Major project on Hydra - Crypto Card, Token and Platform
https://youtu.be/h8qx8U1WWn0
If you would prefer to see a video of this article, consider watching on youtube.
The team behind Hydra chain has been teasing for some time now that they could make a big announcement and just so this weekend, they dropped the news that a new project would be launched in the Hydra ecosystem. The project that has yet to be named - is going to be a mobile app-based platform for both staking and various DeFi capabillities as well as a HRC-20 token, which means the token will be on the Hydra blockchain. Perhaps most notably, it will also feature its own Crypto Visa card with EUR banking capabillities, where you will be able to access funds while they are working for you in the DeFi echosystem.
Now, that last part immediately made me suspicious. Not in the sense that I would suspect this project is illegitimate, or a scam as long time members from the Hydra develipment team will be involved, and the Hydra team has earned their stripes through consistently building a reliable blockchain infrastructure for the Hydra ecosystem.
No, because I for a fact that most Fin Tech startups, even well funded ones, don't have the slightest idea just how much work it will entail when issuing your own Visa card or MasterCard-card, as most of them believe its as simple as making a deal with respective card company and they will print one for you. But this relies on a missconception as the card companies wont handle many parts of ensuring the payment process has been implemented correctly through deals with vendors, legal obstacles etc. And the reason behind this not being a very simple process is because they are not intended for small businesses.
So for a company that is not only small but also a crypto company, which in itself is a legal mine field, you would figure they have bit off more than they can chew. But after bringing this up with the team behind the project, they assured me that they have members on board that have previous experience launching crypto cards and are familiar with the process. So I suppose anything is in order then. The idea is to have a prepaid card that you are able to buy crypto with simply - similar to Revolut. You will be able to pay your restaurant bill with crypto while the remainder is uninterrupted in staking for instance.
The app will allow you to purchase Hydra directly using fiat from your credit card. If you are familliar with how the process for purchasing Hydra is currently, you will need to purchase a crypto with low transfer fees, such as stellar from another platform such as binance, coinbase or crypto.com, and then send it to KuCoin. At KuCoin you then need to trade the crypto for USDT, that you then finally proceed to purchase Hydra with. A pretty extensive process. While the app will still perform these actions in the background for you, the idea is that it will manage everything with just one click for the user from EUR or USD to Hydra.
That alone is a major improvement for the Hydra ecosystem, and I believe its fundamental for the crypto to grow. Right now its quite unobtainable. so for the everyday user to be able to purchase Hydra easily will be a major improvement.
Beyond that the app will offer one-click delegated staking, one-click lending, and one-click liquidity pooling. A feature called leveraged staking will also be introduced, where users will be able to extend their already generous staking income from 55% APY to much more, (although supposedly with increased risk).
In general, I believe this will be beneficial for the Hydra echosystem despite it somewhat goes against the previous direction the Hydra chain has had in accomodating more general "real-world" businesses with crypto integration, such as the crypto-hotel provider LOC or the halal/kosher meat delivery service GoMeat.
Did a game BREAK the Polygon blockchain? Will Sundae Swap break Cardano?
https://youtu.be/Z8d7Jzpy3HQ
A Play-to-Earn NFT game on the Polygon blockchain recently made the gas fees explode by a factor of 16 causing an immense congestion on the blockchain. Can these scalabillity issues forshadow what will happen when Cardano's Sundae Swap goes live?
Polygon or Matic, as its also called, is a layer 2 solution originally created to solve issues of gas fees and scalabillity on the Ethereum blockchain claiming it can handle up to 65000 transactions per second.
Sunflower Farmers, as the NFT-Game is called, is among the most popular games on the Polygon blockchain. The farming simulator encourages the players to earn tokens by completing tasks but saw a sharp spike in transactions, reaching as much as 1.1 million transactions in one single day.
This of course led to massive congestions and spike in gas fees on the entire blockchain, and Sunflower Farmers is shut down ever since. The likely explanation to this spike in transactions is most likely due to massive amounts of bots attempting to farm for tokens.
While the shut down of Sunflower Farms has temporarily set things back to normal on Polygon, its cast some doubt to the claim of the blockchain being able to handle 65000 transactions per seconds. Some claim while those numbers are certainly feasible they would only work in a controlled enviroment but due to the variation in the types of transactions performed become restricted in practice due to block size limits.
Despite these bots congesting the network was certainly not normal on chain behavior, Polygon has nevertheless other layer 2 solution alternatives such as Polygon Hermez and Mir to adress these scalabillity issues.
Looking at Cardano they are certainly surging with optimism lately, even suprassing Solanas market cap.
Part of is people anticipating the launch of the Sundae Swap platform a decentralized exchange and trading protocol on the Cardano blockchain. However, a great deal of ADA holders are equally worried the launch of Sundae Swap is too soon and will cause massive congestion on the blockchain, directing lots of negative attention to the scaleing issues Cardano faces.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson seems completely unphased by the criticism, perhaps viewing whatever the outcome of the realease of the platform as a step forward for the Cardano network.
