Reposting after was mistakenly removed by mods (since resolved - Thanks)
A frequent question I see being asked is how Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche compare? Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences. This article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important.
For better formatting see https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b
https://preview.redd.it/e8s7dj3ivpq51.png?width=428&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d0463462702637118c7527ebf96e91f4a80b290

Overview

Cosmos

Cosmos is a heterogeneous network of many independent parallel blockchains, each powered by classical BFT consensus algorithms like Tendermint. Developers can easily build custom application specific blockchains, called Zones, through the Cosmos SDK framework. These Zones connect to Hubs, which are specifically designed to connect zones together.
The vision of Cosmos is to have thousands of Zones and Hubs that are Interoperable through the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). Cosmos can also connect to other systems through peg zones, which are specifically designed zones that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. Cosmos does not use Sharding with each Zone and Hub being sovereign with their own validator set.
For a more in-depth look at Cosmos and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see my three part series — Part One, Part Two, Part Three
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Cosmos on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Polkadot

Polkadot is a heterogeneous blockchain protocol that connects multiple specialised blockchains into one unified network. It achieves scalability through a sharding infrastructure with multiple blockchains running in parallel, called parachains, that connect to a central chain called the Relay Chain. Developers can easily build custom application specific parachains through the Substrate development framework.
The relay chain validates the state transition of connected parachains, providing shared state across the entire ecosystem. If the Relay Chain must revert for any reason, then all of the parachains would also revert. This is to ensure that the validity of the entire system can persist, and no individual part is corruptible. The shared state makes it so that the trust assumptions when using parachains are only those of the Relay Chain validator set, and no other. Interoperability is enabled between parachains through Cross-Chain Message Passing (XCMP) protocol and is also possible to connect to other systems through bridges, which are specifically designed parachains or parathreads that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. The hope is to have 100 parachains connect to the relay chain.
For a more in-depth look at Polkadot and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see my three part series — Part One, Part Two, Part Three
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Polkadot on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Avalanche

Avalanche is a platform of platforms, ultimately consisting of thousands of subnets to form a heterogeneous interoperable network of many blockchains, that takes advantage of the revolutionary Avalanche Consensus protocols to provide a secure, globally distributed, interoperable and trustless framework offering unprecedented decentralisation whilst being able to comply with regulatory requirements.
Avalanche allows anyone to create their own tailor-made application specific blockchains, supporting multiple custom virtual machines such as EVM and WASM and written in popular languages like Go (with others coming in the future) rather than lightly used, poorly-understood languages like Solidity. This virtual machine can then be deployed on a custom blockchain network, called a subnet, which consist of a dynamic set of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of many blockchains where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance.
Avalanche was built with serving financial markets in mind. It has native support for easily creating and trading digital smart assets with complex custom rule sets that define how the asset is handled and traded to ensure regulatory compliance can be met. Interoperability is enabled between blockchains within a subnet as well as between subnets. Like Cosmos and Polkadot, Avalanche is also able to connect to other systems through bridges, through custom virtual machines made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
For a more in-depth look at Avalanche and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see here and here
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Avalanche on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Comparison between Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche

A frequent question I see being asked is how Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche compare? Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences. This article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important. For a more in-depth view I recommend reading the articles for each of the projects linked above and coming to your own conclusions. I want to stress that it’s not a case of one platform being the killer of all other platforms, far from it. There won’t be one platform to rule them all, and too often the tribalism has plagued this space. Blockchains are going to completely revolutionise most industries and have a profound effect on the world we know today. It’s still very early in this space with most adoption limited to speculation and trading mainly due to the limitations of Blockchain and current iteration of Ethereum, which all three of these platforms hope to address. For those who just want a quick summary see the image at the bottom of the article. With that said let’s have a look

Scalability

Cosmos

Each Zone and Hub in Cosmos is capable of up to around 1000 transactions per second with bandwidth being the bottleneck in consensus. Cosmos aims to have thousands of Zones and Hubs all connected through IBC. There is no limit on the number of Zones / Hubs that can be created

Polkadot

Parachains in Polkadot are also capable of up to around 1500 transactions per second. A portion of the parachain slots on the Relay Chain will be designated as part of the parathread pool, the performance of a parachain is split between many parathreads offering lower performance and compete amongst themselves in a per-block auction to have their transactions included in the next relay chain block. The number of parachains is limited by the number of validators on the relay chain, they hope to be able to achieve 100 parachains.

Avalanche

Avalanche is capable of around 4500 transactions per second per subnet, this is based on modest hardware requirements to ensure maximum decentralisation of just 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of Memory and with a validator size of over 2,000 nodes. Performance is CPU-bound and if higher performance is required then more specialised subnets can be created with higher minimum requirements to be able to achieve 10,000 tps+ in a subnet. Avalanche aims to have thousands of subnets (each with multiple virtual machines / blockchains) all interoperable with each other. There is no limit on the number of Subnets that can be created.

Results

All three platforms offer vastly superior performance to the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0. Avalanche with its higher transactions per second, no limit on the number of subnets / blockchains that can be created and the consensus can scale to potentially millions of validators all participating in consensus scores ✅✅✅. Polkadot claims to offer more tps than cosmos, but is limited to the number of parachains (around 100) whereas with Cosmos there is no limit on the number of hubs / zones that can be created. Cosmos is limited to a fairly small validator size of around 200 before performance degrades whereas Polkadot hopes to be able to reach 1000 validators in the relay chain (albeit only a small number of validators are assigned to each parachain). Thus Cosmos and Polkadot scores ✅✅
https://preview.redd.it/2o0brllyvpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f62bb696ecaafcf6184da005d5fe0129d504518

Decentralisation

Cosmos

Tendermint consensus is limited to around 200 validators before performance starts to degrade. Whilst there is the Cosmos Hub it is one of many hubs in the network and there is no central hub or limit on the number of zones / hubs that can be created.

Polkadot

Polkadot has 1000 validators in the relay chain and these are split up into a small number that validate each parachain (minimum of 14). The relay chain is a central point of failure as all parachains connect to it and the number of parachains is limited depending on the number of validators (they hope to achieve 100 parachains). Due to the limited number of parachain slots available, significant sums of DOT will need to be purchased to win an auction to lease the slot for up to 24 months at a time. Thus likely to lead to only those with enough funds to secure a parachain slot. Parathreads are however an alternative for those that require less and more varied performance for those that can’t secure a parachain slot.

Avalanche

Avalanche consensus scan scale to tens of thousands of validators, even potentially millions of validators all participating in consensus through repeated sub-sampling. The more validators, the faster the network becomes as the load is split between them. There are modest hardware requirements so anyone can run a node and there is no limit on the number of subnets / virtual machines that can be created.

Results

Avalanche offers unparalleled decentralisation using its revolutionary consensus protocols that can scale to millions of validators all participating in consensus at the same time. There is no limit to the number of subnets and virtual machines that can be created, and they can be created by anyone for a small fee, it scores ✅✅✅. Cosmos is limited to 200 validators but no limit on the number of zones / hubs that can be created, which anyone can create and scores ✅✅. Polkadot hopes to accommodate 1000 validators in the relay chain (albeit these are split amongst each of the parachains). The number of parachains is limited and maybe cost prohibitive for many and the relay chain is a ultimately a single point of failure. Whilst definitely not saying it’s centralised and it is more decentralised than many others, just in comparison between the three, it scores ✅
https://preview.redd.it/ckfamee0wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4355f145d821fabf7785e238dbc96a5f5ce2846

Latency

Cosmos

Tendermint consensus used in Cosmos reaches finality within 6 seconds. Cosmos consists of many Zones and Hubs that connect to each other. Communication between 2 zones could pass through many hubs along the way, thus also can contribute to latency times depending on the path taken as explained in part two of the articles on Cosmos. It doesn’t need to wait for an extended period of time with risk of rollbacks.

Polkadot

Polkadot provides a Hybrid consensus protocol consisting of Block producing protocol, BABE, and then a finality gadget called GRANDPA that works to agree on a chain, out of many possible forks, by following some simpler fork choice rule. Rather than voting on every block, instead it reaches agreements on chains. As soon as more than 2/3 of validators attest to a chain containing a certain block, all blocks leading up to that one are finalized at once.
If an invalid block is detected after it has been finalised then the relay chain would need to be reverted along with every parachain. This is particularly important when connecting to external blockchains as those don’t share the state of the relay chain and thus can’t be rolled back. The longer the time period, the more secure the network is, as there is more time for additional checks to be performed and reported but at the expense of finality. Finality is reached within 60 seconds between parachains but for external ecosystems like Ethereum their state obviously can’t be rolled back like a parachain and so finality will need to be much longer (60 minutes was suggested in the whitepaper) and discussed in more detail in part three

Avalanche

Avalanche consensus achieves finality within 3 seconds, with most happening sub 1 second, immutable and completely irreversible. Any subnet can connect directly to another without having to go through multiple hops and any VM can talk to another VM within the same subnet as well as external subnets. It doesn’t need to wait for an extended period of time with risk of rollbacks.

Results

With regards to performance far too much emphasis is just put on tps as a metric, the other equally important metric, if not more important with regards to finance is latency. Throughput measures the amount of data at any given time that it can handle whereas latency is the amount of time it takes to perform an action. It’s pointless saying you can process more transactions per second than VISA when it takes 60 seconds for a transaction to complete. Low latency also greatly increases general usability and customer satisfaction, nowadays everyone expects card payments, online payments to happen instantly. Avalanche achieves the best results scoring ✅✅✅, Cosmos with comes in second with 6 second finality ✅✅ and Polkadot with 60 second finality (which may be 60 minutes for external blockchains) scores ✅
https://preview.redd.it/kzup5x42wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=320eb4c25dc4fc0f443a7a2f7ff09567871648cd

Shared Security

Cosmos

Every Zone and Hub in Cosmos has their own validator set and different trust assumptions. Cosmos are researching a shared security model where a Hub can validate the state of connected zones for a fee but not released yet. Once available this will make shared security optional rather than mandatory.

Polkadot

Shared Security is mandatory with Polkadot which uses a Shared State infrastructure between the Relay Chain and all of the connected parachains. If the Relay Chain must revert for any reason, then all of the parachains would also revert. Every parachain makes the same trust assumptions, and as such the relay chain validates state transition and enables seamless interoperability between them. In return for this benefit, they have to purchase DOT and win an auction for one of the available parachain slots.
However, parachains can’t just rely on the relay chain for their security, they will also need to implement censorship resistance measures and utilise proof of work / proof of stake for each parachain as well as discussed in part three, thus parachains can’t just rely on the security of the relay chain, they need to ensure sybil resistance mechanisms using POW and POS are implemented on the parachain as well.

