The win.win project - End of stage 1 report
We have now completed stage 1 of the win.win project. In this article, we will share our progress and experiences in the early stages of the TWINS blockchain launch and also provide project updates.
The public TWINS network was launched on January 8 after being seeded by the win.win team, with the goal to grow into truly decentralized, independent and highly secure blockchain infrastructure. The win.win project will use this infrastructure to enable direct peer-to-peer value exchanges between user wallets as a self-sustainable and independent decentralized application.
Network birth and current status
It is anticipated that the win.win project will run on NEM’s Catapult technology, which is high performance and includes the required features such as decentralized atomic swaps. However, this technology is still in development and we therefore used PIVX technology for the initial phase of the TWINS network launch. PIVX was chosen due to its generic acceptance as standard in the Masternode eco-system, and its performance and features are satisfactory for the network initiation. The end-goal is to migrate to a Catapult-based network when this technology is ready for public use.
In addition, the selection of PIVX allowed us to leverage the existing knowledge within the Masternode community in providing support, writing documentation and setting up staking wallets and masternodes. The implementation of PIVX was not without its challenges as significant reverse engineering was required to fork the latest version of the code in order to launch our network using a pure PoS consensus mechanism. For example, it took us weeks to figure out why the network was progressing too fast and did not follow our configured block-time parameter. This problem was due to undocumented and informal hardcoded overrides inserted into the code by PIVX open-source contributors. As a side effect of this aberration, an excess amount of reward coins were generated by the network and we had to burn these coins when network stabilization was achieved. In general, the performance and stability of the TWINS network has met our expectations and requirements for this initial phase of the project. At the time of the writing, the TWINS network consists of 777 Masternodes and circulation supply of 975M TWINS.
Decentralization is a priority
The number of network participants has grown steadily since the launch of TWINS. However, we are not satisfied that true decentralization has occurred, as we suspect that there are no more than a few hundred independent participants. In addition, we suspect that too few participants hold large amounts of TWINS, further limiting the required decentralized nature of the PoS network. This issue was caused due to high ROI that benefited the initial participants allowing them to multiply their number of coins. We are not concerned about this current imbalance as the steady increase in participants combined with the lower ROI will result in the required decentralization over time.
However, we are concerned about the current concentration of the masternodes on specific hosting platforms, which may introduce redundancy issues on the TWINS network. Ideally, every participant should host their masternodes in an independent environment, and not share physical and network resources with other users. However, the complexity and resources required to run a masternode in a private environment are often beyond the capabilities of the average user, and hosted and shared masternode platforms have become favored in the industry. This is an important general issue that is encountered by all masternode-based networks and is not specific to TWINS. In an attempt to alleviate this problem, we are constantly seeking a wide range of secure and responsible providers to host TWINS masternodes, thus distributing the network and providing the required redundancy and decentralization.
TWINS coin listings and visibility
The idea of the win.win project is to eliminate the use of exchanges and provide direct transactions between users. However, we realize that this goal is still far off and, in the meantime, exchanges are essential components of the crypto-economy. The project has been listed on the Bitsane exchange to support the TWINS crypto-currency and facilitate trading between TWINS and BTC.
Other than being listed on numerous crypto and masternodes tracking websites and apps, TWINS has now been listed on CoinMarketCap.com - the major coin index for the crypto industry. The qualification for this listing required a number of stringent conditions, as CoinMarketCap have defined high standards of due diligence that must be met. We are proud that win.win was able to meet these conditions and achieve our listing.
One of the conditions for listing on CoinMarketCap was that the coin must be traded on a minimum of two approved exchanges. Therefore, TWINS was also listed on p2pb2b.io in order to meet this condition, and p2pb2b now facilitates approximately 25% of the TWINS trading volume.
TWINS network economics
The critical network parameters such as inflation, reward structure and ratio, block-time and masternode collateral were defined as the result of extensive research and consulting with blockchain experts. We are very pleased that these carefully selected parameters have resulted in the network operating according to our predictions and expectations, that include the goal of steady and organic network growth. In addition, our selection of a constant reward structure, which initially surprised many in the Masternode community, has proven to be prudent design decision and has since received strong positive approval.
