A Quick Guide to LINK, DOCK, BAT, and QTUM
On the 24th of December, 2019, AAX added 12 new trading pairs to the platform. Investors can now trade LINK, DOCK, BAT, and QTUM, against Bitcoin, USDT, and Ether.
Before investing, it’s important to know the background of these particular crypto-assets. Let’s get you started.
What is LINK?
Link is a token that is part of ChainLink, a platform built to bridge the gap between blockchain-based smart contracts and real-world applications. Blockchain interoperability is incredibly important to drive the adoption of blockchain and bring the benefits of distributed ledger technology to more stakeholders.
Some blockchain projects are trying to achieve interoperability with sidechains, parent chains, and child chains. ChainLink uses so-called ‘Oracles’ which are used to verify real-world data prior to recording it in a smart contract on the blockchain.
ChainLink was developed by Sergey Nazarov, who previously founded a decentralized mailing service and an exchange network, and Steve Ellis, who has worked with Sergey before and supported Pivotal Labs as a software engineer.
There is a total supply of 1,000,000,000 LINK, of which 35% was sold in the first crowd sale, 35% has been allocated to incentivize node operators, and 30% is kept for further developing the ecosystem.
It is currently rated 18th on CoinMarketCap. It is valued at $1.86, with a market capitalization of $650 million. LINK reached its all-time high of $4.54 on June 29, 2019.
Since LINK is directly used to operate the ChainLink platform, the more people use ChainLink, the more likely it is that the value of LINK will appreciate.
Trade LINK now.
What is DOCK?
The DOCK token is part of the DOCK platform which aims to give users more control over their own digital credentials and data. Some have compared it to a decentralized version of LinkedIn.
Users can upload their certificates, degrees, professional history, and also decide on who has access to that data.
The way DOCK as a token fits into the ecosystem is as a payment token for applications that require data: if an application requests certain data, it will need to pay DOCK to receive this. All users need to do is make sure their data is up to date; they are not incentivized for their submission of data to the blockchain, precisely to prevent the platform from being flooded with false data.
DOCK was founded by Nick Macario, who comes from a background of web and mobile application marketing, and Elina Cadouri, who used to run Outsource.com as their CEO.
The DOCK token is currently ranked 459th on CoinMarketCap with a total supply of 1,000,000,000 DOCK. It is currently priced at $0.007190, with a market capitalization of $4 million. DOCK reached its all-time high of $0.243 on May 4, 2018.
Trade DOCK now.
What is BAT?
BAT stands for Basic Attention Token. It is the token used in the Brave ecosystem. Brave provides an internet browser that offers a high degree of privacy and restructures the way users interact with content and ads.
Advertisers need to pay publishers in BAT to have their ads viewed; users earn BAT when they view ads. Although the browser keeps data private, it does measure ‘attention’, rewarding publishers and users on the basis of how much of the latter’s attention is spent on a certain page or piece of content.
This way, publishers are incentivized to keep creating better content, advertisers get a better return on their investment, and users get a better experience and are rewarded for their attention.
Brave was founded by Brian Bondy, who is the lead developer and has worked with Khan Academy, Mozilla, and Evernote before, and Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Firefox.
BAT is currently ranked 31st on CoinMarketCap with a total supply of 1,500,000,000 BAT. It is priced at $0.1662, with a market cap of approximately $235 million. BAT’s all-time high of $0.98 was reached on January 9, 2018.
Trade BAT now.
What is QTUM
QTUM is pronounced as Quantum and is a blockchain project that was initially created as a fork of the Bitcoin core, in combination with Ethereum’s Virtual Machine. In other words, QTUM promises to bring the best of both worlds into one single environment.
As the first Proof-of-Stake blockchain, QTUM leverages Bitcoin’s technology for security purposes, and Ethereum for its dApp building capabilities. Additionally, QTUM comes with a native wallet, a smart contract management application, and oracles that enable off-chain data to be fed into the blockchain.
Only recently, in April 2019, QTUM introduced another solution, called Unita, to drive enterprise adoption. It provides a way for enterprise users to process millions of daily transactions, store private data on a permissioned ‘Unita chain’ and transfer data to the public network if needed.
QTUM was founded by Patrick Dai, an early adopter of blockchain technology and former employee at Alibaba.
QTUM is currently ranked 38th on CoinMarketCap. It is currently priced at $1.58 with a market cap of $152 million. Its all-time high of $99.87 was reached on January 7, 2018.
Trade QTUM now.
Originally published at https://academy.aax.com on December 27, 2019.