Avalanche

A subnet in Avalanche consists of a dynamic set of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of many blockchains where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. So unlike in Cosmos where each zone / hub has their own validators, A subnet can validate a single or many virtual machines / blockchains with a single validator set. Shared security is optional

Results

Shared security is mandatory in polkadot and a key design decision in its infrastructure. The relay chain validates the state transition of all connected parachains and thus scores ✅✅✅. Subnets in Avalanche can validate state of either a single or many virtual machines. Each subnet can have their own token and shares a validator set, where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. It scores ✅ ✅. Every Zone and Hub in cosmos has their own validator set / token but research is underway to have the hub validate the state transition of connected zones, but as this is still early in the research phase scores ✅ for now.
https://preview.redd.it/pbgyk3o3wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=61c18e12932a250f5633c40633810d0f64520575

Current Adoption

Cosmos

The Cosmos project started in 2016 with an ICO held in April 2017. There are currently around 50 projects building on the Cosmos SDK with a full list can be seen here and filtering for Cosmos SDK . Not all of the projects will necessarily connect using native cosmos sdk and IBC and some have forked parts of the Cosmos SDK and utilise the tendermint consensus such as Binance Chain but have said they will connect in the future.

Polkadot

The Polkadot project started in 2016 with an ICO held in October 2017. There are currently around 70 projects building on Substrate and a full list can be seen here and filtering for Substrate Based. Like with Cosmos not all projects built using substrate will necessarily connect to Polkadot and parachains or parathreads aren’t currently implemented in either the Live or Test network (Kusama) as of the time of this writing.

Avalanche

Avalanche in comparison started much later with Ava Labs being founded in 2018. Avalanche held it’s ICO in July 2020. Due to lot shorter time it has been in development, the number of projects confirmed are smaller with around 14 projects currently building on Avalanche. Due to the customisability of the platform though, many virtual machines can be used within a subnet making the process incredibly easy to port projects over. As an example, it will launch with the Ethereum Virtual Machine which enables byte for byte compatibility and all the tooling like Metamask, Truffle etc. will work, so projects can easily move over to benefit from the performance, decentralisation and low gas fees offered. In the future Cosmos and Substrate virtual machines could be implemented on Avalanche.

Results

Whilst it’s still early for all 3 projects (and the entire blockchain space as a whole), there is currently more projects confirmed to be building on Cosmos and Polkadot, mostly due to their longer time in development. Whilst Cosmos has fewer projects, zones are implemented compared to Polkadot which doesn’t currently have parachains. IBC to connect zones and hubs together is due to launch Q2 2021, thus both score ✅✅✅. Avalanche has been in development for a lot shorter time period, but is launching with an impressive feature set right from the start with ability to create subnets, VMs, assets, NFTs, permissioned and permissionless blockchains, cross chain atomic swaps within a subnet, smart contracts, bridge to Ethereum etc. Applications can easily port over from other platforms and use all the existing tooling such as Metamask / Truffle etc but benefit from the performance, decentralisation and low gas fees offered. Currently though just based on the number of projects in comparison it scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/4zpi6s85wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=e91ade1a86a5d50f4976f3b23a46e9287b08e373

Enterprise Adoption

Cosmos

Cosmos enables permissioned and permissionless zones which can connect to each other with the ability to have full control over who validates the blockchain. For permissionless zones each zone / hub can have their own token and they are in control who validates.

Polkadot

With polkadot the state transition is performed by a small randomly selected assigned group of validators from the relay chain plus with the possibility that state is rolled back if an invalid transaction of any of the other parachains is found. This may pose a problem for enterprises that need complete control over who performs validation for regulatory reasons. In addition due to the limited number of parachain slots available Enterprises would have to acquire and lock up large amounts of a highly volatile asset (DOT) and have the possibility that they are outbid in future auctions and find they no longer can have their parachain validated and parathreads don’t provide the guaranteed performance requirements for the application to function.

Avalanche

Avalanche enables permissioned and permissionless subnets and complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. For example a subnet can be created where its mandatory that all validators are from a certain legal jurisdiction, or they hold a specific license and regulated by the SEC etc. Subnets are also able to scale to tens of thousands of validators, and even potentially millions of nodes, all participating in consensus so every enterprise can run their own node rather than only a small amount. Enterprises don’t have to hold large amounts of a highly volatile asset, but instead pay a fee in AVAX for the creation of the subnets and blockchains which is burnt.

Results

Avalanche provides the customisability to run private permissioned blockchains as well as permissionless where the enterprise is in control over who validates the blockchain, with the ability to use complex rulesets to meet regulatory compliance, thus scores ✅✅✅. Cosmos is also able to run permissioned and permissionless zones / hubs so enterprises have full control over who validates a blockchain and scores ✅✅. Polkadot requires locking up large amounts of a highly volatile asset with the possibility of being outbid by competitors and being unable to run the application if the guaranteed performance is required and having to migrate away. The relay chain validates the state transition and can roll back the parachain should an invalid block be detected on another parachain, thus scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/li5jy6u6wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=e2a95f1f88e5efbcf9e23c789ae0f002c8eb73fc

Interoperability

Cosmos

Cosmos will connect Hubs and Zones together through its IBC protocol (due to release in Q1 2020). Connecting to blockchains outside of the Cosmos ecosystem would either require the connected blockchain to fork their code to implement IBC or more likely a custom “Peg Zone” will be created specific to work with a particular blockchain it’s trying to bridge to such as Ethereum etc. Each Zone and Hub has different trust levels and connectivity between 2 zones can have different trust depending on which path it takes (this is discussed more in this article). Finality time is low at 6 seconds, but depending on the number of hops, this can increase significantly.

Polkadot

Polkadot’s shared state means each parachain that connects shares the same trust assumptions, of the relay chain validators and that if one blockchain needs to be reverted, all of them will need to be reverted. Interoperability is enabled between parachains through Cross-Chain Message Passing (XCMP) protocol and is also possible to connect to other systems through bridges, which are specifically designed parachains or parathreads that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. Finality time between parachains is around 60 seconds, but longer will be needed (initial figures of 60 minutes in the whitepaper) for connecting to external blockchains. Thus limiting the appeal of connecting two external ecosystems together through Polkadot. Polkadot is also limited in the number of Parachain slots available, thus limiting the amount of blockchains that can be bridged. Parathreads could be used for lower performance bridges, but the speed of future blockchains is only going to increase.

Avalanche

A subnet can validate multiple virtual machines / blockchains and all blockchains within a subnet share the same trust assumptions / validator set, enabling cross chain interoperability. Interoperability is also possible between any other subnet, with the hope Avalanche will consist of thousands of subnets. Each subnet may have a different trust level, but as the primary network consists of all validators then this can be used as a source of trust if required. As Avalanche supports many virtual machines, bridges to other ecosystems are created by running the connected virtual machine. There will be an Ethereum bridge using the EVM shortly after mainnet. Finality time is much faster at sub 3 seconds (with most happening under 1 second) with no chance of rolling back so more appealing when connecting to external blockchains.

Results

All 3 systems are able to perform interoperability within their ecosystem and transfer assets as well as data, as well as use bridges to connect to external blockchains. Cosmos has different trust levels between its zones and hubs and can create issues depending on which path it takes and additional latency added. Polkadot provides the same trust assumptions for all connected parachains but has long finality and limited number of parachain slots available. Avalanche provides the same trust assumptions for all blockchains within a subnet, and different trust levels between subnets. However due to the primary network consisting of all validators it can be used for trust. Avalanche also has a much faster finality time with no limitation on the number of blockchains / subnets / bridges that can be created. Overall all three blockchains excel with interoperability within their ecosystem and each score ✅✅.
https://preview.redd.it/ai0bkbq8wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e85ee6a3c4670f388ccea00b0c906c3fb51e415

Tokenomics

Cosmos

The ATOM token is the native token for the Cosmos Hub. It is commonly mistaken by people that think it’s the token used throughout the cosmos ecosystem, whereas it’s just used for one of many hubs in Cosmos, each with their own token. Currently ATOM has little utility as IBC isn’t released and has no connections to other zones / hubs. Once IBC is released zones may prefer to connect to a different hub instead and so ATOM is not used. ATOM isn’t a fixed capped supply token and supply will continuously increase with a yearly inflation of around 10% depending on the % staked. The current market cap for ATOM as of the time of this writing is $1 Billion with 203 million circulating supply. Rewards can be earnt through staking to offset the dilution caused by inflation. Delegators can also get slashed and lose a portion of their ATOM should the validator misbehave.

Polkadot

Polkadot’s native token is DOT and it’s used to secure the Relay Chain. Each parachain needs to acquire sufficient DOT to win an auction on an available parachain lease period of up to 24 months at a time. Parathreads have a fixed fee for registration that would realistically be much lower than the cost of acquiring a parachain slot and compete with other parathreads in a per-block auction to have their transactions included in the next relay chain block. DOT isn’t a fixed capped supply token and supply will continuously increase with a yearly inflation of around 10% depending on the % staked. The current market cap for DOT as of the time of this writing is $4.4 Billion with 852 million circulating supply. Delegators can also get slashed and lose their DOT (potentially 100% of their DOT for serious attacks) should the validator misbehave.

Avalanche

AVAX is the native token for the primary network in Avalanche. Every validator of any subnet also has to validate the primary network and stake a minimum of 2000 AVAX. There is no limit to the number of validators like other consensus methods then this can cater for tens of thousands even potentially millions of validators. As every validator validates the primary network, this can be a source of trust for interoperability between subnets as well as connecting to other ecosystems, thus increasing amount of transaction fees of AVAX. There is no slashing in Avalanche, so there is no risk to lose your AVAX when selecting a validator, instead rewards earnt for staking can be slashed should the validator misbehave. Because Avalanche doesn’t have direct slashing, it is technically possible for someone to both stake AND deliver tokens for something like a flash loan, under the invariant that all tokens that are staked are returned, thus being able to make profit with staked tokens outside of staking itself.
There will also be a separate subnet for Athereum which is a ‘spoon,’ or friendly fork, of Ethereum, which benefits from the Avalanche consensus protocol and applications in the Ethereum ecosystem. It’s native token ATH will be airdropped to ETH holders as well as potentially AVAX holders as well. This can be done for other blockchains as well.
Transaction fees on the primary network for all 3 of the blockchains as well as subscription fees for creating a subnet and blockchain are paid in AVAX and are burnt, creating deflationary pressure. AVAX is a fixed capped supply of 720 million tokens, creating scarcity rather than an unlimited supply which continuously increase of tokens at a compounded rate each year like others. Initially there will be 360 tokens minted at Mainnet with vesting periods between 1 and 10 years, with tokens gradually unlocking each quarter. The Circulating supply is 24.5 million AVAX with tokens gradually released each quater. The current market cap of AVAX is around $100 million.