Regardless, there seems to be a lot of news for the Cardano blockchain this year, as going by the list #BuildingOnCardano 175 projects are being built on the blockchain to be released this year. Some people critizise Hoskinson, saying he should have waited with the launch until the Cardano layer 2 scaling solution Hydra is in place before launching the dex, something that is intended to make Cardano be able to handle up to an estimated million transactions per second according to simulations. But then again, that is still theoretical.
My own guess regarding this is that while there might be some congestion issues, I don't think it will be as bad as people suggest, considering Cardano has been clocked in at 257 transactions per second. And while that seems quite pathetic in comparison to the numbers mentioned in this article, one needs to keep in mind that Ethereum handles about as few as 30 transactions per second.
Is NVIDIA luring FLUX into a trap?
https://youtu.be/DoGVeZZZ4-4
Flux recently announced they became a premier partner with NVIDIA through their inception program.
Being selected along with 90 other startups, Flux was the only cryptocurrency project of the bunch. The inception program by NVIDIA is free and designed to help startups get a flying start by getting acces to NVIDIA staff expertise, access to the latest technology, contacts with potential investors as well as co-marketing support for increasing the companys visibillity.
Now if you're unfamiliar with Flux, it is a coin that has had a very good run last quater. Their objective is to create scalable decentralized cloud infrastructure for Web 3.0 If you look at their own pricing models, they seem to very advantageous in comparison to the big cloud providers such as AWS or Azure. However, the main reason companies tend to go with big tech cloud providers doesn't usually come down to price, more so that those cloud providers offer for instance various tools to analyze and store data.
Flux is a Proof-of-Work coin with its own operating system running on Linux. Node operators can choose three tires of hardware and Flux capital that has to be staked and with three levels of rewards beeing given accordingly. So despite being a very profitable coin to mine, for some GPUs even more profitable than Ethereum, they still share rewards 50/50.
This has partly to do with the node owners and miners being rewarded with not only Flux but also paralell assets currently. These parallel assets are intended to make the Flux governance coin to function on all DeFi protocols, including, Ethereum, Solana, Kadena, Binance Smart Chain, Tron, and in total 10 coins. These new parallel assets are airdropped to node stakers and miners alike.
What I consider perhaps most interesting regarding Flux is that they are developing something they call "Proof of Useful Work" to replace Proof of work for securing the Flux network. This will mean rather than solving randomized algorithms, Flux algorithms will solve real world problems. This would either entail supporting machine learning, AI, image rendering or scientific advancement simulations, such as the now already existing folding @ home software that allows computers all over the world to support protein simulations towards the same network.
Nvidia is as all of those of you miners (or gamers) know is the largest and market leading GPU manufacturer in the world, and have been so for quite some time.
Seeing them choosing Flux - A proof of work coin out of the only bunch for their inception program is quite weird, considering they have worked tooth and nail to shut down miners by introducing LHR cards. For those of you who aren't miners, LHR - Lite Hash Rate means GPUs with a feature that ruins the hashrate for miners. They argued that this feature will make cards unattractive to miners to the extent that they will become more readily available for gamers.
So what does it mean that they now have changed their course and decided to work with Flux - a cryptocurrency that no doubt relies on the technology they have deliberately worked to exclude from their customer base?
Some speculate that it simply means that Nvidia chose basically those that fit the mold and didn't care too much what companies participated. But would they deliberately provide support to a company that are no doubt going to continue to work against their efforts to block mining?
Others more cynically inclined might suspect that Nvidia are trying to drain Flux of their knowledge of how they run decentralized networks supported by GPU power, a technology that possibly could revolutionize the gaming industry. Or perhaps leverage what they learn about Flux mining support so they could block miners even more efficiently. While this whole thing sounds a bit far fetched, its not uncommon for these unfathomably large tech companies to swallow small startups whole and steal their ideas.
Those who are more optimistic regarding this deal say that Nvidia might even be interested in partnering with Flux in the future, realizing that they don't need to run their own decentralized cloud network if they could have Flux run it for them and perhaps find a way to work in symbiosis, each company gaining from the others strengths.
Regardless, the Flux team seems to consider this an extiting partnership, and perhaps it is just that: Two companies - one major and one startup - learning from each other.
Cardashift - New token ICO on Cardano
If you want to watch the video of this content, please check out the youtube channel below:
https://youtu.be/hgafQq9ba5k
There is a new ICO - Initial Coin Offering to be held for a token on the Cardano blockchain. The token is called Cardashift, and is intended to become a new launchpad for projects projects geared towards social and enviromental Sustainable Development goals.
Crypto launchpads, are platforms that allow projects on the same blockchain to raise capital while giving access to token sales for investors before they hit the market, hopefully at a lower price. The focus of Cardashifts launchpad is going to be directed towards sustainabillity and projects that align with both social and envorimental Sustainable Development Goals.
