Want to get started straight away? The WaykiChain Developer Portal, which includes the participation rules, can be found here!

About WaykiChain
WaykiChain (WICC) is a third-generation blockchain that is based on the DPoS consensus algorithm and supports Turing-complete smart contracts. It is able to sustain transactional throughput of more than a thousand transactions per second.In the long run, WaykiChain (WICC) aims to provide a secure, reliable and highly-performant blockchain technology platform that powers multiple industries such as prediction markets, decentralized assets exchanges, and decentralized forex exchanges.

Developer Portal
On February 15, 2019, The WaykiChain English Developer Portal was officially opened for developers from all across the globe. The program is established to spur the growth of the WaykiChain’s public blockchain ecosystem. The activities center around 4 tasks. In total $50,000 worth of WICC tokens will be given away.

By using our API, you can learn about WaykiChain’s product development. You can also contribute to the documentation and share it with other developers. Read more

You can find abundant development resources and tools provided by WaykiChain to improve on the development efficiency. Read more

Invite your developer friends and associates to join the WaykiChain’s Developer Portal and win a bounty! Earn 66 WICC for every successful invite. Read more

Join WaykiChain Developer Incentive Program to co-build the WaykiChain ecosystem and get the bonus. Excellent work will be given the chance to be displayed in the WaykiChain community. Read more

The WaykiChain Developer Portal can be found here!

Incentive Task List

1. Developer Volunteer Recruitment: $50 — $500 per week;
2. Node Deployment: 20WICC per participant;
3. Smart Contract Development Tool: $600 — $6,500;
4. Creative DApp Development: $800 — $25,000.

More tasks will be released in the future!

Why choose WaykiChain for DApp development?

• Fast development and deployment through WaykiChain DApp PaaS;
• Increased user friendliness through the WaykiChain Hybrid Solution Architecture;
• Higher TPS compared to POW blockchains.

Follow WaykiChain’s official channels for the latest updates:

• Website
• Developer Telegram Group
• English Telegram Group
• Twitter

For inquiries please contact: Linda — marketing@waykichainhk.com

Technical Support @BlockchainWater18 on Telegram

Event Consultation @JessicaFang23 on Telegram

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +429,678 people.

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WaykiChain (WICC) Launches a Developer Program with $50,000 in rewards! was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Within the last decade the production of plastic has seen a massive increase. The plastic production within those last 10 years was equal to the production amount of the entire 20th century. Mass-consumption being cited as one of the main causes of the increase.

The production of plastic, in combination with plastic pollution, has a significant negative impact on the environment as it usually isn’t degradable and the production requires a lot of oil, gas and coal. Only a small percentage of plastics is recycled and recycled plastic is never used in high-quality products.

If we continue on this path, the environment will continue to be deteriorating at a rapid pace. The legacy we leave behind for future generations will be affected if we don’t take action now.

A solution to using earth damaging plastic as a means to package food, drinks, cosmetics and paint is by using metal instead. Metal is an environment friendly packaging material. Metal and glass are the only widely used packaging materials that have an unlimited lifespan and can be infinitely recycled. Metal has been used for years to package drinks, paint, conservatives, chemicals and other products.

While some first world countries like the US already have a metal can recycling industry (worth around 1 billion US dollars), many others do not.

According to a recent report, the global metal recycling industry is estimated to reach USD 434 billion by 2023. Which is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.04%. The Asia-Pacific region is currently dominating the metal recycling industry, because of its rapid economic growth, increase in population and policies and regulation that supports environmental protection and waste management.

There are still a lot of countries to inform about the environmental benefits of utilizing metal cans for recycling. Its time to bring worldwide awareness to using metal as a go-to packaging and recycling solution.

A project that can help raising awareness and making a difference is Metal Packaging Token (MPT). MPT is a unique global project to use blockchain technology to incentivize the recycling of metal cans and at the same time support the environment.