Results

Avalanche’s AVAX with its fixed capped supply, deflationary pressure, very strong utility, potential to receive air drops and low market cap, means it scores ✅✅✅. Polkadot’s DOT also has very strong utility with the need for auctions to acquire parachain slots, but has no deflationary mechanisms, no fixed capped supply and already valued at $3.8 billion, therefore scores ✅✅. Cosmos’s ATOM token is only for the Cosmos Hub, of which there will be many hubs in the ecosystem and has very little utility currently. (this may improve once IBC is released and if Cosmos hub actually becomes the hub that people want to connect to and not something like Binance instead. There is no fixed capped supply and currently valued at $1.1 Billion, so scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/mels7myawpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=df9782e2c0a4c26b61e462746256bdf83b1fb906
All three are excellent projects and have similarities as well as many differences. Just to reiterate this article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important. For a more in-depth view I recommend reading the articles for each of the projects linked above and coming to your own conclusions, you may have different criteria which is important to you, and score them differently. There won’t be one platform to rule them all however, with some uses cases better suited to one platform over another, and it’s not a zero-sum game. Blockchain is going to completely revolutionize industries and the Internet itself. The more projects researching and delivering breakthrough technology the better, each learning from each other and pushing each other to reach that goal earlier. The current market is a tiny speck of what’s in store in terms of value and adoption and it’s going to be exciting to watch it unfold.
https://preview.redd.it/dbb99egcwpq51.png?width=1388&format=png&auto=webp&s=aeb03127dc0dc74d0507328e899db1c7d7fc2879
For more information see the articles below (each with additional sources at the bottom of their articles)
Avalanche, a Revolutionary Consensus Engine and Platform. A Game Changer for Blockchain
Avalanche Consensus, The Biggest Breakthrough since Nakamoto
Cosmos — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part One
Cosmos — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Two
Cosmos Hub ATOM Token and the commonly misunderstood staking tokens — Part Three
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part One — Overview and Benefits
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Two — How Consensus Works
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Three — Limitations and Issues

Can they overcome the product limitations of blockchain and deliver the world-class experience that consumers expect?
https://reddit.com/link/i8ewbx/video/ojkc6c9a1lg51/player
This is the second part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
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While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this very powerful technology to reach the masses. As we laid out in our previous series, Crypto-Powered, we believe companies that build with blockchain at their core will have the best shot at winning the broader consumer finance market. We hope it will be us at Genesis Block, but we aren’t the only game in town.
So this series explores the entire crypto landscape and tries to answer the question, which crypto company is most likely to become the bank of the future?
In our last episode, we offered an in-depth analysis of big crypto exchanges like Coinbase & Binance. Today we’re analyzing non-custodial crypto wallets. These are products where only the user can touch or move funds. Not even the company or developer who built the application can access, control, or stop funds from being moved. These apps allow users to truly become their own bank.
We’ve talked a little about this before. This group of companies is nowhere near the same level of threat as the biggest crypto exchanges. However, this group really understands DeFi and the magic it can bring. This class of products is heavily engineer-driven and at the bleeding-edge of DeFi innovation. These products are certainly worth discussing. Okay, let’s dive in.

Users & Audience

These non-custodial crypto wallets are especially popular among the most hardcore blockchain nerds and crypto cypherpunks.

“Not your keys, not your coins.”

This meme is endlessly repeated among longtime crypto hodlers. If you’re not in complete control of your crypto (i.e. using non-custodial wallets), then it’s not really your crypto. There has always been a close connection between libertarianism & cryptocurrency. This type of user wants to be in absolute control of their money and become their own bank.
In addition to the experienced crypto geeks, for some people, these products will mean the difference between life and death. Imagine a refugee family that wants to safely protect their years of hard work — their life savings — as they travel across borders. Carrying cash could put their safety or money at risk. A few years ago I spent time in Greece at refugee camps — I know first-hand this is a real use-case.
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https://preview.redd.it/vigqlmgg1lg51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a5d48a63ce7a637749bbbc03d62c51cc3f75613
Or imagine a family living under an authoritarian regime — afraid that their corrupt or oppressive government will seize their assets (or devalue their savings via hyperinflation). Citizens in these countries cannot risk putting their money in centralized banks or under their mattresses. They must become their own bank.
These are the common use-cases and users for non-custodial wallets.

Products in Market

Let’s do a quick round-up of some of the more popular products already in the market.
Web/Desktop The most popular web wallet is MetaMask. Though it doesn’t have any specific integration with DeFi protocols yet, it has more than a million users (which is a lot in crypto land!). Web wallets that are more deeply integrated with DeFi include InstaDapp, Zerion, DeFi Saver, Zapper, and MyCrypto (disclosure: I’m an investor and a big fan of Taylor). For the mass market, mobile will be a much more important form-factor. I don’t view these web products as much of a threat to Genesis Block.
https://preview.redd.it/gbpi2ijj1lg51.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=c039887484bf8a3d3438fb02a384d0b9ef894e1f
Mobile The more serious threats to Genesis Block are the mobile products that (A) are leveraging some of the powerful DeFi protocols and (B) abstracting away a lot of the blockchain/DeFi UX complexity. While none get close to us on (B), the products attempting this are Argent and Dharma. To the extent they can, both are trying to make interacting with blockchain technology as simple as possible.
A few of the bigger exchanges have also entered this mobile non-custodial market. Coinbase has Wallet (via Cipher Browser acquisition). Binance has Trust Wallet (also via acquisition). And speaking of acquisitions, MyCrypto acquired Ambo, which is a solid product and has brought MyCrypto into the mobile space. Others worth mentioning include Rainbow — well-designed and built by a small indy-team with strong DeFi experience (former Balance team). And ZenGo which has a cool feature around keyless security (their CEO is a friend).
There are dozens of other mobile crypto wallets that do very little beyond showing your balances. They are not serious threats.
https://preview.redd.it/6x4lxsdk1lg51.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=fab3280491b75fe394aebc8dd69926b6962dcf5d
Hardware Wallets Holding crypto on your own hardware wallet is widely considered to be “best practice” from a security standpoint. The most popular hardware wallets are Ledger, Trezor, and KeepKey (by our friends at ShapeShift). Ledger Nano X is the only product that has Bluetooth — thus, the only one that can connect to a mobile app. While exciting and innovative, these hardware wallets are not yet integrated with any DeFi protocols.
https://preview.redd.it/yotmvtsl1lg51.png?width=1025&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8567b42839d9cec8dbc6c78d2f953b688886026

Strengths

Let’s take a look at some of the strengths with non-custodial products.

1. Regulatory arbitrage Because these products are “non-custodial”, they are able to avoid the regulatory burdens that centralized, custodial products must deal with (KYC/AML/MTL/etc). This is a strong practical benefit for a bootstrapped startup/buildedeveloper. Though it’s unclear how long this advantage lasts as products reach wider audiences and increased scrutiny.
2. User Privacy Because of the regulatory arbitrage mentioned above, users do not need to complete onerous KYC requirements. For example, there’s no friction around selfies, government-issued IDs, SSNs, etc. Users can preserve much of their privacy and they don’t need to worry about their sensitive information being hacked, compromised, or leaked.
3. Absolute control & custody This is really one of the great promises of crypto — users can become their own bank. Users can be in full control of their money. And they don’t need to bury it underground or hide it under a mattress. No dependence, reliance or trust in any third parties. Only the user herself can access and unlock the money.

Weaknesses

Now let’s examine some of the weaknesses.

1. Knowledge & Education Most non-custodial products do not abstract away any of the blockchain complexity. In fact, they often expose more of it because the most loyal users are crypto geeks. Imagine how an average, non-crypto user feels when she starts seeing words like seed phrases, public & private keys, gas limits, transaction fees, blockchain explorers, hex addresses, and confirmation times. There is a lot for a user to learn and become educated on. That’s friction. The learning curve is very high and will always be a major blocker for adoption. We’ve talked about this in our Spreading Crypto series — to reach the masses, the crypto stuff needs to be in the background.
2. User Experience It is currently impossible to create a smooth and performant user experience in non-custodial wallets or decentralized applications. Any interaction that requires a blockchain transaction will feel sluggish and slow. We built a messaging app on Ethereum and presented it at DevCon3 in Cancun. The technical constraints of blockchain technology were crushing to the user experience. We simply couldn’t create the real-time, modern messaging experience that users have come to expect from similar apps like Slack or WhatsApp. Until blockchains are closer in speed to web servers (which will be difficult given their decentralized nature), dApps will never be able to create the smooth user experience that the masses expect.
3. Product Limitations Most non-custodial wallets today are based on Ethereum smart contracts. That means they are severely limited with the assets that they can support (only erc-20 tokens). Unless through synthetic assets (similar to Abra), these wallets cannot support massively popular assets like Bitcoin, XRP, Cardano, Litecoin, EOS, Tezos, Stellar, Cosmos, or countless others. There are exciting projects like tBTC trying to bring Bitcoin to Ethereum — but these experiments are still very, very early. Ethereum-based smart contract wallets are missing a huge part of the crypto-asset universe.
4. Technical Complexity While developers are able to avoid a lot of regulatory complexity (see Strengths above), they are replacing it with increased technical complexity. Most non-custodial wallets are entirely dependent on smart contract technology which is still very experimental and early in development (see Insurance section of this DeFi use-cases post). Major bugs and major hacks do happen. Even recently, it was discovered that Argent had a “high severity vulnerability.” Fortunately, Argent fixed it and their users didn’t lose funds. The tools, frameworks, and best practices around smart contract technology are all still being established. Things can still easily go wrong, and they do.
5. Loss of Funds Risk Beyond the technical risks mentioned above, with non-custodial wallets, it’s very easy for users to make mistakes. There is no “Forgot Password.” There is no customer support agent you can ping. There is no company behind it that can make you whole if you make a mistake and lose your money. You are on your own, just as CZ suggests. One wrong move and your money is all gone. If you lose your private key, there is no way to recover your funds. There are some new developments around social recovery, but that’s all still very experimental. This just isn’t the type of customer support experience people are used to. And it’s not a risk that most are willing to take.
6. Integration with Fiat & Traditional Finance In today’s world, it’s still very hard to use crypto for daily spending (see Payments in our DeFi use-cases post). Hopefully, that will all change someday. In the meantime, if any of these non-custodial products hope to win in the broader consumer finance market, they will undoubtedly need to integrate with the legacy financial world — they need onramps (fiat-to-crypto deposit methods) and offramps (crypto-to-fiat withdraw/spend methods). As much as crypto-fanatics hate hearing it, you can’t expect people to jump headfirst into the new world unless there is a smooth transition, unless there are bridge technologies that help them arrive. This is why these fiat integrations are so important. Examples might be allowing ACH/Wire deposits (eg. via Plaid) or launching a debit card program for spend/withdraw. These fiat integrations are essential if the aim is to become the bank of the future. Doing any of this compliantly will require strong KYC/AML. So to achieve this use-case — integrating with traditional finance —all of the Strengths we mentioned above are nullified. There are no longer regulatory benefits. There are no longer privacy benefits (users need to upload KYC documents, etc). And users are no longer in complete control of their money.

