120 million. The idea behind this is to incentivize the users of the BitTorrent protocol to seed the files. This project is called Project Atlas. To keep the network in a healthy state, seeding of files is necessary but the problem is that it is not incentivized. TRON’s aim is to incentivize seeding which would definitely put the network in better health than ever. This is certainly a very good use case for Web 3.0. Going by the same principles; if you wish to get a file faster then you can pay more to get larger bandwidth. It is similar to how a blockchain transaction works; if you pay a higher fee, your tx will get processed faster. In theory, it is true that tx can go through for free of cost on the network but since there are so many tx to deal with, spending some fee is the only option left or else keep waiting… Bitcoin > Coming back to working of TRON Some blockchains are trying to scale the main Ethereum blockchain by sharding or sidechaining. TRON is trying to scale the main chain itself. Of course, the trade-off here is that the consensus algorithm used is Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) which is not the ‘most’ decentralized algorithm. In such a consensus environment, voting cartels could form in a jiffy rigging the entire rationale behind blockchain in a damned minute! TRON blockchain works on top of TRON Virtual Machine (TVM). TVM is analogous to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It is a lightweight machine based on Turing complete. Its goal is to provide millions of global developers with a custom-built blockchain system that is efficient, convenient, stable, secure and scalable. Furthermore, TVM employs the concept of to prevent overloading the network. Let’s not forget the cryptokitties frenzy on the Ethereum main chain. For this reason, to ensure smooth network operation, the TRON network grants every account a free pool of for free transactions every 24 hours. To engage in transactions more frequently requires freezing TRX for additional bandwidth points, or paying the fee in TRX. Bandwidth Bandwidth Points Another concept unique to TVM is Freezing some amount of TRX tokens will give the node bandwidth, or energy and TRON Power (voting rights) to the node of the frozen tokens. Frozen tokens are “locked” for a period of 3 days. During this period the frozen TRX cannot be traded. After this period you can unfreeze the TRX and trade the tokens. Freeze Balance. > Future of TRX Evaluation of TRX as on 29th January 2019, 03:24 PM is as follows: TRX spiked up as high as 134% in a matter of just a month. Of course, the idea of TRX sounds very promising. Check out this video for further insights if you’re a crypto trader. If you’re a TRON evangelist, you’d be happy to know that TRON is carrying forward Sir Tim Berners Lee’s (Inventor of WWW) legacy by trying the fix the web. _Tim Berners Lee is widely considered the father of the World Wide Web. But while his invention did transform the…_cryptorecorder.com Tron (TRX) - Tim Berners Lee believes in a decentralized web: Can Tron lead the way? If you wish to explore new waters in your trading field, TRON could be a nice choice. (It’s only my personal thought.) This was a primer on TRON. In the next part of this article, I will give a hands-on demo on how to deploy a smart contract on TRON blockchain and much more. Stay tuned. :) If you think I should add something more to the article, please write in the comments below and I’ll update the article. If you liked the article or learned something new today please feel free to applaud! It’d mean a lot to me.