Metal Packaging Token

Metal Packaging Token (MPT), founded in 2018 by metal packaging professionals, proposes a blockchain-based solution to improve cost-effectiveness within the metal packaging industry, making it a competitor to plastic packaging.

MPT’s main goal is to reduce or eliminate the difference in costs between plastic and metal packaging, so that all goods suitable for metal packaging will be packaged in metal cans. Without increasing the recycling ability, achieving a somewhat equal price in both plastic and metal as packaging material is highly unlikely. By creating a cost-efficient supply-chain, prices for metal packaging can come down significantly. Optimizing a project’s supply-chain is a popular use-case for blockchain technology. The distributed ledger technology provides interesting data and creates long-term statistics on recycling. MPT intends to launch a metal can recycling operation that incentivizes people with their own cryptocurrency, called MPT.

EOS blockchain

To ensure the projects ability to scale the MPT team chose the EOS blockchain as their main chain, after careful consideration. MPT will adopt EOS’s Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm. EOS gives MPT the ability to implement smart contracts and initiate a governance system to prevent the project from centralization. EOS’s layer-2 sidechain solution enables MPT to have multiple sidechains to run parallel to its main chain. A sidechain is a separate blockchain that is attached to its parent blockchain, using a two-way peg. The advantage of deploying sidechains is that there can be multiple sidechains without them interfering with its mainchain. Each sidechain can be deployed with a different use-case. For MPT, this feature will be utilized for deploying sidechains based on specific geographical locations, as metal recycling prices tend to be different in various regions.

MPT target market

The first market that MPT plans to tap into will be the end consumers. For this specific market MPT will manufacture MPT Deposit Points and they will develop a mobile application for users. Participating consumers can recycle their metal cans at deposit points nearby and in return they will receive MPT tokens. Users do not need to acquire blockchain knowledge. They only need a mobile app, the location of a nearby MPT Deposit Point and their metal cans for recycling.

The MPT supply-chain consists of five layers. The fifth layer is the end consumer, which is the starting point of the project and the key layer that ultimately pays for the other layers to be addressed. The other layers are:

1. Steel producers
2. Can Makers
3. Can Fillers
4. Retail
5. End Consumers

During the process of laying out the project, MPT will collaborate with brand owners by handing out an MPT Charging Start-Up Package. Brand owners will receive their first batch of MPT tokens free of charge. They can get familiar with the process, like printing the MPT QR code on the cans. Brand owners are entitled to set their own incentives and the amount of cans they want to start with. Besides establishing partnerships with brand owners, MPT will also apply for government subsidies in different jurisdictions.

MPT token structure

A total of 1,800,000,000 MPT will be created on the EOS blockchain. 30% of the tokens will be used for partnerships, marketing and new hires, while 20% of the total MPT supply will be allocated to the team, with a 100% lock up period of one year, starting at the time of airdrop.
The other 50% of MPT will be divided between the airdrop cap (roughly 34%), the scrap purchase (20%) and the community sale (46%). An estimated amount of 414,000,000 MPT will be available for purchase in the community sale that will last for four weeks.

Exceptional transparency during Community Sale

During their community sale MetalPackagingToken is using the industries best practices for transparancy. One of these features is the unique buy-back-guarantee that is hardcoded into the Tokens Contract. Any community sale participant that, for a duration of 12 months, decides not to use or move its MPT tokens will have the ability to activate the guarantee and get back its buy-in in full. Transferring the tokens bought in the community sale to another wallet or exchange account will forfeit the right to sell back MetalPackagingToken. By offering this buy-back mechanism, MetalPackagingToken creates a unique protection mechanism for its community sale participants. It also means that MetalPackagingToken can only use community sale funds after investors have ‘unlocked’ their tokens by trading them on an exchange.

Furthermore, all unsold MPT, will be burned immediately after the completion of the community sale. More details on the community sale will be published on the official website by Q1 of 2019. The token price for the community sale will be determined at a later date.