Wrap Up

One of the great powers of crypto is that we no longer depend on banks. Anyone can store their wealth and have absolute control of their money. That’s made possible with these non-custodial wallets. It’s a wonderful thing.
I believe that the most knowledgeable and experienced crypto people (including myself) will always be active users of these applications. And as mentioned in this post, there will certainly be circumstances where these apps will be essential & even life-saving.

However, I do not believe this category of product is a major threat to Genesis Block to becoming the bank of the future.

They won’t win in the broader consumer finance market — mostly because I don’t believe that’s their target audience. These applications simply cannot produce the type of product experience that the masses require, want, or expect. The Weaknesses I’ve outlined above are just too overwhelming. The friction for mass-market consumers is just too much.
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https://preview.redd.it/lp8dzxeh1lg51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=03acdce545cd032f7e82b6665b001d7a06839557
The winning bank will be focused on solving real user problems and meeting user needs. Not slowed down by rigid idealism like censorship-resistance and absolute decentralization, as it is with most non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be a world-class product that’s smooth, performant, and accessible. Not sluggish and slow, as it is with most non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be one where blockchain & crypto is mostly invisible to end-users. Not front-and-center as it is with non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be one managed and run by professionals who know exactly what they’re doing. Not DIY (Do It Yourself), as it is with non-custodial wallets.
So are these non-custodial wallets a threat to Genesis Block in winning the broader consumer finance market, and becoming the bank of the future?
No. They are designed for a very different audience.
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Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-can-non-custodial-crypto-wallets-ever-replace-banks-c381d7e863f4
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wm5hT0fQvVY
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/14-crypto-banking-wars-can-non-custodial-crypto-wallets-ever-replace-banks
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/14-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Can-Non-Custodial-Crypto-Wallets-Ever-Replace-Banks-ei1e49

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download

Hey Parachuters! Seems like ages since I last posted a weekly update, right? Unfortunately, got super busy with IRL work and couldn’t keep up. But fret not! I finally scraped some time out today to get upto speed with all the news from the Parachute universe in May and June and organised them into a series of weekly updates like the ones I used to write earlier. But instead of posting them one by one everyday, thought it might be best to release them all at one go. So here's Part I of VI - All that happened at Parachute + partners from 15 May - 21 May'20:
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The ParJar swap feature beta testing started this week with a call to testers far and wide. Click here for the latest update and stats on ParJar straight from Cap's mouth - "...it took almost two years of betas and growth to reach 1 million tips (March 7th) nd it’s taken 2 months to to add another 400k..". Amazing! The #par4par raffle continues with a 500k $PAR pool. Peace Love hosted a general knowledge trivia in TTR this week for 10k $PAR in prizes. Gamerboy’s random trivia and Victor’s “Big Trivia” in Tiproom were quite fun as well. Naj (who’s also this week’s Parena winner) hosted a six set quiz in TTR. Charlotte’s been hosting quizzes in a new format for quite some time now. This week too she held one in Tiproom. Jason started a #culturalweekend prompt with an invitation to Parachuters to share "about a cultural dance or ceremony" from their area. "Explain in detail about the dance and why it is important" for some cool $PAR. Among many of the cool stories shared by Parachuters included Nico’s Occitan music from Italy and Soleira’s Dancing Devils of Tinaquillo. Congratulations to Clinton’s FLI charity for partnering with Lumenthropy which is Stellar's philanthropic arm. Remember, all profits from the Parachute Shop go to FLI. Another crypto league with a 150k $PAR prize pot started this week. Gian’s Two-For-Tuesday was a free for all. To revisit all the awesome music posted for 2FT, check out the playlist made by Sebastian.
Naj came back from near certain defeat in the finale to win this week’s Parena
aXpire CEO Matthew Markham penned an article on remote work and billing software for legal firms. An updated e-flyer for Bilr was released as well. To track the latest $AXPR burn, click here. 2gether added customer support capabilities to their Twitter, Facebook and Discord. Plus, an incident tracker status page was added this week. The XIO dApp which is still in private beta has already seen 500k+ $XIO tokens locked into it. Awesome! To get a feel of how the dApp works, check out Dash’s latest video demo where he also shared some updates on tokenomics. Uptrennd founder Jeff Kirdeikis interviewed Dash over an hour long session to talk all things XIO. $XIO got listed on Idex. Click here to watch an update video on the latest developments. For XIO discussions this week, Citizens brainstormed over the base liquidity pair on Uniswap V2. DeFi Nation’s Clayton Roche wrote a detailed commentary on what XIO is doing right. Birdchain’s mid-May update came out this week. Voyager hosted a business update conference call this week. CEO Steve Ehrlich talked about the platform and crypto in general with Charlie Shrem on the Untold Stories podcast this week. Voyager’s Q3 2020 results were released. Still figuring out how to fund your Voyager wallet? Watch this video to find out. An upgrade to Fantom’s Opera Network was pushed which allows staking different amounts over time. For the latest project update, click here. A community AMA also happened this week where the team talked about a new staking proposal called Fluid Staking. Jeff from Uptrennd sat down to interview IOST co-founder Terry Wang this week. Uptrennd broke into the top 20k Alexa global rankings. Woohoo! GET Protocol’s GUTS Tickets app is now available in Italian as well. DoYourTip’s $DYT is now available on Uniswap V2.
What a welcome sight for support engineers. Source: https://2gether.statuspage.io/history
Switch’s $ESH token was listed on Stex, ProBit, Crex 24, Hotbit, Bilaxy and Bitcoin.com this week. Bitcoin.com also announced support for the $GHOST airdrop along with a deposit and trade competition. Continuing on its acquisition spree from last week, Switch acquired gaming platform Wavesbet and voting dApp ClearPoll. Whitepaper for the GHOST project by John McAfee was released. They will be airdropping their tokens 1:1 to $ESH HODLers on the 25th. The release of $GHOST has been contentious to say the least. Reflecting on some of the plagiarism allegations levelled against the project, the crew shared their side of the story. The team also sat down for an AMA with Coiner Vietnam. District0x’s latest weekly update talked about the upcoming DappDigest and new developments in Meme Factory among other news. The Q4 2019 quarterly report was released as well. Read all about Hydro’s Financial Offers framework here. If you are a graphic designer, don’t forget to check out this gig at Sentivate. US-residents only. OST’s Simona Pop will be attending a panel discussion by Outlier Ventures next week to talk about dev onboarding. P2P internet ecosystem ThreeFold announced a multi-faceted partnership with SelfKey for KYC and new user onboarding services. Following last week's community vote on the most attractive marketplaces, Passports Marketplace was found to be the most popular. This week, the community voted on their most preferred blockchain to be added to the app. Bank of Hodlers joined SelfKey's Loans Marketplace while Tokens.net joined the Exchanges Marketplace. COTI did a study on IoT payments and how it could offer a solution. The project was selected for the next listing vote on Gate.io. COTI community also got an opportunity to interact with the AtomicWallet team through an AMA this week.
Hydro has been constantly updating its dev tools to offer a seamless developer experience
Click here to read the latest Constellation Hypergraph mainnet stats. New features were added to the Molly wallet. Click here for steps to install the wallet. TheDailyChain expanded on how the $DAG ecosystem was growing. Pynk CEO Seth Ward wrote about the future of fintech in his EM360 article. Congratulations on crossing the 1k follower mark on Medium. In Shuffle Monster news, most of the $SHUF liquidity on Uniswap was moved to the V2 pool this week. New features were added to the Wibson app with the latest release giving more data control powers to the end user. Pre-staking started on the Harmony mainnet with the opening up of bids by validators followed by the election of the first batch of validators thereby marking the start of Open Staking. And just after, Harmony became the first ever blockchain to support sharded PoS. The news of Open Staking going live was covered by Coindesk and Cointelegraph. More details on what next was shared in a Coinspeaker article. How does a delegator fit into the overall scheme of things? Check out this video. Open staking noobs will find these 101 tutorials helpful. CTO Rongjian Lan also did a community call to explain about it. For the latest development updates otherwise known as #pow thread, click here. Harmony’s EPoS is designed to be fair to all stakers. So make sure to optimise your staking rewards. $ONE Binance wallets were taken down briefly for a temporary maintenance activity. They now support the mainnet coin. Hope you had a chance to participate in the guess-effective-median-stake contest to win some cool $ONE prizes. Click here for the latest staking stats. $ONE was added to Binance Savings which offers a fixed rate of return on locked savings. A minor bug in the staking bug was removed. The APR numbers should get calculated more accurately now. The crew appeared for an AMA with StakingHub. Congratulations to the winners of Stake Heist! Binance and BitMax announced support for staking with BItMax crew also appearing for an AMA. IntelliShare crew sat down for an AMA with CoinNess this week.
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And with that, we have to close for this week in the Parachuteverse! See you again with another update. Ciao!

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2020 \"Index Fund\" EXPERIMENT - Tracking Top 10 Cryptocurrencies of 2019 - Jan 2020 Update - Up 55%
Full blog post with all the tables
edit: even if it was possible to alter the title, I don't think I would - enjoying the time travel comments! Apologies for the typo, fighting a bit of jet lag!
tl;dr - 2020 group off to a strong start, up +55% in January, but trail the 2019 Top Ten, which are up +63%. BSV crushes the competition in January. Focusing on the 2020 Top Ten cryptos paid off in January, a rarity for these experiments. Not a reader? This dude made a video of the findings.

The Experiment:

Instead of hypothetically tracking cryptos, I made an actual $1000 investment, $100 in each of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap on the 1st of January 2018. The result? The 2018 Top Ten portfolio ended the year down 85%, my $1000 worth only $150.
I then repeated the experiment on the 1st of January 2019 with the new 2019 Top Ten cryptos, then again in 2020.
Think of the Top Ten Experiments as a lazy man’s Index Fund (no weighting or rebalancing), less technical, but hopefully still a proxy for the market as a whole – or at the very least an interesting snapshot of the 2018, 2019, and 2020 crypto space.
I am trying to keep this project simple and accessible for beginners and those looking to get into crypto but maybe not quite ready to jump in yet. I try not to take sides or analyze, but rather attempt to report in a detached manner letting the numbers speak for themselves.
This is not investing advice – as a matter of fact, the vast majority of the reports will show that the Top Ten approach under performs other strategies. This is experiment is designed to be documentary in nature, describing a specific period in cryptocurrency history.