One of our initial concerns was that some participants would take financial advantage of the early stage of the project with short-term profit strategies. However, we are pleased to report that the vast majority of our participants are indicating their long-term commitment to the project.
Legal aspects
We are at the very early stage of the crypto-economy, and we realize that the legal frameworks for true decentralized exchanges are not yet clear. Prior to commencing operation as an exchange service, the win.win team will ensure that the project is fully compliant with any regulations that are in place.
Before launching the TWINS cryptocurrency, we performed substantial research to ensure that we are not in violation of any securities and financial regulations that are currently applicable to the crypto industry. We are pleased to report that we have received an extensive legal opinion formed by consultation between our legal representatives and the relevant regulatory authorities in Lithuania, Europe (where New Capital is incorporated) confirming our compliance for this stage of the project.
Community-driven success
New Capital, the initiator of the project believes that the win.win project must be self-sustainable and completely independent of all parties (including the initiator) in order to accomplish full decentralization and achieve the end-goal of supporting true peer-to-peer value exchanges. As the win.win project team, we see our function as providing the right tools to build, grow and maintain this decentralized application by the community itself. The end-goal is to achieve full community control of the mature project with complete independence from the win.win team.
Therefore, the growth and success of the win.win project is wholly dependent on the involvement and contributions by the community, and we have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm shown by this community. In addition to general participation, we have noticed the development of a very strong core group of enthusiasts who are acting as evangelists for the project, providing support to others, inviting new participants (including their friends and families), creating and distributing content for the project, writing and translating documentation, developing services to support the project, researching the industry and making useful suggestions. Clearly, these participants have great faith in the goals of the project and are confident that our aims can be achieved. For the win.win team, these efforts have proven to us that the idea of a community-driven project is valid and practical.
Welcome to stage 2 - Our next steps
The main goals for stage 2 of this project are network growth and further decentralization, community growth, engagement and active participation, project visibility, communications and PR, TWINS coin acceptance and usability, development of strategic partnerships.
The community is the greatest asset for the win.win project, and one of the most important goals of stage 2 is to ensure that we have the tools, interfaces and procedures in place, that are required to maximize inter-community engagement and participation. We have realized that the rapid growth of this community together with the vast number of missions that need to be accomplished, demands a unique and custom-made project management system for autonomous, scalable and efficient coordination between community members. In mid March, the Source Force platform was initiated to fulfill this requirement, and over 200 community contributions have been already processed through the system. Given the importance of the platform, we will be assembling a dedicated development team to ensure that this software is given high priority and is developed in a timely manner. Source Force will not only manage and coordinate community-driven missions, but also track and display project progress in real-time, helping us to highlight the project visibility and provide communications to the wider audience. The Source Force platform will also attract new participants who will contribute their time and valuable knowledge to the project and will be rewarded with TWINS cryptocurrency. This is an effective method of promoting organic and enthusiastic community growth through active participation, and will serve to direct and focus our PR efforts with clear and measurable goals.
An essential component of peer-to-peer exchanges is the mobile wallet app. It is anticipated that in the future, third party providers of wallet apps will integrate the win.win solution to enable direct wallet-to-wallet value exchanges. However, in order to ensure the mass adoption of the win.win protocol it is important that we sign strategic partnerships with wallet developers who have significant market share, or that we actively support the development of a wallet application that has a potential for significant market penetration. These both options are valid and will be actively pursued during the stage 2 of the project. Specifically, regarding the development of a wallet app, we are in the initial stage of the implementation of an open-source, multi-currency, highly secure and friendly-to-use mobile wallet app, with the generic name of “wallet app”. This application is not only essential to our long-term strategy, but will also accelerate general acceptance and usability of TWINS, as it will provide practical day–to-day usage of our cryptocurrency.
In summary, we are very satisfied with the progress of the win.win project. The blockchain network is stable and continues to grow, the community participation is enthusiastic and extremely supportive, the network is generating value and incentivizing participants, and we have achieved valuable partnerships.
Stage 1 was an exciting journey with impressive results that we can all be proud of. We are highly energized, and are looking forward to more great accomplishments.
The win.win team
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