MPT will be available on decentralized exchanges, like Bancor, Chaince and other decentralized EOS dApp exchanges, as well as other centralized exchanges.

Concluding remarks

If we want the next generation of people to be able to live in a decent world, we need to start caring more about the environment. By lowering the costs of metal packaging, increasing its recycling opportunities and incentivizing individual recyclers, MPT is on its way to make a positive change in preserving the legacy we want to leave behind for the next generations. By achieving global adoption, MPT would have a big potential to drastically reduce energy consumption and Co2 emission. With a team that is comprised of metal packaging industry professionals and a project that has an aligned interest with brand owners to make a difference in reducing the plastic contamination of our planet, MPT wants to create a behavioral change in people’s actions and raise more awareness to this ever-increasing issue.

For more information about Metal Packaging Token, visit their official website or check out their Telegram channel. More in-depth information can be found in the whitepaper. If reading this article, caught your interest and you want to contribute to the Metal Packaging Token project, then start raising awareness about MPT and perhaps even enquire how to start your own local MPT sidechain.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +418,678 people.

Subscribe to receive our top stories here.

MPT to Launch the World’s first Blockchain dApp for Metal Can Recycling was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A new cryptocurrency project on the block is Dusk Network which attempts to take the utility Ethereum and the privacy of Monero and combine them.

If one is familiar with Ethereum, then you would know about the phenomenon known as Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) that is taking place over the world. If you’ve had the unfortunate chance to be blasted with stories from people bragging about making over 10 times their money in a few weeks with cryptocurrencies in late 2017 at the kitchen table, it has most likely been through an ICO.

In fact, I myself first started seriously looking into ICOs when my cousin told me about one he entered called WABI, which eventually went from $0.24 (public rate) to peak at $5.39, netting a 22 times return over the course of a month. Of course, that peak did not last, highlighting the risk in this domain.

The concept itself comes from the ‘normal’ Initial Public Offerings (IPO) that is done by private companies, selling off shares or parts of a company off to the public in order to raise funds to grow the business. ICOs are similar in the way that the company sells off a portion of the total amount of coins they will create, that would eventually be used in return for the company’s services provided in the future.

An easy example would be to think about an airline company setting up 1,000,000 loyalty frequent flyer points and selling 500,000 of that to the public. By using blockchain and setting up the points this way, reassures the customers that there is in fact a limit to the number of points and more cannot be created out of thin air and diluting the worth of the points you currently hold (inflation), similar to one of the problems that Bitcoin was created to solve with money.

However, there are a key number of differences between ICOs and IPOs.

What are the differences between IPOs and ICOs?

Those services do not necessarily exist yet.

Because many of these companies are start ups raising money for their project, it is unlikely that the services that they are offering will be available until years to come, if at all. These tokens are basically an IOU you can resell, and only useful if the company succeeds.

You do not own any part of the company or its assets.

For IPOs you are essentially buying a portion of the company which could include its assets and profits. You also have a say in how the company is run, even if your say is small, as that power is divided between the number of shares. This is not the case for an ICO. You are not entitled to their earnings nor do they necessarily have to listen to your opinions on how they should run their business. If they do end up going bankrupt, you are not entitled to any claim.

Information does not need to be disclosed.

A private company forfeits many benefits once going public. They are now forced to disclose financial reports and must have a board of directors. They have to report to governing bodies relevant to the country they are based in, for example the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. As a company that has completed an ICO, they have no need to do such things (for the moment anyway), as they are still private companies.

So why would anyone invest in ICOs?

Despite all these risks and clear disadvantages, ICOs exploded in popularity in 2017, with some projects even raising billions singlehandedly. So what are the advantages that attract so many people into investing in ICOs?

The answer is profit and liquidity.

All investors are driven to high returns on investments and the ability to cash in these coins and tokens with relative ease makes it very attractive. The quick access to the newly minted coins meant that investors could quickly flip for profit, multiplying their capital in a short amount of time. I mean who doesn’t like to make money quickly with good cash flow?