Cardashift have claimed that their reasons for choosing to go with Cardano as their blockchain was due to their alignment with them regarding sustainability goals. you might remember cardano mentioning their non-profit branch - the Cardano Foundations sustainability goals on the Cardano Summit where they mention their plans to dedicate over five hundred million USD to humanitarian projects. The Cardano foundation has also among other things partnered with Save the Children (not to be confused with the infamous influencer crypto scam Save the Kids) to set up the donation network ADApay .
This doesnt tell the whole story however, as they have listed three primary reasons for going with cardano in an article:
First Cardano has focused on Africa for their development such as their previous works with the Ethiopian government to create a digital identity for 5 million students. Cardashift believes africa can experience defi and digital technologies as a development booster in particular.
Second, Cardano is striving towards carbon neutrality. Cardashift I have explained that they believe it's important for cryptocurrencies to remove the image of being polluters in particular those working with sustainability. They point towards Bitcoins annual emissions being comparable to the carbon footprint of Nigeria. The Ouroboros protocol from Cardano solves this issue of electricity consumtion. Cardashift write that by comparison, while a single Bitcoin transaction uses as much as electricity as two refrigerators do for a year, a cardano transaction uses as much electricity as 5 hours of charging a laptop.
Their third reasons for choosing Cardano is due to its functional programming and deterministic nature. Meaning if you initiate a transaction on the blockchain, you will know ahead of time what is going to happen, what fees you will be subjected too and the nature of the transaction process. When dealing with impact investment with large scale transactions, its vital to know these things ahead of time according to Cardashift.
The projects presented on the launchpad will be selected based on three criterias:
The projects should have a tangible and positive impact
The project should be at a early stage
It should have a demonstrable high business potential
The projects will initally be funded according to an IDO model (Initial Dex Offering) that will later be expanded into other options. Such as liquidity pooling, staking, AirDrops etc. While the selection of projects will be done through a vote by staking method, the initial projects will be pre-selected.
Starting off however only IDO funding will be available. After projects have been screened, voted on and approved, investors will use their CLAP-tokens, which is the name of the Cardashift token, to invest to the projects of their liking.
As you can see in the picture, the investors can also use other cryptocurrencies to a 4% penalty fee that will be used to purchase back CLAP tokens, increasing the demand. Investors are rewarded with tokens of the prospective project they have invested in and are charged the same 4% whenever they swap their project tokens to CLAP tokens. At that stage the project tokens have hopefully appreciated in value since their projects launched, and the initial investors have recieved a return on their investment.
The fully dilluted market cap of CLAP is 1 billion and in the public sale will consist of 160 million tokens sold where you will recieve 30 CLAP for each ADA. Also there is a lockup period for the investors that have already participated in the private sale, as well as the investors, something I consider postivive. The big team behind the project (for some reason specified to be "Humans" on the website) are public, something that further adds to the credibility to the project.
Even if these factors greatly diminish the risk of this project being a scam, there is nothing that can garantee you that this or any project is successful, so as always, do your own research.
Cardashift discord: https://discord.gg/T98Sxq3H
Ravencoin halving soon! - How will it end?
https://youtu.be/ZZ6N2pFb5jo
Youtube video of this story https://youtu.be/ZZ6N2pFb5jo
Ravencoin is going to be split in half. And by that I mean they are scheduled to cut the block rewards of RVN from 5000 to 2500 now on January 11th 2022.
This is not coming as a suprise to anyone and has been long awaited, but it was originally thought to occur around the same time as ETH would go to proof of stake. Why is this important? We will look into this and much more in this video. But first, a quick rundown on what Ravencoin actually is.
Most people who know about Ravencoin are crypto miners. Ravencoin is derived from the bitcoin protocol but with a total supply of 21 billion as opposed to Bitcoins 21 million. The unique appeal of Ravencoin is how it enables users to mint their own tokens and NTFs very easily. It also has a ASIC resistant mining protocol since a hard fork that made them change their algorithm. The downside to this is that the mining itself consumes more electricity than for example your average Ethereum mining.
Lead developer Tron Black has claimed that this is primarily intended to make the mining more accessible to the average user as you can mine a decent amount of Ravencoin even with a really old and low memory GPU.
While the project even surpassed Ethereum in profitabillity at times, it was long speculated that Ravencoin would be the mining coin to take over the vast amounts of miners once Ethereum goes proof of stake. Ethereums recent price jumps and postponed ETH 2.0 implementation seems to have made the project somewhat loose steam.
The big question is, does Ravencoin stands out enough to keep up with its compeditors. The abillity to create tokens very easily by burning a set number of RVN is impressive and it also allows you to create a unique asset, set the supply limit, decide on whenever the asset should be reissuable or not and give the asset a unique name unlike on many other blockchains.
However, why are there no useful tokens created on the blockchain so far?
For a blockchain thats made it riddiculously easy to create your own asset tokens you would have thought there would be hundreds of interesting token projects on the blockchain.