Month Thirteen – UP 55%

If you’re just finding the experiment now, welcome. You have some catching up to do. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
On the 1st of January, 2018, I bought $100 each of the Top Ten cryptos at the time for a total investment of $1000 to see how they would perform over the year. I tracked the experiment and reported each month. I then extended the 2018 experiment repeated the process with the new 2019 Top Ten group of cryptos. How is it going?
After two years the 2018 Top Ten were down -86%.
After one year the 2019 Top Ten broke just about even (up +2%).
I decided to keep things going in 2020, so I repeated the experiment yet again. The round three coins are:
Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, EOS, Binance Coin, Bitcoin SV, and Tezos are the coins I’ll be tracking as part of the 2020 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment.
Let’s get into it. Here’s the 2020 Top Ten Crypto Experiment update for January.

Month One – UP 55%

Well there’s something you don’t see everyday. Or at least I don’t after twenty five months of running these experiments: an all green month. Great start for the 2020 batch and by far the strongest January since the Top Ten experiments started in 2018.

Ranking and January Winners and Losers

Except for the top three (BTC, ETH, and XRP), there was a ton of movement in January, most of it downward. Tezos crashed hard, down from #10 to #15 and becomes the first to drop out of the Top Ten. Tether dropped two places, always a good sign for the rest of the group. BSV gained the most ground advancing four spots in the rankings.
January Winners – BSV dominated the field finishing January up +181%. Bitcoin Cash finished a distant second place gaining +78%.
January Losers – Tether, which is always great news for the rest of the pack. XRP finished in second place “only” up +25%.
For those keeping score, I keep a tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and losses:

Overall update – BSV takes strong early lead. Tether is the worst performer.

It was hard for the rest of the cryptos to keep up with BSV this month, up +181% in January. That’s more than double what second place Bitcoin Cash gained this month. BSV is already worth $280.
Tether started 2020 in the basement as the rest of the field gained at least +25%.

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

The crypto market gained over $67B in January 2020, up +36% since New Year’s Day.

Bitcoin dominance:

Bitcoin dominance dipped a few percentage points to 66% during the first month of 2020, a sign of increasing interest in altcoins.

Overall return on investment since January 1st, 2020:

The 2020 Top Ten Portfolio gained about $549 in January 2020. After an initial $1000 investment, the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio is worth $1,549. That’s up about +55%.
There’s not much here at the moment, but we’ll be looking at the entire experiment, month by month in an attempt to keep some perspective:
How does the 2020 Top Ten Experiment compare to the parallel projects?

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: down about -80% ($202)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up about +63% ($1,631)

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line:
After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, my portfolios are worth $3,382.
That’s up about 12.7%.

Implications/Observations:

The crypto market as a whole is up about +36% in January compared to the 2020 Top Ten cryptos which have gained +55%. Sticking with the Top Ten coins beat the overall market in January.
Although there are a few examples of this strategy working with the 2019 Top Ten, it’s interesting to note that this hasn’t yet happened with the 2018 group as at no point in the first twenty-five months of the Top Ten 2018 Experiment has the approach of focusing on only the Top Ten cryptos outperformed the overall market.
I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of my experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options. The S&P 500 was flat in January.
The initial $1k investment I put into crypto would now be worth $1000 had it been redirected to the S&P 500.
But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging/$1,000-per-year-in-January approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:

• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018: +$210
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019: +$290
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020: +$0

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line:
After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,500.
That’s up about +17% (compared to +12.7% with the Top Ten Crypto Experiments).

Conclusion:

A nice start to the year for the 2020 Top Ten and the best January since I started updates in 2018. It’s also a nice to be modestly up on the combined 2018, 2019, and 2020 portfolios for a change.
Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for the original 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment and the 2019 Top Ten Experiment follow up experiment.

Sup folks! Here’s Part III of VI of our May-June update catchup (29 May - 4 Jun'20):
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For this week's #fridayprompt Jason got Parachuters to talk about items "from your childhood that you hold very dear to your heart" and why. Super congrats to Evan (TheEnjineer) for winning this week’s Parena and taking home a cool 20k $PAR. Naj hosted a 2 part trivia in TTR for 10k $PAR in prizes. Peace Love held his “Big Trivia” on Sunday. Victor hosted one in Tiproom as well. The Crex24 exchange peeps were nice enough to add $PAR as one of the contenders in their latest vote-for-listing round. Parachuters put up a great fight even though we didn’t make it in the end. But it was fun. The 4th Parachute League with a prize pool of 100k $PAR will be going live on Crypto Leagues next week. Paper trade your way to glory! For Two-For-Tuesday Gian got folks to share music that had "bands or song titles whose name has a number in it" for 500 $PAR. Like always, Sebastian volunteered to set up the playlist. Enjoy!
LordHades' collection of Turbo Cards were his entry to this week's #fridayprompt
Matthew from aXpire wrote about LEDES and why it mattered for eBilling. This week saw 200k $AXPR burned as part of the monthly burn event. 2gether CEO Ramon Ferraz shared about some of the recent challenges that they had to overcome in order to keep the ship sailing. The latest #XIOSocial prompt was focused on Citizens and we got to know more about the people behind some of the active XIDs. Dash shared an update on the newest developments on the dApp. Birdchain team published an important reminder for everyone about avoiding scams. If you missed Voyager CEO Stephen Ehrlich’s crypto investment webinar last week, fret not. You can watch it here. The June interest rates look pretty enticing. Still considering whether to get into Voyager? This article might help. Josh from Switch was interviewed by Bitcoin.com exchange this week. $ESH got listed on CoinBene. Folks new to Fantom can watch this intro video for a quick roundup. Uptrennd’s $1UP token was chosen for HitBTC’s latest token listing poll. Uptrennd continues to feature among the top monetized social media platforms by monthly pageloads. For the latest news roundup, click here. The team also announced a partnership with Global Digital Assets to expand market reach and user growth. A new update to the Opacity platform was released this week. Click here to read the latest District0x weekly report. Hydrogen integrated identity verification solution IDology to its platform for KYC checks. Don’t forget to check out Hydro’s report on Payments as a Service (PaaS) and how it will play a key role in Fintech. The ecosystem is growing too with 26 companies applying for Hydro grants to build on the platform. Silent Notary’s Ubikiri released a crowdfunding solution this week.
The fintech space continues to grow at breakneck speed: Source: Hydro’s PaaS report
Harmony turned 1 this week and announced that Binance’s $BUSD stablecoin will be added to its mainnet. The first ever HRC20 token went live on Harmony as well. ThreeFold announced support for Open Staking on its grid. In addition to $KEY as mentioned above, $ONE was listed on Swapzone as well. Edge and Atomic Wallet will support $ONE as well. All foundational node tokens have been committed to Open Staking. 3.5+ Bn $ONE are now staked by 195 validators. Congratulations to the winners of the Flash Quiz from last week. The team also sat down for an AMA with CoinDCX. The latest community proposal was discussed in a fireside chat. And what a fun way to represent your team. Haha. Did I miss out something? Check out the news roundup in case I did. Intellishare will be creating a fund to support products on its mainnet in order to build the $INE ecosystem. Read the detailed May update for GET Protocol here. $COTI got listed on Indodax. The first recipients of COTI Staking 2.0 rewards received anywhere between 28% to 43% in annualized returns. Read all about it here. Another round of KuCoin staking was launched this week. And if you already didn’t know, node operators can set their own full node fee on the COTI network. DoYourTip’s $DYT token got listed on Txbit exchange with eight different fiat trading pairs. Woohoo!
Yup, that’s the Harmony team. Good Luck figuring them out :D
SelfKey published a guide to key concepts in crypto lending. Australian crypto-lending solution Helio Lending joined the Loans Marketplace. $KEY was added to My Crypto Stats tracker and Swapzone exchange aggregator. The May progress report was published as well. To keep track of the dev updates, you can also check CoinCodeCap. For a high level understanding of how data flows are handled by Constellation, watch this video explainer by Wyatt. All the moving parts of the Hypergraph ecosystem were listed out here. Pynk’s crowdfunding campaign (which went live last week) was overfunded by 133% of the target within 9 hours. The team also did an AMA with the community as the fundraise went on. If you missed it, you can watch it here. CEO Seth Ward’s thoughts on the effects of COVID-19 on the tech sector was published in a Business Leader article. CyberFM completed its May payments this week. Click here to watch Wibson’s presentation at the Ethereum Buenos Aires event from last week. Wibson Marketing Manager Fiorella Scantamburlo spoke about digital identity at the Latam Blockchain Summit this week. Plus, here’s a handy guide to find out if your Facebook account is truly private. Sentivate’s first technology partner was revealed – it is NordVPN. This was quickly followed by a significant update. The development on the Mycro Hunter App continues unabated.
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And with that, we have to close for this week! See you again with another update. Bye!