Due to the demand of ICOs, Ethereum, the main platform for ICOs, had quickly jumped from $7 at the start of 2017 to quickly peak at $1,432 in January 2018. That is a return of 200 times in the span of one year. During the peak of ICO activity, I recall hearing people complaining that multiplying their money by 3–5 every few weeks was no longer enough anymore. That’s how much the expectations had risen and why all that had to change.

Why is everything changing?

Along with the surging popularity in ICOs, fraud and quick get rich schemes quickly became rife throughout the space. Get rich quick schemes to prey on those who wish to get rich quick. Projects were promising great returns without a solid business plan or anything more to show than a whitepaper (a report that is supposed to present a problem and detail a solution). Some lacking even that. This quickly attracted the attention of regulators, bringing with them stricter requirements, enforced upon new and existing projects alike.

Enter Security Token Offerings (STO)

While ICOs sell coins or utility tokens, things that can be potentially of no worth, security tokens are backed by company assets like shares, earnings, voting power or something else of value. This brings it much closer in alignment to other pre-existing investment offerings. Assuming that the regulations that will be put in place are similar to the ones IPOs face, Ethereum will not be able to fulfill those conditions.

Why can’t Ethereum host STOs?

In many major countries, the practice of insider trading is illegal. This basically means that for people with knowledge regarding a publically traded company that the public doesn’t know, they aren’t allow to trade stock or securities based on that information. This includes a competitor’s stocks or securities. These people will usually be directors, significant shareholders, and in the case of start ups, includes all employees.

Due to the public nature of Ethereum and other common ICO funding platforms such as NEO and ICON, all investment transactions are visible to everyone. One may argue that because the transactions are publically available, it would not constitute as insider trading as that information is public. However, consider the scenario where a prominent investment fund can manipulate the market using this public information to broadcast the fact that they’re heavily investing in a certain project. Due to the influence of their name, the price will go up, a form of market manipulation.

A lack of identity verification. Some countries are forbidden in taking part in ICOs due to legal issues. Currently the only solution is to vet these people outside of the blockchain via a third party website or service. However, this does not mean that it is necessarily that person participating in the ICO once verified.

Enter Dusk Network

Dusk Network, again, is internet money just like Bitcoin. Unlike However it will eventually feature smart contracts, the same ones Ethereum has which allows a developer to code special programs and put it on the blockchain, and more importantly host ICOs (or in this case, STOs).

What are smart contracts and what do they do?

If you already know what smart contracts are, feel free to skip this section, but for the benefit of others who don’t, I will give a quick introduction. A contract basically exists to make sure two or more parties fulfil its conditions. For example, you might have a contract between you and the company you work for, they have to pay you x amount for your services to them. It removes the necessity of trust, which might not exist between people performing a transaction especially if they do not know each other, as it is enforceable by law and breaking it has consequences.

A smart contract is a similar concept, however, instead of being written and drafted by lawyers, it is written by programmers, and instead of being executed by the court of law, it is executed by the blockchain and everyone running it.

Like real contracts, a smart contract’s use can be very versatile, and is only limited by what the programmer knows how to write. For example, I’ve always been paranoid of purchasing something off the internet. I’m sure many have had the same fear with their first purchase, ‘What if it never arrives?’, ‘What if it comes broken?’, ‘What if it’s the wrong thing?’. Thoughts that echo mine are the reason we have third party mediators like PayPal that will refund you when something goes wrong. But what if we had smart contracts?

By sending your payment into the smart contract, it would belocked until the conditions for its release is met. In this case, perhaps thetracking status on your parcel being changed from ‘in transit’ to ‘deliveredand signed’, and if not met within a certain number of days, will refund thepayment back to you. Because this is all executed automatically by a program,especially by one with code that’s visible to the public and cannot be changednor taken down (all features of the blockchain), there is little reliance onthe mood of the Paypal customer representative that is supposed to take yourside.