Especially when you consider people setting up ravencoin nodes are not rewarded anything for supporting the network. So these people go out and purchase equipment for setting up nodes to support the ravencoin network and they recieve nothing in return, yet Ravencoin miners recieve plenty?
How is that reasonable?
Heres an idea: Just mint an asset token on the RVN network and find a mechanism to share it to node holders supporting the network. That way you could both prove the utillity of the RVN asset creation and support the node holders.
The idea of these assets is to use them as representing shares of a company, gift cards and similar. But when I looked to people close to me, I couldnt really find a reason why this would make sharing stock shares in their company through tokens would make their lives easier.
Quite the oppsite. If you are going to go the legal route, you would on many crypto hostile countries be in for a world of pain if you started handing out shares in crypto tokens, with no real benefits. If the opposite would be possible, to use tokens as a way for starting a decentralized company, there would be no way to enforce share dividends or similar simply by holding tokens as per agreement.
The halving of ravencoin will occur on January the 11th, meaning that the block reward will be reduced from 5000 RVN to 2500 RVN. Assuming the prices stay the same this will reduce the mining profits of Ravencoin by half. However, many assume that the halving of the block rewards will lead to a price jump, making holders and miners of RVN hopeful for the date.
And here is the thing: Despite Ravencoin showing little promise this autumn, it has recently seen a slow but steady price jump as we approach the halving. What we are seeing now is likely the FOMO building up ahead of time.
Will the halving mean a price hike - I do think so, I don't think its going to be something crazy like 1 dollar per RVN, perhaps in due time. But I do think the price will increase significantly. Its not impossible that there will be a short high spike where the price rushes and then long time holders dumping the price back down, but once it stabilizes again I do believe that the price is going to continue climbing until we see Ethereum 2.0
Hydra - 5 triggers for 2022
In his second labour, Hercules encountered the Hydra, a monster with multiple heads. To his despair, for every new head of the Hydra he chopped off, two new heads appeared, making his efforts to defeat the monster work against him. Only by burning the freshly decapitated wounds of the Hydra could he prevent its exponential growth and ultimately defeat the beast.'
In crypto, Hydra is a lightning fast blockchain and Proof of stake coin. Through the magic of compounding interest it can easily reach as much as 70-80% yield per year, growing new coins in rapid pace in the same way as the Learnian Hydra of the myth.
In the same way Hercules managed to contain the Hydra through fire, Hydra contains its inflation through a burn mechanism as a deflationary measure, enabling a burn of up to 100% of the transaction fees.
So why has Hydra just taken a dip recently?
We saw a price dump of Hydra post the last vote that affected Locktrip holders – not opening that can of worms in this video.
Here are some of the major triggers we will see for Hydra during 2022:
Before we start, the triggers don’t guarantee a price Hike for hydra, but they are sure to lead to more activity on the Hydra blockchain
With that out of the way, lets go:
1 - Number one, The end of the LOC – Hydra airdrop. When the Hydra blockchain was first built, it was funded by LOC token holders. These holders would then later be compensated through generous Hydra airdrops. It was later revealed that airdropped hydra had been sold by these LOC holders to purchase further LOC tokens, for them to get even more airdropped hydra. It was determined this was hurting the Hydra ecosystem and dumping the price. And you might understand that it was pretty discouraging for Hydra holders to see how the price of their coin tanked meanwhile LOC holders wrote things about how they bought their new lambos and houses with their airdrops. This has been blamed for Hydras price dip, and as one might imagine cancelling the airdrop also angered a lot of LOC holders. Their reasoning was of that “Am I a bad person for selling the profits of my investment?” By x date the last airdrop will be sent and no more Hydra Coins will be dumped on the chain, hopefully signaling the end of the price suppression.
2 – The bridge between Ethereum and Hydra will be completed enabling the inflow of capital from the massive Ethereum blockchain. The bridge will be created between the ETH and ERC-20 token browser wallet Metamask and the Hydra Extension Wallet. This will likely generate more transactions of Hydra burning more Hydra coins and seeing more influx of capital.
3 – The various tokens that are likely to enter the Hydra blockchain. We will see future action on the hydra blockchain when these tokens enter the Hydra ecosystem.
The GoMeat listing on various exchanges. Its currently unknown when this will occur but surely these listings will generate more transactions on the Hydra blockchain and thus also creating more coin burn and price fluctuations.
4 – The enabling of delegated staking. Currently, creating your own node rather than staking on KuCoin requires a small fortune to achieve desired results. Allowing users to delegate their staking will benefit the decentralization of the network, as well as the overall profitability, as having users move away from Kucoin will award them more staking rewards as well as reducing the risk of them selling their staking profits directly on the exchange.
5 – Blocktime reduction – This will reduce the time 128 seconds down to 32 seconds, in other words, cutting it down by a factor of four. This will in practical terms reduce the amount of luck needed for node holders, while it previously was recommended to hold 800 Hydra for a single node it will only require 200 Hydra.