Hey everyone! This is Part IV of VI from our May-June update catchup series (5 Jun - 11 Jun'20):
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Yosma's Cheerful Cassowary beat Eva's Bright Beetle in a quick finale to win this week's Parena which had a massive $PAR pot thanks to a generous donation from Tony. Gamer Boy’s “Random Gk” and “Renewal from January” quizzes in Tiproom were fun as always. Plus, there were 10k $PAR in prizes. Cool! Charlotte’s “Mega Trivia” got everyone scratching their heads. CoD Mobile gamers were in for an epic time this week with Tavo hosting a tournament with a 3k $PAR pot in the Parachute War Zone. Two-for-Tuesday slid into the "rap, reggae and reggaeton" mode this week. Click here to listen to the playlist. Thanks Sebastian for setting it up! If you have been around for a while, you’ll know that Clinton’s charity, For Living Independence, does some amazing work. So the next time you shop on Amazon, don’t forget to show some love though AmazonSmile.
Cap and crew made their voices heard in NYC this week in solidarity with George Floyd
Congratulations to 2gether for crossing the 40k user mark this week. A new way for account top ups was introduced as well. This week’s CEO email covers news on the latest UX and the 2GT token. Youtuber Funontheride featured the email in his video. Filippo Angeloni covered the latest updates in his newest video as well. Founder Savador Casquero wrote about crypto staking in an Investing.com article. MakerDAO covered the 2gether card in its blog post on crypto debit cards. Following the XIO dApp update from last week, Citizens brainstormed about the UI this week. Citizens also talked about some of their contrarian beliefs in crypto. Bomb community started a Uniswap rewards program. Voyager raised USD 2.1M through a private placement from investors such as Streamlined Ventures, Susquehanna, Market Rebellion etc. Their stock has seen some enormous growth this year too. CEO Stephen Ehrlich shared his thoughts on the crypto market in a recent Bloomberg article. The team also took inputs from the community on which crypto to list next. John McAfee announced a Ghost cell phone data service to be released in September. Check out how the eSIM will work from the sneak peek video. The list of supported phones is mentioned here. And hope you had good fun in ParJar Gaming while winning some cool $ESH. A new set of upgrades were pushed to the Fantom Wallet. For the latest technical update on the project, click here. This week, I also wrote a Hackernoon article (with my co-author Rohit) exploring projects which had unique variations to Proof-of-Stake for their chain consensus. Among the projects featured were Fantom, COTI and Harmony. Jeff from Uptrennd will be speaking at the LA Blockchain Summit in October this year. The winners of the Blockchain Awards were announced. The newest Opacity release allows expired accounts to be revived within 2 months of expiry.
Fantom, Harmony and COTI take up a tiny but growing slice in the global staking pie
Catch up on the latest District0x weekly update and dev update from here and here respectively. The Q1 2020 report was released as well. The project is still sitting on a healthy crypto asset base of USD 4M+. Hydro team shared a guide to choosing a prepaid debit card program manager. Their PaaS report was also covered by Finovate this week. A new research page for featuring all of Hydro’s fintech research material was released. The successful applicants of the Project Hydro Decentralization Ambassador Program (which started in May) were voted upon this week and 7 DAs were elected. Silent Notary, Ubikiri and IDL integrations were completed this week with Silent Notary now appearing in Applications section of Ubikiri. A roundup of the latest updates was published as well. Sentivate founder Thomas Marchi sat down for an interview with MineYourBiz Monday’s NrdGrl007. Mycro announced that Chaia.io will be hosting a campaign on the Mycro Hunter App soon. SelfKey’s Data Breach compendium was updated this week. And if you’re a Product Designer looking for remote work, don’t forget to check out this opening at SelfKey. What next for Constellation? Watch the Constellation Network State of The Union to find out. Their educational group Startdust Collective made a brand video and a high level explainer article on the HyperGraph Transport Protocol. Pynk is thinking about doing a global crowdfunding campaign as opposed to one that is restricted to certain countries only. In light of this, the Pynk Crowd Wisdom was put to work to find out the best way to go about this.
Results of the Project Hydro DA Elections
Wibson’s latest app update was covered by Cointelegraph and Europe World News. Click here to catch up on this week’s detailed work thread from the Harmony project. A recent Harmony ecosystem is the SmartStake dashboard to check staking stats. Sprout Wallet now supports core utilities of HRC20 tokens. The team sat down for an AMA with Binance India and KuCoin this week. Next week they will be doing another AMA with the larger Binance community. Some insights about the Harmony grants were shared in this week’s community call. Read up on Intellishare founder Raymond Xiong’s thoughts on DAOs which he shared as part of a speaker panel at the 2020 Digital Innovation Project Exchange Conference. The team also published a post on how they aim to solve the DeFi congestion. The TestNet is expected to arrive soon as well. After the latest livestream of DI-RECT’s concert which saw ~10k attendees, GET Protocol announced that they will be facilitating tickets to the follow-up show as well. A recap of the COTI journey was published to mark the one-year anniversary of the project and the occasion was celebrated with a fun trivia. DoYourTip community voted to have liquidity rewards for pooling $DYT on Uniswap.
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And with that, it’s a wrap! See you again with another update. Ciao!

Author: Gamals Ahmed, CoinEx Business Ambassador
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ABSTRACT

In this research report, we present a study on Kyber Network. Kyber Network is a decentralized, on-chain liquidity protocol designed to make trading tokens simple, efficient, robust and secure.
Kyber design allows any party to contribute to an aggregated pool of liquidity within each blockchain while providing a single endpoint for takers to execute trades using the best rates available. We envision a connected liquidity network that facilitates seamless, decentralized cross-chain token swaps across Kyber based networks on different chains.
Kyber is a fully on-chain liquidity protocol that enables decentralized exchange of cryptocurrencies in any application. Liquidity providers (Reserves) are integrated into one single endpoint for takers and users. When a user requests a trade, the protocol will scan the entire network to find the reserve with the best price and take liquidity from that particular reserve.

1.INTRODUCTION

DeFi applications all need access to good liquidity sources, which is a critical component to provide good services. Currently, decentralized liquidity is comprised of various sources including DEXes (Uniswap, OasisDEX, Bancor), decentralized funds and other financial apps. The more scattered the sources, the harder it becomes for anyone to either find the best rate for their trade or to even find enough liquidity for their need.
Kyber is a blockchain-based liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from a wide range of reserves, powering instant and secure token exchange in any decentralized application.
The protocol allows for a wide range of implementation possibilities for liquidity providers, allowing a wide range of entities to contribute liquidity, including end users, decentralized exchanges and other decentralized protocols. On the taker side, end users, cryptocurrency wallets, and smart contracts are able to perform instant and trustless token trades at the best rates available amongst the sources.
The Kyber Network is project based on the Ethereum protocol that seeks to completely decentralize the exchange of crypto currencies and make exchange trustless by keeping everything on the blockchain.
Through the Kyber Network, users should be able to instantly convert or exchange any crypto currency.

1.1 OVERVIEW ABOUT KYBER NETWORK PROTOCOL

The Kyber Network is a decentralized way to exchange ETH and different ERC20 tokens instantly — no waiting and no registration needed.
Using this protocol, developers can build innovative payment flows and applications, including instant token swap services, ERC20 payments, and financial DApps — helping to build a world where any token is usable anywhere.
Kyber’s fully on-chain design allows for full transparency and verifiability in the matching engine, as well as seamless composability with DApps, not all of which are possible with off-chain or hybrid approaches. The integration of a large variety of liquidity providers also makes Kyber uniquely capable of supporting sophisticated schemes and catering to the needs of DeFi DApps and financial institutions. Hence, many developers leverage Kyber’s liquidity pool to build innovative financial applications, and not surprisingly, Kyber is the most used DeFi protocol in the world.
The Kyber Network is quite an established project that is trying to change the way we think of decentralised crypto currency exchange.
The Kyber Network has seen very rapid development. After being announced in May 2017 the testnet for the Kyber Network went live in August 2017. An ICO followed in September 2017, with the company raising 200,000 ETH valued at $60 million in just one day.
The live main net was released in February 2018 to whitelisted participants, and on March 19, 2018, the Kyber Network opened the main net as a public beta. Since then the network has seen increasing growth, with network volumes growing more than 500% in the first half of 2019.
Although there was a modest decrease in August 2019 that can be attributed to the price of ETH dropping by 50%, impacting the overall total volumes being traded and processed globally.
They are developing a decentralised exchange protocol that will allow developers to build payment flows and financial apps. This is indeed quite a competitive market as a number of other such protocols have been launched.
In Brief - Kyber Network is a tool that allows anyone to swap tokens instantly without having to use exchanges. - It allows vendors to accept different types of cryptocurrency while still being paid in their preferred crypto of choice. - It’s built primarily for Ethereum, but any smart-contract based blockchain can incorporate it.
At its core, Kyber is a decentralized way to exchange ETH and different ERC20 tokens instantly–no waiting and no registration needed. To do this Kyber uses a diverse set of liquidity pools, or pools of different crypto assets called “reserves” that any project can tap into or integrate with.
A typical use case would be if a vendor allowed customers to pay in whatever currency they wish, but receive the payment in their preferred token. Another example would be for Dapp users. At present, if you are not a token holder of a certain Dapp you can’t use it. With Kyber, you could use your existing tokens, instantly swap them for the Dapp specific token and away you go.
All this swapping happens directly on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning every transaction is completely transparent.

1.1.1 WHY BUILD THE KYBER NETWORK?

While crypto currencies were built to be decentralized, many of the exchanges for trading crypto currencies have become centralized affairs. This has led to security vulnerabilities, with many exchanges becoming the victims of hacking and theft.
It has also led to increased fees and costs, and the centralized exchanges often come with slow transfer times as well. In some cases, wallets have been locked and users are unable to withdraw their coins.
Decentralized exchanges have popped up recently to address the flaws in the centralized exchanges, but they have their own flaws, most notably a lack of liquidity, and often times high costs to modify trades in their on-chain order books.
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Some of the Integrations with Kyber Protocol
The Kyber Network was formed to provide users with a decentralized exchange that keeps everything right on the blockchain, and uses a reserve system rather than an order book to provide high liquidity at all times. This will allow for the exchange and transfer of any cryptocurrency, even cross exchanges, and costs will be kept at a minimum as well.
The Kyber Network has three guiding design philosophies since the start:

1. To be most useful the network needs to be platform-agnostic, which allows any protocol or application the ability to take advantage of the liquidity provided by the Kyber Network without any impact on innovation.
   
2. The network was designed to make real-world commerce and decentralized financial products not only possible but also feasible. It does this by allowing for instant token exchange across a wide range of tokens, and without any settlement risk.
   
3. The Kyber Network was created with ease of integration as a priority, which is why everything runs fully on-chain and fully transparent. Kyber is not only developer-friendly, but is also compatible with a wide variety of systems.
   

1.1.2 WHO INVENTED KYBER?

Kyber’s founders are Loi Luu, Victor Tran, Yaron Velner — CEO, CTO, and advisor to the Kyber Network.

1.1.3 WHAT DISTINGUISHES KYBER?

Kyber’s mission has always been to integrate with other protocols so they’ve focused on being developer-friendly by providing architecture to allow anyone to incorporate the technology onto any smart-contract powered blockchain. As a result, a variety of different dapps, vendors, and wallets use Kyber’s infrastructure including Set Protocol, bZx, InstaDApp, and Coinbase wallet.
Besides, dapps, vendors, and wallets, Kyber also integrates with other exchanges such as Uniswap — sharing liquidity pools between the two protocols.
A typical use case would be if a vendor allowed customers to pay in whatever currency they wish, but receive the payment in their preferred token. Another example would be for Dapp users. At present, if you are not a token holder of a certain Dapp you can’t use it. With Kyber, you could use your existing tokens, instantly swap them for the Dapp specific token and away you go.
Limit orders on Kyber allow users to set a specific price in which they would like to exchange a token instead of accepting whatever price currently exists at the time of trading. However, unlike with other exchanges, users never lose custody of their crypto assets during limit orders on Kyber.
The Kyber protocol works by using pools of crypto funds called “reserves”, which currently support over 70 different ERC20 tokens. Reserves are essentially smart contracts with a pool of funds. Different parties with different prices and levels of funding control all reserves. Instead of using order books to match buyers and sellers to return the best price, the Kyber protocol looks at all the reserves and returns the best price among the different reserves. Reserves make money on the “spread” or differences between the buying and selling prices. The Kyber wants any token holder to easily convert one token to another with a minimum of fuss.

