THE HOARD.

Dolapo Ololade
Sep 9, 2018 · 4 min read

Hoard is a design-driven blockchain-based fintech company that seeks to effectively improve decentralized financial services and the crypto-asset experience.

Crypto-assets should be available and usable by everyone, everywhere. Blockchain based innovation is fluorishing and classic financial services are being disrupted everyday. However, most crypto-assets apps, or their parent platforms, lack exceptional customer experiences.

The Hoard team conclude that crypto-technology should be smooth, continuous and economical. The team developed a platform and uphold mobile applications to simplify the complexities of crypto-assets. Hoard aim to tear down barriers of entry and minimize steep learning curves, so everyone everywhere can take part in this brave new world.

Complex cryptocurrency apps stifle consumer adoption.
* Blockchain incompatibility makes crypto-asset transactions complicated.
* Financial management through traditional banking is often slow and centralized,focusing on the processes rather than the customers and their experiences.

THE HOARD SOLUTION.

*Eliminate reliance on multiple applications to manage your crypto-assets. Buy. Trade.Sell. Track. Spend. Store. All in one integrated wallet.
* Provide a trusted and secure bridge between the fiat money and crypto-assets environments FINRA/MSB regulated and KYC/AML compliant.
* Deliver capabilities and an interface that are built for the professional investor, but designed for the novice. Simple, but sophisticated.
* Enable instant cross-chain transactions that address missed opportunities resulting from processing delays and lack of trust.
* Extend these blockchain-driven benefits to traditional financial services organizations to propel their digital transformation efforts and meet customer expectations.

The Smaug Network is an off-chain, 2nd layer solution for instant payments and micro-transactions, enabled by the OAR token.
With traditional crypto-assets exchanges, much of the activity is performed off-chain. For example, some exchanges offer free user-to-user transfers of the most popular crypto-assets. They accomplish this by having an internal ledger, backed by on-chain deposits, that record the balances of their users. These balances are not recorded on-chain until users decide with withdraw their assets outside of their networks.

This is very simple. Think of it just like a spreadsheet that updates and is accurate and is only a virtual asset while on the exchange, but the exchange must hold this asset to be able to create a virtual or liquid environment. Once the asset leaves the exchange fees and real blockchain transactions happen.

There is inherent risk in these types of transactions; the user who has been sent these funds intra-network does not have access to the private keys that store this balance (and in fact, neither does the user who sent this funds intra-network). In the case of an exchange becoming insolvent, there is little one can do to claim these funds.
The only safe way to exchange these funds is to make these transactions on-chain, commonly referred to as a withdrawal.

Withdrawals from traditional exchanges are plagued with issues: long confirmation times, complicated and user-unfriendly interfaces, high fees, and more. Exchanges utilizing the Smaug Network have a better proposition.
To begin, users who want to utilize the Smaug Network will first escrow an amount of OAR tokens greater than or equal to the amount of funds they would like to transact instantly across the network. These users deposit OAR tokens in a specialized smart contract, and these escrow operation is verified by the network of Hoard masternodes.

Once this has been accomplished, the user can begin trustlessly and instantly transacting funds using the Smaug Network for peer-to-peer transactions, exchange deposits, microtransactions, etc. This off-chain ledger is recorded in a database, similar to those used by traditional exchanges. However, with the Smaug Network, this database is distributed among the Hoard masternodes, adding decentralization and lowering insolvency risks. This off-chain transaction is backed by the escrowed OAR tokens to guarantee future settlement.

Hoard is creating a bridge between the old monetary systems and the newer blockchain-based economy. We’re delivering simplified experiences over complex technologies. We’re creating the most comprehensive digital assets ecosystem the world has ever seen. It’s a platform which is not exclusivity. Some elements of our ecosystem are centralized, like connecting to banks and converting fiat to digital currencies. Other elements are decentralized, like our blockchain protocol and cross-exchange pipeline (codename: Smaug). In between these two worlds lives the Hoard app. This application is your personal banking interface to the tokenized economy of currencies, assets, commodities, securities, and utilities in a single location.

The Hoard wallet is a single point of key management for all digital assets. It’s the foundation to being your own bank. Think of the Hoard wallet as your interface to blockchain and the new tokenized economy. It’s your private vault where you can hold, track, transfer, and transact any unit of digital value. The wallet is your new gateway to the digital economy with the necessary framework, security, support, and financial tools to transact with any person, place, or thing through blockchain technology.

Twitter:@TheDolapoO

Dolapo Ololade

Written by

Crypto and Blockchain Analyst . Email:t2ndey@gmail.com