Those are my top 5 triggers for Hydra in 2022. See the video below on youtube for the full content:
youtu.be/eBUKkYWKcMk https://youtu.be/eBUKkYWKcMk
Polygon partnering with NFL?
NFL recently anounced they would be willing to issue tickets to their sporting events as NFT:s through Polygon tokens. The idea behind this is that the tickets themselves would be used as commemorative items and only be issued for select games.
The reason Polygon hasn't gone to the moon yet over these amazing news could be because they also recently announced their one billion dollar zk strategic fund, something that is believed to be at leats partly by sale of Polygon tokens.
Also, initial investors of the polygon token were awarded airdrops, or vesting cliffs as it is called in their own terminology, where initial investors were awarded new Polygon tokens.
Considering the initial investors paid less than a cent for each Polygon token it is not unlikely they decided to take their winnings home due to the new airdrop.
*See the full story on the youtube link.*
https://youtu.be/pwJEVlQ_Ny8
Parasol Finance (PSOL) - Solanas new IDO platform token
Solana is among the fastest blockchains available currently ranking as the fifth largest in terms of market cap.
While Ethereum certainly has the upper hand when it comes to the number of tokens that exist on its blockchain, we are going to look at a new token on Solanas blockchain that is currently in its third and final ICO phase, (***initial coin offering*** phase) - Parasol Finance
Parasol Finance is the First Community governed IDO platform - IDO stands for ***Initial DEX Offering***. So basically it's a platform for launching new coins, tokens, new crypto projects, raising liquidity and for all kinds of crypto crowdfunding as in a decentralized manner.
What they mean about being Community governed is that holding the parasol tokens gives you the right to vote on projects which project should be initiated and which shouldn't be. The IDO platform is intended to limit the investment cap as well, making the launches more fair and as a way to reduce the risk of launches being hijacked by wale investors. So while we have had decentralized exchanges before, this is the first decentralized platform for launching new crypto projects that is completely community governed on Solana.
https://youtu.be/pj6wsP0_K88
*See the above video for more information regarding Parasol Finance. If you enjoyed this video feel free to subscribe.*
While I think this project sounds quite interesting the question is how this will be realized so there are a lot of coins that sound very good on paper and you never know until they have been realized. As with all new coins and tokens in the cryptosphere you should be approaching these kind of projects with a healthy dose of skepticism and caution.
GoMeat - The next big token on Hydra?
After completing the first ICO on the Hydra blockchain by raising roughly $1.5M in funding, GoMeat has entered the Hydra ecosystem like a bomb. Started from a business operating in the niche area of the handling and delivery of specialty meats (halal and kosher), GoMeat awaits being listed on every exchange from KuCoin to Coinbase. But where are they now?
In this video below I will go through what GoMeat business is about, how it fits into the Hydra Blockchain and why they have decided to use the GOMT token to support their existing business.
https://youtu.be/mBug6uSbmO4
*See the video on youtube for further explanation.*
5 ways to earn Free Crypto
Even while mining or buying are most often the easiest options, there is something uniquely satisfying about earning free crypto directly through your own hard work. Until we arrive at such a time where crypto jobs will be widely available, here are some options for how you can start earning today:
1. Noice.Cash - Earn BCH simply by posting short "tweets", (set your own payout!) NoiceCash https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbU9la09vWEdGa1BiUlNGWWlndncwUnhKVzFlQXxBQ3Jtc0tuZ0NBb0dhMWd6aEFsTHp6N3ZJbmlPb01EaV9IdHFDbElHYzJUOEhZa3RTLVZuRXhqUlg2d2QyNTRiTmZYRmlyM1JVcTlXQTVhcUFKQk9pTWVWNDQyOE1KMFBYN3F5V0hpWi0xam1fVjQ1cmlYOXJ6TQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fnoise.cash%2Fu%2FOnChainNoice
2. Torum Crypto Community, post to earn XMT (difficult to cash out) https://www.torum.com/signup?referral_code=keyboardwarrior
3. Publish0x: Earn by reading and writing articles *https://www.publish0x.com?a=jnegLk16aw*
4. FreeCash: Earn free crypto (Litecoin, Dogecoin, BTC and ETH) by completing boring surveys (get 100 coins for free from the link **FreeCash**) https://freecash.com/r/116860236620937752549
5. Odysee: Earn LBRY tokens by watching videos and creating your own videos: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@OffTheBlockChain:7
See the full explanation for every site in the video below (links in the description)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tflOAbf9Omw&t=918s&ab_channel=OffTheBlockChain
If you enjoyed this content and would like more, please consider subscribing to my youtube channel.
Has Ethereum screwed over their DeFi tokens?
Last year and earlier this year, there was a formiddable explosion of Decentralized Finance apps/coins/tokens/assets that were being developed on the Ethereum blockchain. While the market was booming for ETH (and still is) there seemed to be no better place to create your assets to spread awareness and perhaps also grant legitimacy to your new crypto that was offering a share of the DeFi market.