This is only one example of the use case of smart contracts and there are many more, as evidenced by the many projects Ethereum and blockchain technology has given birth to. Already there are projects to use smart contracts to handle loans, selling and buying processes, rentals, game content and of course, its biggest use case currently, raising funds. I must iterate this again, for this is only the beginning of things, and the possibilities are really only bound by our imagination.

Right, then how is Dusk Network any different from Ethereum?

Dusk Network is privacy orientated

Privacy on the blockchain isn’t anything new. In fact, there is already Monero, which is basically the private version of Bitcoin. However, Monero (and Bitcoin for that matter) currently lacks the functionality of smart contracts. And that is where Dusk Network attempts to combine both.

Fungibility

This may be an obvious question but why do we need privacy? Leaving aside your depraved hobbies or need to spend on things that should really never see the light of day, currencies need to be fungible. No, we’re not talking about fungus or those things you’re buying. Being fungible means that any individual unit of goods or commodity needs to be worth the same as any other. In other words, the dollar I’m holding needs to be equivalent in value to the dollar you’re holding or any other dollar out there (of the same type).

Now, if you’re anything like me, casually scrunching up notes and shoving it into my pocket, only for it to later emerge weeks later like a used piece of tissue, fungibility is a life saver otherwise I’d be living on the street by now. In fact, thanks to this rule, you can exchange your torn up notes for a new one, even if there’s less than 50% of it left. And no, you can’t rip it in half and replace them for two full new ones or stick bits from separate notes together and trade it in (I know, I’m disappointed my genius strategy didn’t work too).

But cryptocurrencies are digital, so how can they be possibly worth less than another? Due to the fact that the full history of Bitcoin and other non-private cryptocurrencies are up for display to everyone, eventually, because of questionable hobbies and crime, those things are going to be traced back to the coin. Now, some organisations or individuals (think politicians), do not want to be connected to such things, and because of that, the value of those coins would be worth less to people.

Now this is an issue because the purpose of money is to make trades easier and with an imbalance of value, it only makes things harder. Real paper money has this benefit where you have no idea whose shirt it has been down or what goods it has been used to pay for as there is no track of its history. This is where privacy on the blockchain is necessary.

How do privacy coins stay private?

If the whole point of the ledger is so that people can’t just duplicate coins how can any of it stay private? And if it is private, how do people validate or audit it anymore?

There are a few things needed to make this happen.

Stealth Addresses

One time random addresses created for every transaction. Think of using a different forwarding address every time you receive mail. All incoming payments are still sent to your address, but no one except you can see how much mail you are getting and from where. The payments are not linked back to public address or transaction addresses, hence the stealth part of the name. Of course, if this happens how do you see your own transactions or have someone audit it? The solution to this is to have three different keys.

When creating a wallet, you will receive a public key as normal but instead of just one private key, you will have both a private view key and a private spend key. Individually the keys can be used to do as the names suggest and combined the two private keys will lead to your address. The private view key can be used as a read only address for accounting and auditing purposes.

Ring Signature Confidential Transactions (RingCT)

When you conduct a transaction on Bitcoin and other public blockchains only the one transaction is made so that it is easily verifiable. However, this also makes it easily traceable as it leaves a permanent paper trail on the blockchain. With privacy coins such as Monero, Ring Signatures are a way to create decoy transactions known as outputs, which are made using the sender’s account keys and decoy keys taken from the blockchain.

Sending transactions become like a group exercise, with the number of participating decoy addresses being called a ring signature size. These addresses are bunched together, with someone signing off the transaction for everyone else like a joint account. When combined with stealth addresses disabling transaction history tracking, it becomes very hard to see where the transaction is going and who is really sending it, giving all addresses involved plausible deniability. Much like when the teacher asks who threw the spitball but none of you say anything… and your classmates are constantly changing into other people.