TRON blockchain 101

Fake it till’ you make it. A well known proverb that has privately helped many individuals reach a point of success in their lives. However, I have never really publicly witnessed a successful execution of this strategy in realtime until the end of 2017. The person I am referring to is Justin Sun of the Tron Foundation. He literally took a project that had next to nothing when they first launched with a plagiarized white-paper from Ethereum, a facade that this project was happening under the close guidance of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, a team comprised of nondescript individuals, and turned Tron into one of the most formidable alternative to the Ethereum blockchain. Today, this same project now holds a market valuation of $1 billion, employs more than 100 engineers worldwide, and has even executed one of the most clever acquisitions in the crypto space with BitTorrent. Basics: The TRON project based out of started in September 2017 Beijing, CN. The TRON is a blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide free content entertainment system with the blockchain and distributed storage technology. Unlike many blockchain projects, TRON and has more than has already introduced a fully functioning product 100 Dapps. Price: $.02Ranking by Market Cap: 9Market Capitalization: $1,418,180,991Circulating Supply: 66,648,407,557 TRXMax Supply: 99,247,619,212 TRX24hr Trading Volume: $172,618,413 Ticker: TRON Team: The Tron who has been nothing short of a magician when it comes to creating FOMO and driving the price of the Tron Token. He was also one of the . team is lead by Justin Sun first employees of Ripple Laps in China The His prior experience focuses on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and advertisement systems. He also spent several years working at several major Chinese technology companies such as: Alibaba, Qihoo 360, and Tencent. CTO is Zhiqiang Chen. The Tron team has an additional 100 blockchain developers and engineers, 40 of them being senior level developers. Rounding out the Tron team is a solid number of business developers, strategists, and marketers. Drivers of Growth: Tron has recently announced a new hire of the . He will be acting as Tron’s first head of compliance to ensure that business goes smoothly with regulators. A great hire to further legitimize Tron. former SEC Supervisory attorney, David Labhart Tron recently which pioneered peer-to-peer technology for sharing files on the internet, for $140 million. This collaboration is now referred to as acquired, BitTorrent, Project Atlas. The Singapore-based BitTorrent Foundation, will be that will run on the Tron protocol. BitTorrent already has essentially jump starting Tron’s ecosystem. issuing a new BitTorrent Token (BTT) 100 million users, If Tron can find a way to leverage the BitTorrent acquisition and their users to I can see this making a big push towards a tangible everyday use case. create a decentralized media platform, Comparing the daily number of transactions between Tron and Ethereum. In November, . It is reported that the daily transaction numbers for TRX has Tron surpassed the highest single-day transaction total for Ethereum more than doubled to 3.3 million since then. Tron has achieved the compared to the current 25 TPS of Ethereum. high throughput of 2,000 TPS According to Sun, the Once implemented, users can transact TRX tokens with a far greater level of anonymity and privacy. As a result, TRON will join the group of other privacy-centric cryptos such as ZCash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), or Verge (XVG). Tron has plans to implement zk-SNARKs as early as the first quarter of 2019. Tron has recently announced the launch of a $100 million blockchain gaming fund, Tron Arcade. Tron Arcade will The $100 million in funding will be distributed over the next 3 years. empower developers to create and develop blockchain-based games. Sesameseed has announced the launch of allowing card holders to spend their Tron tokens at participating retailers. TronCard Beta program; Hate or love him. Justin Sun has within the crypto space. What he was able to accomplish to create a billion dollar ecosystem doesn’t happen by accident or luck. At the end of the day, the blockchain space is open source so mastered the art of marketing what really sets projects apart, other than their team members, is marketing and go to market strategy. Tron has also done a great job of securing , which is a low hanging industry to be revolutionized by crypto. partnerships within the gaming community like Game.com and Gifto Tron was also one of the on the Ethereum blockchain. In September 2017, they airdropped 500 Tron tokens ($1.50 at the time) to more than 500,000 addresses. This instantly created stakeholders in their newly created project which lead to its astronomical raise. first pioneers of successfully conducting a large permissionless airdrop Headwinds: Unfortunately, there are still many predominate people within the crypto community that see Tron as a shitcoin. However, the best investments usually start with the least consensus. The success of this project will depend on the regulatory environment in China since it’s geared more towards that demographic. However, they have made some good attempts towards distributing their ecosystem globally. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future. Conclusion: I’ll be the first to admit that I was not a supporter of Tron when the project first launched. I thought Justin Sun was a classic scam artist taking advantage of investors during the height of speculation. However, he has continuously proved me wrong and has now turned me into a believer. While hundreds of projects that raised millions in their ICO’s are going out of business because of poor treasury management, Justin is expanding his empire. He has accomplished more while being considered a shit coin than 95% of all projects in the space. For more insights be sure to check out my website: www.MasiDigitalVentures.com

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