While this was all well and good, fuelling your DeFi staking by burning ethereum is theoretically a good idea, but with the current insane gas prices we are seeing, you would have to burn a small fortune just to put up any coin of questionable future value for those kind of activities.
This also goes for the mining procedure that require small time miners to pay a good fee of close to 8-10 USDs worth of ETH for a simple transaction, basically swallowing lots of the profit for small time hobby miners who might just have a casual set up with one card in a personal computer.
While some of the gas fee bloat is understandable due to the extremely high levels of traffick etherhash is getting, some of it is due to the last hard fork with rewarding the development team and burning some of the transaction costs. The intention of this is that it will set the stage for the later process in which this will occur at a higher level when ETH goes proof of stake in the ETH 2.0 hard fork this spring 2022 Q2.
These choices can certainly be rationalized, it is once again a reminder that ETH is going towards more centralization and favouring the wealthiest investors rather than attempting to pursue a decentralization of their Cryptocurrency. Just take a look at the requirement for running a ethereum node in the future of having 32 ETH. 32!!! That number is even in todays value a small fortune, close to 100 000 USD. Hardly something the casual crypto enthusiast can afford to put in, not to talk about mine before then.
As you can see, Im quite dissillusioned with the development of ETH, despite being grateful for everything it has done to drive mining and crypto into the public eye.
What are your thoughts?
Hydra - A unique cryptocurrency blockchain
Hydra is a open source Proof-of-Stake blockchain that has managed to solve the problem Ethereum, Cardano and many other coins are currently wrestling: How the inflationary and deflationary processes work. https://hydrachain.org/
Many businesses struggle to use crypto since they can't have fluctuating transaction fees making the transactions unreliable. Hydra solves this by having fixed fees in corresponding dollars. What changes however is the amount of the transaction fee of Hydra that is burned - up to **100%**.
While many coins experiment with deflationary measures, they can quickly become too unobtainable and fall into a deflationary spiral if they are burned too fast and become too rare. That is why Hydra uses a high inflation reward system with a currenct annual percentage return for stakers of **68.97 %.**
Does this sound a bit too good too be true? The reason this project actually has become successful is because it was created to support a business rather than as a purely speculative tool with business uses added on later. Locktrip is a travel agency that wanted to create a blockchain to support their crypto bookings. While their prices are able to be kept 20% below the market price on for example booking.com, they use a Hydra token they created, LOC which is burned with every transaction increasing the value of their token. https://locktrip.com/?refId=128398
So essentially, Locktrip managed to keep their customers happy with significantly lower prices while also making profit from using the Hydra chain. This is just the beginning of all of the wonderful projects that Hydra is going to develop in the near future, so make sure you follow up on this project.
My favorite place to aquire hydra currently is KuCoin as it allows you to "soft-stake" Hydra for a massive return even for as little as 1 Hydra. While its certainly more beneficial to host your own node, it is recommended you stake on KuCoin if you're not a big baller (600-1000 Hydra and up).
KuCoin also offers very generous competitions regularly for those staking 50 Hydra or more on their servers.
To finish this article up, its also important to not mistake this Hydra with Cardano's development of something with a similar name. While Cardano uses something they call hydra, its not a token and its not affilliated with Hydrachain.
Vietnam leading crypto adoption with 41% of population being owners!
Contrary to what many believe, crypto is not mostly a trend among hipster tech-bros in sillicon valley or stock obsessed bankers on Wall Street.
As a matter of fact, a recent study involving 27 countries has indicated the population of third world countries seem to dominate crypto adoption while countries such as the US and UK fall last on the list with a meager 9% and 8% respectively responded they owned cryptocurrencies. Conversely, Vietnam was pegged as the global leader in cryptocurrency adoption, with 20% of Vietnameese crypto enthusiasts owning Bitcoin, 7% owning Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum and Ripple making up 5% each.
According to the study, adoption of cryptocurrencies is seemingly dominated by countries in East-Asia, and other studies seem to indicate African countries also fall into the same category. One notable exception from the other western countries is Belgium with its 26% adoption, favouring primarly Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple.
The results of this study may indicate a difference in perspectives from emergent markets and western countries as it is viewed mainly as a speculation tool in western countries, while is looked upon more favourably as a way to achieve long term financial security in the global south. Partially, regulations employed by UK and US authorities are also likely to blame for this comparatively low level of adoption.
Many migrants also use cryptocurrencies to avoid inconvenient bank transfers when sending money to their relatives in other countries, something that crypto offers as an additional layer of convenience.
Personally I was a bit surprised at these numbers not to mention the fact that Indian crypto adoption is seemingly a lot higher than I anticipated. Germany is also a country that I've percieved as notoriously crypto-friendly with very lax regulation in terms of crypto, therefore its suprising to see only 11% of germans own cryptocurrencies.
If anything, I sure hope a coming bear market wont scare away too many of these new crypto entusiasts wherever they may reside.