Going one step further are Ring Signature Confidential Transactions, which also hide the amount being sent and the destination. How this works can be demonstrated with a bit of maths. It’s probably been a while since we’ve touched algebra so let’s keep it simple. If I had 100 DUSK and wanted to send you 50 DUSK, my transaction would be as follows:

Input: 100 DUSK
Output 1: 50 DUSK to you
Output 2: 50 DUSK to me as change

However, all people outside of you and I would only see something like:
Input: 10x
Output 1: 5x
Output 2: 5x

Obviously, the transactions are more complex than that and thus even harder to determine what the amounts are. However, the downside of using such decoy transactions is that the blockchain gets much larger quickly over time. Roughly an 8 fold size increase compared to Bitcoin.

Eventually, Dusk Network will be moving onto Bulletproofs, a type of zero-knowledge proofs (a way of determining something is true, without having any knowledge of it), which will reduce the size further by making sure the information stored within the transaction doesn’t contain any unnecessary information like the decoy transactions. This makes transactions much smaller and faster, something of which Monero has recently implemented, reducing fees on their network by over 95%.

All these features are what currently exist in other cryptocurrencies. So what new features does Dusk Network bring to the table?

The Anonymous Network Layer

When data gets sent all around the internet, it follows a set of rules and instructions known as the protocol and to make sure that the data you’re sending around doesn’t get leaked to people that it isn’t intended for, encryption is necessary.

Centuries ago, when messages during war were delivered by hand, many of these were intercepted by enemy soldiers and had plans and tactics leaked. As a result, encryption standards improved gained wider use. You may be familiar with Caesar’s cipher, one of the earliest forms of encryption, where letters of your message are replaced by letters fixed by a number further down the alphabet.

For example:
DUSK NETWORK

with a 2 letter shift becomes:
BSQI LCRUMPI

This was fairly easy to crack by hand, and so with the introduction of computers, much harder algorithms were created and so the job of deciphering them quickly became no longer possible for humans.

However, while we have a number of protocols that are capable of encryption, they generally do not put much consideration into the user’s privacy. In most cases, your IP address, an online identifier for your computer, will be revealed. And while in most cases, the only information that can be extracted is your general location, in certain situations, your personal information can be extracted from your Internet Service Provider. As a solution, Dusk Network has proposed the Anonymous Network Layer in order to enable full anonymity over its network.

Garlic Routing: Making sure it can’t be traced back

You may have heard of The Onion Router (Tor), where one can browse the Internet anonymously. The Tor network is a network of servers that would hide your identity by moving your requests through themselves like a giant pinball machine. Anyone who tries to trace it will only see the traffic coming from one of those nodes. Think of your request as a box with something inside. This box is then wrapped many times with gift-wrapping paper (much like an onion) and passed on to someone. The person then unwraps a layer, which reveals a card telling you which person to pass it onto. Eventually when the layers run out, it will reach the true person it is intended for, who can find out what it is inside.

By making use of the Invisible Internet Project (I2P), a free open source project released over 15 years ago updated and maintained by volunteers, Dusk Network extends off onion routing into garlic routing by bunching messages together into one box (like garlic cloves), making it harder to track the messages’ origins and increasing data transfer speeds. Those messages, each with their own delivery instructions, are only revealed at the end.

One limitation with I2P however, is that it is unidirectional (the data goes in one direction) which suits some use cases like streaming or sending messages, but unsuited for when data needs to go in both directions at the same time in cases such as audio or video calls. This is where Dusk Network deviates and implements bi-directional routing which enables that functionality.

On top of that, it is able to offer anonymous file downloads and communications, including audio and video streaming using the same method. This works by connecting to a Voucher Seeder, node that lists all the active Dusk Network nodes, connecting to one and sending the data forward.

Hold on, if this data is being passed around the nodes, wouldn’t they have a copy of that information? And how would it keep communications secure if anyone with a node can just tap into it?