1.2 KYBER PROTOCOL

The protocol smart contracts offer a single interface for the best available token exchange rates to be taken from an aggregated liquidity pool across diverse sources. ● Aggregated liquidity pool. The protocol aggregates various liquidity sources into one liquidity pool, making it easy for takers to find the best rates offered with one function call. ● Diverse sources of liquidity. The protocol allows different types of liquidity sources to be plugged into. Liquidity providers may employ different strategies and different implementations to contribute liquidity to the protocol. ● Permissionless. The protocol is designed to be permissionless where any developer can set up various types of reserves, and any end user can contribute liquidity. Implementations need to take into consideration various security vectors, such as reserve spamming, but can be mitigated through a staking mechanism. We can expect implementations to be permissioned initially until the maintainers are confident about these considerations.
The core feature that the Kyber protocol facilitates is the token swap between taker and liquidity sources. The protocol aims to provide the following properties for token trades: ● Instant Settlement. Takers do not have to wait for their orders to be fulfilled, since trade matching and settlement occurs in a single blockchain transaction. This enables trades to be part of a series of actions happening in a single smart contract function. ● Atomicity. When takers make a trade request, their trade either gets fully executed, or is reverted. This “all or nothing” aspect means that takers are not exposed to the risk of partial trade execution. ● Public rate verification. Anyone can verify the rates that are being offered by reserves and have their trades instantly settled just by querying from the smart contracts. ● Ease of integration. Trustless and atomic token trades can be directly and easily integrated into other smart contracts, thereby enabling multiple trades to be performed in a smart contract function.
How each actor works is specified in Section Network Actors. 1. Takers refer to anyone who can directly call the smart contract functions to trade tokens, such as end-users, DApps, and wallets. 2. Reserves refer to anyone who wishes to provide liquidity. They have to implement the smart contract functions defined in the reserve interface in order to be registered and have their token pairs listed. 3. Registered reserves refer to those that will be cycled through for matching taker requests. 4. Maintainers refer to anyone who has permission to access the functions for the adding/removing of reserves and token pairs, such as a DAO or the team behind the protocol implementation. 5. In all, they comprise of the network, which refers to all the actors involved in any given implementation of the protocol.
The protocol implementation needs to have the following: 1. Functions for takers to check rates and execute the trades 2. Functions for the maintainers to registeremove reserves and token pairs 3. Reserve interface that defines the functions reserves needs to implement
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1.3 KYBER CORE SMART CONTRACTS

Kyber Core smart contracts is an implementation of the protocol that has major protocol functions to allow actors to join and interact with the network. For example, the Kyber Core smart contracts provide functions for the listing and delisting of reserves and trading pairs by having clear interfaces for the reserves to comply to be able to register to the network and adding support for new trading pairs. In addition, the Kyber Core smart contracts also provide a function for takers to query the best rate among all the registered reserves, and perform the trades with the corresponding rate and reserve. A trading pair consists of a quote token and any other token that the reserve wishes to support. The quote token is the token that is either traded from or to for all trades. For example, the Ethereum implementation of the Kyber protocol uses Ether as the quote token.
In order to search for the best rate, all reserves supporting the requested token pair will be iterated through. Hence, the Kyber Core smart contracts need to have this search algorithm implemented.
The key functions implemented in the Kyber Core Smart Contracts are listed in Figure 2 below. We will visit and explain the implementation details and security considerations of each function in the Specification Section.

1.4 HOW KYBER’S ON-CHAIN PROTOCOL WORKS?

Kyber is the liquidity infrastructure for decentralized finance. Kyber aggregates liquidity from diverse sources into a pool, which provides the best rates for takers such as DApps, Wallets, DEXs, and End users.

1.4.1 PROVIDING LIQUIDITY AS A RESERVE

Anyone can operate a Kyber Reserve to market make for profit and make their tokens available for DApps in the ecosystem. Through an open reserve architecture, individuals, token teams and professional market makers can contribute token assets to Kyber’s liquidity pool and earn from the spread in every trade. These tokens become available at the best rates across DApps that tap into the network, making them instantly more liquid and useful.
MAIN RESERVE TYPES Kyber currently has over 45 reserves in its network providing liquidity. There are 3 main types of reserves that allow different liquidity contribution options to suit the unique needs of different providers. 1. Automated Price Reserves (APR) — Allows token teams and users with large token holdings to have an automated yet customized pricing system with low maintenance costs. Synthetix and Melon are examples of teams that run APRs. 2. Fed Price Reserves (FPR) — Operated by professional market makers that require custom and advanced pricing strategies tailored to their specific needs. Kyber alongside reserves such as OneBit, runs FPRs. 3. Bridge Reserves (BR) — These are specialized reserves meant to bring liquidity from other on-chain liquidity providers like Uniswap, Oasis, DutchX, and Bancor into the network.

1.5 KYBER NETWORK ROLES

There Kyber Network functions through coordination between several different roles and functions as explained below: - Users — This entity uses the Kyber Network to send and receive tokens. A user can be an individual, a merchant, and even a smart contract account. - Reserve Entities — This role is used to add liquidity to the platform through the dynamic reserve pool. Some reserve entities are internal to the Kyber Network, but others may be registered third parties. Reserve entities may be public if the public contributes to the reserves they hold, otherwise they are considered private. By allowing third parties as reserve entities the network adds diversity, which prevents monopolization and keeps exchange rates competitive. Allowing third party reserve entities also allows for the listing of less popular coins with lower volumes. - Reserve Contributors — Where reserve entities are classified as public, the reserve contributor is the entity providing reserve funds. Their incentive for doing so is a profit share from the reserve. - The Reserve Manager — Maintains the reserve, calculates exchange rates and enters them into the network. The reserve manager profits from exchange spreads set by them on their reserves. They can also benefit from increasing volume by accessing the entire Kyber Network. - The Kyber Network Operator — Currently the Kyber Network team is filling the role of the network operator, which has a function to adds/remove Reserve Entities as well as controlling the listing of tokens. Eventually, this role will revert to a proper decentralized governance.

1.6 BASIC TOKEN TRADE

A basic token trade is one that has the quote token as either the source or destination token of the trade request. The execution flow of a basic token trade is depicted in the diagram below, where a taker would like to exchange BAT tokens for ETH as an example. The trade happens in a single blockchain transaction. 1. Taker sends 1 ETH to the protocol contract, and would like to receive BAT in return. 2. Protocol contract queries the first reserve for its ETH to BAT exchange rate. 3. Reserve 1 offers an exchange rate of 1 ETH for 800 BAT. 4. Protocol contract queries the second reserve for its ETH to BAT exchange rate. 5. Reserve 2 offers an exchange rate of 1 ETH for 820 BAT. 6. This process goes on for the other reserves. After the iteration, reserve 2 is discovered to have offered the best ETH to BAT exchange rate. 7. Protocol contract sends 1 ETH to reserve 2. 8. The reserve sends 820 BAT to the taker.

1.7 TOKEN-TO-TOKEN TRADE

A token-to-token trade is one where the quote token is neither the source nor the destination token of the trade request. The exchange flow of a token to token trade is depicted in the diagram below, where a taker would like to exchange BAT tokens for DAI as an example. The trade happens in a single blockchain transaction. 1. Taker sends 50 BAT to the protocol contract, and would like to receive DAI in return. 2. Protocol contract sends 50 BAT to the reserve offering the best BAT to ETH rate. 3. Protocol contract receives 1 ETH in return. 4. Protocol contract sends 1 ETH to the reserve offering the best ETH to DAI rate. 5. Protocol contract receives 30 DAI in return. 6. Protocol contract sends 30 DAI to the user.

2.KYBER NETWORK CRYSTAL (KNC) TOKEN

Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) is an ERC-20 utility token and an integral part of Kyber Network.
KNC is the first deflationary staking token where staking rewards and token burns are generated from actual network usage and growth in DeFi.
The Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) is the backbone of the Kyber Network. It works to connect liquidity providers and those who need liquidity and serves three distinct purposes. The first of these is to collect transaction fees, and a portion of every fee collected is burned, which keeps KNC deflationary. Kyber Network Crystals (KNC), are named after the crystals in Star Wars used to power light sabers.
The KNC also ensures the smooth operation of the reserve system in the Kyber liquidity since entities must use third-party tokens to buy the KNC that pays for their operations in the network.
KNC allows token holders to play a critical role in determining the incentive system, building a wide base of stakeholders, and facilitating economic flow in the network. A small fee is charged each time a token exchange happens on the network, and KNC holders get to vote on this fee model and distribution, as well as other important decisions. Over time, as more trades are executed, additional fees will be generated for staking rewards and reserve rebates, while more KNC will be burned. - Participation rewards — KNC holders can stake KNC in the KyberDAO and vote on key parameters. Voters will earn staking rewards (in ETH) - Burning — Some of the network fees will be burned to reduce KNC supply permanently, providing long-term value accrual from decreasing supply. - Reserve incentives — KNC holders determine the portion of network fees that are used as rebates for selected liquidity providers (reserves) based on their volume performance.

Finally, the KNC token is the connection between the Kyber Network and the exchanges, wallets, and dApps that leverage the liquidity network. This is a virtuous system since entities are rewarded with referral fees for directing more users to the Kyber Network, which helps increase adoption for Kyber and for the entities using the Network.
And of course there will soon be a fourth and fifth uses for the KNC, which will be as a staking token used to generate passive income, as well as a governance token used to vote on key parameters of the network.
The Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) was released in a September 2017 ICO at a price around $1. There were 226,000,000 KNC minted for the ICO, with 61% sold to the public. The remaining 39% are controlled 50/50 by the company and the founders/advisors, with a 1 year lockup period and 2 year vesting period.
Currently, just over 180 million coins are in circulation, and the total supply has been reduced to 210.94 million after the company burned 1 millionth KNC token in May 2019 and then its second millionth KNC token just three months later.
That means that while it took 15 months to burn the first million KNC, it took just 10 weeks to burn the second million KNC. That shows how rapidly adoption has been growing recently for Kyber, with July 2019 USD trading volumes on the Kyber Network nearly reaching $60 million. This volume has continued growing, and on march 13, 2020 the network experienced its highest daily trading activity of $33.7 million in a 24-hour period.
Currently KNC is required by Reserve Managers to operate on the network, which ensures a minimum amount of demand for the token. Combined with future plans for burning coins, price is expected to maintain an upward bias, although it has suffered along with the broader market in 2018 and more recently during the summer of 2019.
It was unfortunate in 2020 that a beginning rally was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, although the token has stabilized as of April 2020, and there are hopes the rally could resume in the summer of 2020.

2.1 HOW ARE KNC TOKENS PRODUCED?

The native token of Kyber is called Kyber Network Crystals (KNC). All reserves are required to pay fees in KNC for the right to manage reserves. The KNC collected as fees are either burned and taken out of the total supply or awarded to integrated dapps as an incentive to help them grow.

2.2 HOW DO YOU GET HOLD OF KNC TOKENS?

Kyber Swap can be used to buy ETH directly using a credit card, which can then be used to swap for KNC. Besides Kyber itself, exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, and OKex trade KNC.