What are your thoughts on crypto adopton? How will the trend change in the coming years and what will it mean for crypto? Let me know in the comments below!
Is Chia a SCAM?
I realize the title alone is quite provocative and perhaps gives the vibe of clickbait, but considering I've written very positive things about Chia previously I figured it wouldn't be right if I didn't share this new information that made me at least start to look at the project in a different light. https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/proof-of-space-an-alternative-to-mining-xyknvlk
I want to start off by saying that my suspicions regarding the Chia project has nothing to do with the method it is being mined - Proof of Space. For those of you who are uninitiated, instead of traditional GPU mining Chia uses HDD storage space where something called "plotting" is conducted. Having a larger number of completed plots allows you to have a greater possibility to get Chia coin. This was proposed as a sort of GPU mining killer as the extensive electricity use of Bitcoin has been under scrutiny for years.
While the enviromental impact on this has been debated as it doesn't consume as much electricity as GPU mining and was proposed as a "green" alternative mining, the number of HDD used pokes holes in that argument, as many try to speed up the time it takes to create plots by using a SSD drive for plotting and then storing the finished plots on HDD, something which eventually wears out the drives, no doubt impacting the enviroment through extensive wear and tear of storage devices, resulting in a greater consumption.
The innovation of Chia is however groundbreaking in that it has pushed the boundairies of what can be achieved through these kinds of blockchain technologies no doubt, but my critique on Chia involves its extensive pre-mine. While fairly launched cryptocurrencies are not always the norm as the development team need some incentives to work, Chias pre-mine was so extensive that ***86% of all Chia in existance were pre-mined one year into the existance of the coin***. This alone is unacceptable in my eyes as this extensive pre-mine is no way near possible to justify by saying the coin needs stabilization.
There will need to be a lot of amends the development team has to do in order to win back the trust of the Chia users after this, but hopefully they will consider burning the pre-mine since the price itself is not unstable by todays standards.
Further difficulties with Chia is that many are talking about how its "too late" to get into the project as the ones rewarded are the ones who already have plots rather than the ones starting plotting now as the difficulty has increased. This could be compared to how hopeless mining Bitcoin has become after all the huge ASIIC farms moved in and made the difficulty impossible for the average miner.
Other articles about things that are more direct scams:
Clipboard trojan scam https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/how-i-got-scammed-into-mining-ethereum-for-a-scammer-xryzmkl
Wallet verification scam https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/never-verify-your-crypto-wallet-xknerey
While I do believe Chia has a lot to answer for, I don't believe they are a scam on the same level as those mentioned in the articles.
Hopefully Chia will solve these issues in the future. If not, there is a fork (or perhaps more accurately described as a clone) called "Chives" https://www.chivescoin.org/
Chives is a sister project to the Ravencoin copy Hivecoin which I personally have a soft spot for due to liking Ravencoin and loving easily minable coins. https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/hivecoin-your-chance-to-get-in-very-early-xmmyvez
Do you think the Chia pre-mine is justifiable? Let me know in the comments below!
How to MINE Cardano (ADA)
Yes, you can actually mine Proof of Stake coins. But it requires you to pass through some loop holes.
I just recently discovered the most convenient way to mine Proof of Stake coins like Cardano: UnMineable https://unmineable.com/?ref=e94o-b220
As the name implies, the site allows you to mine coins that are normally not possible to mine. This is done by setting up your miner to mine on ehash, kawpow or any other available algorithm and get paid directly in your chosen non-minable cryptocurrency.
Right now you're probably thinking that this doesnt make any sense as you might as well mine the most profitable coin and swap it to whatever you what to swap it to instead. That is indeed possible, but in my case the most profitable thing to mine for my set up would be ethereum, and with the current astronomical gas fees its simply not possible to cash out early without paying your mining profits in gas fees. Add on top of that the swap fees you would have to pay from ETH and I would be left with almost nothing. Even beyond that, many exchanges dont allow you to swap or transfer small amounts of crypto.
Indeed the people behind Unmineable are taking a cut of the profits at the top, but if you use the referal link posted you will recieve a discount on their fees. And after mining now for a few days I can attest to the fact that they pay the correct amount and the transparency seems to be just as good as from other mining pools. https://unmineable.com/?ref=e94o-b220
Below you can see all of the available coins to mine at the time being:
And yes, some of you might notice that the list even includes some PoW coins. So you could theoretically mine on the ethereum algorithm but get paid in Ravencoin and similar.
All in all, I can recommend this site since it allows you to try out weird new coins you would never have throught of getting otherwise, or simply just mine your favourite Proof of Stake coin.
Happy mining everybody!
unMineable https://unmineable.com/?ref=e94o-b220
Pizza sold for 10000 HVN!
