NIX — Making bitcoin transactions ‘private’
Ratings at a glance [8 out of 10]
Team — 8/10
Project Vision — 10/10
Project Stage — 6/10
PS — Please look at the update mentioned at the end of the article
In this article, I would like to introduce you to NIX, a protocol play that is heavily undervalued at the moment
What is NIX? What is the NIX Platform? How do I get NIX?
NIX aims to empower elements to create ecosystems with specific use cases to power real world usage of blockchain. To achieve this, NIX will adopt multiple privacy mechanisms, scaling solutions, smart contracts integration, sidechain utilities, and ease of use towards the end consumer specifically in speed and environment.
Why is this important — Bitcoin, Ethereum and other top coins have proven their value over time. While the coinholders value privacy, they are not ready to trust other newer privacy coins. Nix will enable the users to transact privately with anyone using the Ghost protocol.
The first use case of NIX will be the NIX platform; which will be the first privacy-based decentralized exchange(DEX) manager. This system will solve privacy layers among DEX trading, creating a security layer for any protocol and tradeable asset through a multi-tiered trading structure. NIX will bridge communication between external DEX’s to create privacy elements among all and any compatible ecosystems.
The only way to get NIX until June 6 is by holding Zoin in the Zoin desktop wallet. The instructions for the same are available at https://nixplatform.io/information/airdrop-instructions/. If this sounds too complicated, please buy Nix from exchanges once it is listed 3–4 days after June 6 (likely to be a bigger exchange than Cryptopia).
Team [8/10]
NIX is backed by a team of experienced developers, cryptographers and advisors that combine advanced skills to make NIX the platform of the future. The team has worked together at Zoin and has made Zoin much better than what it was earlier. The NIX team keeps increasing in size and has some good talented individuals who are experts in their fields.
It is clear looking at the profiles that the team is strong on development of the core product. The team at this point, lacks strong expertise on marketing, creating partnerships, which is going to be a critical element to increase adoption in the future.
Project Vision [10/10]
NIX’s goal is to become the de-facto chain-to-chain, privacy-centric communication protocol, by establishing itself as a first of its kind DEX Manager.
There are 2 firsts that are visible in NIX’s vision —
- NIX will make the traditional bitcoin, ethereum and other coins private.
- Dex manager — will allow trading to be done with higher volume as volumes from multiple exchanges can be combined. This is first of its kind.
NIX will be a leader in its segment, the only DEX (Decentralized exchange) manager and the first protocol to make bitcoin (and other top coins) private.
The key elements of the project include
- The NIX Ghost Protocol — a custom privacy code which involves the Zerocoin Protocol along with the utilization of Stealth Addresses in order to make transactions untraceable with no trusted parties and with a higher level of anonymity,
- Bulletproofs — these conceal transaction value and shrink the size of the cryptographic proof adding scalability solutions
- Atomic Swaps and Privacy Smart Contract Architecture with the intention of performing decentralized operations from a node on any blockchain to another.
Project Stage [6/10]
Most projects take 6–12 months to develop whitepapers whereas Nix is ready for a mainnet launch on 6th June, which is about 4–5 months from the time the team starting working on it.
The team has partnered with BLOCK DX, which will be the very first DEX to be incorporated in the Nix Platform.
The project has achieved a lot within an extremely short timeframe, but needs to achieve a lot in the future to realize the full vision.
The next major milestone will be the iOS and Android wallets with Ghost protocol integration and then DEX manager. Here is the detailed roadmap.
Growth Potential
DEXes are the future of crypto trading with significant volume shifting to DEXes as they enable higher security of the individual’s crypto assets. Nix platform could gain a fair share of the DEX trading volume over a period of time, due to the fact that it enables privacy of traditional coins.
There will be strong demand for NIX to get higher ghost nodes. NIX Ghost Nodes will be created to help ensure dedicated network processing for Ghost Protocol transactions. Ghost nodes secure the network and require 40,000 NIX coins to run, thus creating a demand for these coins. The advantage is that ghost nodes are awarded 0.25% txn fees and partial block rewards of 28% per block. The use case is strong, especially as the network goes live and includes additional DEXes.
The returns on NIX in 1 year could be in the range of 8x — 40x from the current price of Zoin which is $1.40. This is based on the fact that Nix succeeds in bring several DEXes on to its platform. Currently Wanchain is the closest competitor which is likely to bring its platform to life in 2019 and has 400K USD marketcap, whereas Zoin’s marketcap is just a bit higher than 25K USD.
In the short run, with the mainnet launch, we could see a 2x-3x return in June as it will become easier for people to directly buy Nix on the exchange.
Risk Factors — The development of Nix is more than satisfactory given that it has only been 3–4 months. However, I have traditionally only included coins with fully developed product / alpha / beta. We are getting there with Nix, we have a mainnet launch on June 6 and the DEX manager will be ready in Q4 2018.
The opinions mentioned in this article are my views to get feedback from readers on my investment strategies. This article is not an invitation to invest and should NOT be construed as such. Cryptocurrencies and tokens are a very high risk asset class. If you intend to invest, please do your own research before further investing and invest only what you can afford to lose. The author is not a financial advisor and the assumptions and calculations used by the author could be incorrect. The author does not take any money, cash or crypto to promote the tokens / currencies, but may be invested in them.
P.S.
- After careful consideration, I have decided that team, project vision and project stage is all that matters to understand the fundamental strength of the project. Community and marketing are important to the success of any project — however, these can be developed / improved if the team is great, project has a grand and unique vision that is backed by development on the ground. Hence, I have simplified my rating to include only these 3 factors. Please consider these in light of growth potential and risk associated in the project.
- Holo and Docademic increased several times the recommended price. Hope some of you did your own research and invested at appropriate time. To avoid missing any future recommendations, please subscribe to my medium channel.
- Share your comments so that I know what you think about article. Also, let me know any coin you want me to review. Conditions : MCap < 40 mn, working product / prototype, heavily undervalued (according to you)
Update 24-Aug-18 —
Since token conversion, I observed the NIX team to be high handed and not highly professional in their approach.
- If there was a 20 day delay from the exchange, they should have allowed everyone 2 weeks time to claim the coins.
- The coin has just been launched and the dust is settling out of the fork when they decide to introduce some form of shared ghost node and delay the actual exchange, because this is more important
- They decide to create a secret club where every day people have to keep writing good posts. Is this a decentralized privacy coin, or a joke to ego boost the dev teams every evening, even if you have a day job.
- The last nail in the coffin was to decide to move to a Proof of Stake from Proof of Work because it is more secure. Why is it more secure? No details
I would say that the devs are good, but I am not sure overall about the project when other projects are moving ahead on development while NIX might just lag behind.