2.3 WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH KYBER?

The most direct and basic function of Kyber is for instantly swapping tokens without registering an account, which anyone can do using an Etheruem wallet such as MetaMask. Users can also create their own reserves and contribute funds to a reserve, but that process is still fairly technical one–something Kyber is working on making easier for users in the future.

2.4 THE GOAL OF KYBER THE FUTURE

The goal of Kyber in the coming years is to solidify its position as a one-stop solution for powering liquidity and token swapping on Ethereum. Kyber plans on a major protocol upgrade called Katalyst, which will create new incentives and growth opportunities for all stakeholders in their ecosystem, especially KNC holders. The upgrade will mean more use cases for KNC including to use KNC to vote on governance decisions through a decentralized organization (DAO) called the KyberDAO.
With our upcoming Katalyst protocol upgrade and new KNC model, Kyber will provide even more benefits for stakeholders. For instance, reserves will no longer need to hold a KNC balance for fees, removing a major friction point, and there will be rebates for top performing reserves. KNC holders can also stake their KNC to participate in governance and receive rewards.

2.5 BUYING & STORING KNC

Those interested in buying KNC tokens can do so at a number of exchanges. Perhaps your best bet between the complete list is the likes of Coinbase Pro and Binance. The former is based in the USA whereas the latter is an offshore exchange.
The trading volume is well spread out at these exchanges, which means that the liquidity is not concentrated and dependent on any one exchange. You also have decent liquidity on each of the exchange books. For example, the Binance BTC / KNC books are wide and there is decent turnover. This means easier order execution.
KNC is an ERC20 token and can be stored in any wallet with ERC20 support, such as MyEtherWallet or MetaMask. One interesting alternative is the KyberSwap Android mobile app that was released in August 2019.
It allows for instant swapping of tokens and has support for over 70 different altcoins. It also allows users to set price alerts and limit orders and works as a full-featured Ethereum wallet.

2.6 KYBER KATALYST UPGRADE

Kyber has announced their intention to become the de facto liquidity layer for the Decentralized Finance space, aiming to have Kyber as the single on-chain endpoint used by the majority of liquidity providers and dApp developers. In order to achieve this goal the Kyber Network team is looking to create an open ecosystem that garners trust from the decentralized finance space. They believe this is the path that will lead the majority of projects, developers, and users to choose Kyber for liquidity needs. With that in mind they have recently announced the launch of a protocol upgrade to Kyber which is being called Katalyst.
The Katalyst upgrade will create a stronger ecosystem by creating strong alignments towards a common goal, while also strengthening the incentives for stakeholders to participate in the ecosystem.
The primary beneficiaries of the Katalyst upgrade will be the three major Kyber stakeholders: 1. Reserve managers who provide network liquidity; 2. dApps that connect takers to Kyber; 3. KNC holders.
These stakeholders can expect to see benefits as highlighted below: Reserve Managers will see two new benefits to providing liquidity for the network. The first of these benefits will be incentives for providing reserves. Once Katalyst is implemented part of the fees collected will go to the reserve managers as an incentive for providing liquidity.
This mechanism is similar to rebates in traditional finance, and is expected to drive the creation of additional reserves and market making, which in turn will lead to greater liquidity and platform reach.
Katalyst will also do away with the need for reserve managers to maintain a KNC balance for use as network fees. Instead fees will be automatically collected and used as incentives or burned as appropriate. This should remove a great deal of friction for reserves to connect with Kyber without affecting the competitive exchange rates that takers in the system enjoy. dApp Integrators will now be able to set their own spread, which will give them full control over their own business model. This means the current fee sharing program that shares 30% of the 0.25% fee with dApp developers will go away and developers will determine their own spread. It’s believed this will increase dApp development within Kyber as developers will now be in control of fees.
KNC Holders, often thought of as the core of the Kyber Network, will be able to take advantage of a new staking mechanism that will allow them to receive a portion of network fees by staking their KNC and participating in the KyberDAO.

2.7 COMING KYBERDAO

With the implementation of the Katalyst protocol the KNC holders will be put right at the heart of Kyber. Holders of KNC tokens will now have a critical role to play in determining the future economic flow of the network, including its incentive systems.
The primary way this will be achieved is through KyberDAO, a way in which on-chain and off-chain governance will align to streamline cooperation between the Kyber team, KNC holders, and market participants.
The Kyber Network team has identified 3 key areas of consideration for the KyberDAO: 1. Broad representation, transparent governance and network stability 2. Strong incentives for KNC holders to maintain their stake and be highly involved in governance 3. Maximizing participation with a wide range of options for voting delegation
Interaction between KNC Holders & Kyber
This means KNC holders have been empowered to determine the network fee and how to allocate the fees to ensure maximum network growth. KNC holders will now have three fee allocation options to vote on: - Voting Rewards: Immediate value creation. Holders who stake and participate in the KyberDAO get their share of the fees designated for rewards. - Burning: Long term value accrual. The decreasing supply of KNC will improve the token appreciation over time and benefit those who did not participate. - Reserve Incentives:Value creation via network growth. By rewarding Kyber reserve managers based on their performance, it helps to drive greater volume, value, and network fees.

2.8 TRANSPARENCY AND STABILITY

The design of the KyberDAO is meant to allow for the greatest network stability, as well as maximum transparency and the ability to quickly recover in emergency situations. Initally the Kyber team will remain as maintainers of the KyberDAO. The system is being developed to be as verifiable as possible, while still maintaining maximum transparency regarding the role of the maintainer in the DAO.
Part of this transparency means that all data and processes are stored on-chain if feasible. Voting regarding network fees and allocations will be done on-chain and will be immutable. In situations where on-chain storage or execution is not feasible there will be a set of off-chain governance processes developed to ensure all decisions are followed through on.

2.9 KNC STAKING AND DELEGATION

Staking will be a new addition and both staking and voting will be done in fixed periods of times called “epochs”. These epochs will be measured in Ethereum block times, and each KyberDAO epoch will last roughly 2 weeks.
This is a relatively rapid epoch and it is beneficial in that it gives more rapid DAO conclusion and decision-making, while also conferring faster reward distribution. On the downside it means there needs to be a new voting campaign every two weeks, which requires more frequent participation from KNC stakeholders, as well as more work from the Kyber team.
Delegation will be part of the protocol, allowing stakers to delegate their voting rights to third-party pools or other entities. The pools receiving the delegation rights will be free to determine their own fee structure and voting decisions. Because the pools will share in rewards, and because their voting decisions will be clearly visible on-chain, it is expected that they will continue to work to the benefit of the network.

3. TRADING

After the September 2017 ICO, KNC settled into a trading price that hovered around $1.00 (decreasing in BTC value) until December. The token has followed the trend of most other altcoins — rising in price through December and sharply declining toward the beginning of January 2018.
The KNC price fell throughout all of 2018 with one exception during April. From April 6th to April 28th, the price rose over 200 percent. This run-up coincided with a blog post outlining plans to bring Bitcoin to the Ethereum blockchain. Since then, however, the price has steadily fallen, currently resting on what looks like a $0.15 (~0.000045 BTC) floor.
With the number of partners using the Kyber Network, the price may rise as they begin to fully use the network. The development team has consistently hit the milestones they’ve set out to achieve, so make note of any release announcements on the horizon.

4. COMPETITION

The 0x project is the biggest competitor to Kyber Network. Both teams are attempting to enter the decentralized exchange market. The primary difference between the two is that Kyber performs the entire exchange process on-chain while 0x keeps the order book and matching off-chain.
As a crypto swap exchange, the platform also competes with ShapeShift and Changelly.

5.KYBER MILESTONES

• June 2020: Digifox, an all-in-one finance application by popular crypto trader and Youtuber Nicholas Merten a.k.a DataDash (340K subs), integrated Kyber to enable users to easily swap between cryptocurrencies without having to leave the application. • June 2020: Stake Capital partnered with Kyber to provide convenient KNC staking and delegation services, and also took a KNC position to participate in governance. • June 2020: Outlined the benefits of the Fed Price Reserve (FPR) for professional market makers and advanced developers. • May 2020: Kyber crossed US$1 Billion in total trading volume and 1 Million transactions, performed entirely on-chain on Ethereum. • May 2020: StakeWith.Us partnered Kyber Network as a KyberDAO Pool Master. • May 2020: 2Key, a popular blockchain referral solution using smart links, integrated Kyber’s on-chain liquidity protocol for seamless token swaps • May 2020: Blockchain game League of Kingdoms integrated Kyber to accept Token Payments for Land NFTs. • May 2020: Joined the Zcash Developer Alliance , an invite-only working group to advance Zcash development and interoperability. • May 2020: Joined the Chicago DeFi Alliance to help accelerate on-chain market making for professionals and developers. • March 2020: Set a new record of USD $33.7M in 24H fully on-chain trading volume, and $190M in 30 day on-chain trading volume. • March 2020: Integrated by Rarible, Bullionix, and Unstoppable Domains, with the KyberWidget deployed on IPFS, which allows anyone to swap tokens through Kyber without being blocked. • February 2020: Popular Ethereum blockchain game Axie Infinity integrated Kyber to accept ERC20 payments for NFT game items. • February 2020: Kyber’s protocol was integrated by Gelato Finance, Idle Finance, rTrees, Sablier, and 0x API for their liquidity needs. • January 2020: Kyber Network was found to be the most used protocol in the whole decentralized finance (DeFi) space in 2019, according to a DeFi research report by Binance. • December 2019: Switcheo integrated Kyber’s protocol for enhanced liquidity on their own DEX. • December 2019: DeFi Wallet Eidoo integrated Kyber for seamless in-wallet token swaps. • December 2019: Announced the development of the Katalyst Protocol Upgrade and new KNC token model. • July 2019: Developed the Waterloo Bridge , a Decentralized Practical Cross-chain Bridge between EOS and Ethereum, successfully demonstrating a token swap between Ethereum to EOS. • July 2019: Trust Wallet, the official Binance wallet, integrated Kyber as part of its decentralized token exchange service, allowing even more seamless in-wallet token swaps for thousands of users around the world. • May 2019: HTC, the large consumer electronics company with more than 20 years of innovation, integrated Kyber into its Zion Vault Wallet on EXODUS 1 , the first native web 3.0 blockchain phone, allowing users to easily swap between cryptocurrencies in a decentralized manner without leaving the wallet. • January 2019: Introduced the Automated Price Reserve (APR) , a capital efficient way for token teams and individuals to market make with low slippage. • January 2019: The popular Enjin Wallet, a default blockchain DApp on the Samsung S10 and S20 mobile phones, integrated Kyber to enable in-wallet token swaps. • October 2018: Kyber was a founding member of the WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) Initiative and DAO. • October 2018: Developed the KyberWidget for ERC20 token swaps on any website, with CoinGecko being the first major project to use it on their popular site.

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