As announced on the Hivecoin Reddit, the first HVN to goods transaction was made in the form of a pizza for 10,000 HVN. The purchase became a running gag on the Hivecoin discord as many thought it might become similar to the infamous Bitcoin pizza purchase in the early days of BTC, where a pizza was sold for 10 000 bitcoin a number that would have been a vast fortune in todays pricing, but back then was hardly considered worth anything. https://www.reddit.com/r/HivecoinHVN/
While its easy to make fun of somebody in hindsight, the poor BTC pizza purchaser Laszlo Hanyecz considered it "free pizza" at the time, and is later regarded having said that he didnt find BTC valuable if it cant be used for transactions of goods or services like any other currency. One has to understand that Laszlo Hanyecz probably pioneered the acceptance of BTC by demonstrating its credibillity as an alternative currency to the masses.
While today, nobody belives in Bitcoin as a future currency but perhaps more likely as a form of "digital gold" -a store of value. Even ethereum which uses very fast technology in comparison to BTC is unlikely to serve as a currency in the future due to the still high transaction prices.
Similarly, the future of Hivecoin (a fork or copy of Ravencoin) is still uncertain. While the community around Hivecoin has certainly grown in a rapid pace much thanks to the profitable mining and standardized airdrop of 10 000 and later 5 000 HVN, in crypto the long distance runners are the ones who win the race.
Lets hope that pizza tasted very good in case Hivecoin turns out to be one of the marathon runners.
More about Hivecoin:
Hivecoin - Your chance to get in *very* early https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/hivecoin-your-chance-to-get-in-very-early-xmmyvez
Hivecoin Airdrop - Get 5000 HVN for Free! https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-bulletin/hivecoin-airdrop-get-5000-hvn-for-free-xmmjdoy
Follow the Hivecoin Reddit for everything related to Hivecoin (HVN) https://www.reddit.com/r/HivecoinHVN/
Hivecoin - Your chance to get in VERY early
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you got in really early mining Bitcoin, earning several thousands of BTC every day?
When you look at the most established coins like Ethereum and Bitcoin, you will notice that mining even one coin (or even a fraction of one) can literally take ages. Many within the mining community moved on to one of my personal favorites - *Ravencoin*, after the recent reduced profitabillity of Ethereum mining. No harm done, mining Ravencoin is fun and you can easily aquire some coin that way, but due to the new influx of miners, the difficulty has already gone up slightly, not to mention that there will be a having of the coin by the end of this year, literally cutting the coins mined in half.
While I will certainly hold on to my Ravencoin, I recently stumbled upon **Hivecoin (HVN)**, a coin that uses the same source code: The KawPoW algorithm. For those of you who don't know, the algorithm is ASIC resistant and also enables an easy way to create unique assets. The project was started around March 2021 so you have plenty of time to start amassing huge amounts of Hivecoin at very low effort.
**Since I know you are wondering:**
***- No, its not the digital network Hive (HIVE) or Hiveterminal (that uses the same abbreviation, HVN), its*** ***HIVECOIN (HVN)*** ***and nothing else.*** https://www.hivecoin.org/
**Mining**
Mining Hivecoin today is a blast. Its super fun to see how a single card in the NVIDIA 20-series will earn you at least a few hundred coins ***every hour.*** Not to mention the reward that comes with it. Your OC on your GPU should be similar to those that you use for Ravencoin, in other words - very low memory clock, higher core clock and low electricity settings.
**Fairly Mined**
Also similarly to Ravencoin, Hivecoin is fairly mined meaning nobody premined a bunch of coins to launch a pump-and-dump scheme as we've seen so many times before. A major difference between the coins is however that while Ravencoin is purely Proof-of-Work, Hivecoin uses a combination of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Service (PoSe).
You can read more regarding this in the Hivecoin whitepaper. https://www.hivecoin.org/whitepaper/
**Master Nodes**
What this means is that Hivecoin uses Master nodes, users who have 1,000,000 HVN that supervise the network and ensure the blockchain is not compromised. The profits from the mining is divided as 45% go to the miner themselves, 45% go to the master nodes ensuring the integrety of the network and 10% go towards the developing community.
**Asset Tokens**
Creating asset tokens can later be issued to represent whatever you would like them to be: Shares in a stock company, gift cards for a business, your own crypto token etc. While this possibillity certainly already exists in Ravencoin smoothly today (and in Ethereum as well, although not as smoothly implemented) it would take burning 5000 RVN to create such an asset. If you would merely want to try out this feature, a "test" would be quite expensive considering the Ravencoin price at the moment.
Thats just one of the reasons Hivecoin is such a wonderful opportunity, especially for Ravencoin and Ethereum enthusiasts. You can try out and see if this feature is useful to you and not having to spend basically anything at all since the creators will give quite generous airdrops if you join their discord. https://discord.com/invite/76Sxm5Wa4b
But even if you can't mine anything and just think this even sounds remotely interesting you should consider joining the discord as said earlier. The community is friendly and there are very generous airdrops being done at the moment. https://discord.com/invite/76Sxm5Wa4b
Get in early while you still can!
Wallets https://www.hivecoin.org/wallets/
Hivecoin Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/HivecoinHVN/
@Keyboardwarrior