Secure Tunnel Switching: Keeping communications secure

When making an audio or video call, a communication line is opened up to the person you wish to contact via a number of nodes on the network. When the amount of time you have been communicated exceeds a certain amount, a new communication line is opened up and both are kept open until they are both in sync, a process known as bitmatching, at which point the old line is closed. This process is repeated as the communications continue. Not so different from having access to many different mobile phones and numbers and switching between them all throughout your call. In this manner, privacy is increased with no nodes holding more than a certain amount of encrypted communications nor will it be vulnerable to targeted attacks on the network.

Segregated Byzantine Agreement: What’s wrong with Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS)?

Where Bitcoin uses Proof of Work to secure the blockchain, we know by now that it is extremely power inefficient. Now this is done on purpose in order to make attacks on the network extremely expensive, thus making the network safer. However, this is not cost effective and it is damaging to the environment and so it could be expected that regulations could come in to curb it. As such, some currencies moved on to use Proof of Stake. Now, Proof of Stake is a different type of method for consensus, selecting the nodes that will determine what will be the next block on the chain using different sets of criteria such as the age of the coins being held or the amount of coins held by a wallet. Of course, as you can imagine, this serves only to make the rich richer as they gain more control of the network and as such, defeats the purpose of decentralisation.

So how do you proceed? Dusk Network has proposed a new method dubbed Segregated Byzantine Agreement. Sounds like a mouthful doesn’t it? What does it even mean? The name comes from the Byzantine General’s Problem, an agreement problem, where a group of generals commanding a part of the Byzantine army (Eastern Roman army) surround a city. Each general has the option of attacking or retreating, but it is important that the generals agree on one choice or else only part of the army will attack and suffer heavy defeat.

Now, normally this would be a simple problem to solve. If there were an odd number of generals, they need only submit their votes to each other and tally up the choices. However, complicating the problem is the fact that some generals are traitors that will purposely mislead the army. Because the generals are separated and thus need to be contacted individually, a traitorous general could send an ‘attack’ vote to half of the generals and a ‘retreat’ vote to the other half of the generals leading half to attack and the other half to retreat.

If not complicated enough, no general is going to send the message himself (what would be the point of being a general otherwise?), and thus we must factor in the chance that the messengers sent to each general could have a chance of being traitorous as well.

So what was originally proposed as a solution was the introduction of lieutenants rather than all generals. These lieutenants, if loyal, would always follow the command of the general. Immediately, some of the issues with what orders to follow have reduced. With 3 generals, if one is traitor, two armies will receive incorrect orders. However with 1 general and 2 lieutenants, if the lieutenant is the traitor, only 1 of the armies will have incorrect orders. However, what if it so happens that the general is the traitor? Then we still have a problem and we will continue to have that problem while more than 1/3 of generals are traitors.

In Dusk Network, generals take on the role provisioners and lieutenants take on the role of nodes. Nodes wishing to be provisioners have to commit and lock a minimum amount of resources in the system known as DUSK like in Proof of Stake systems in order to command more authority in the network. If selected from the pool to be part of the committee, they are then in charge of helping verify the block (Validation), selecting the next block (Voting) and deterring fraud (Notarisation). In return, they are provided with a steady return of DUSK as income for helping out.

On the other hand, regular nodes only handle the transactions and compete to generate the next block. As this is not Proof of Work, the computational power required is minimal and so even phones can act as such. On generating the next block, that node is rewarded with a sum of DUSK.

The process

1. Normal nodes attempting to generate a block lock in a certain amount of DUSK for a certain amount of time by sending it to a stealth address
2. They are returned a priority score determined by reputation and a pseudo random process
3. The committee are selected from a pool of nodes that have reached the minimum staking requirements to be provisioners
4. The node with the highest priority score proposes the block
5. Validation of the block is done by the nodes that voted in the previous winning block
6. Voting is done by the current round of provisioners, if consensus is not reached, an empty block is added
7. Notarisation is done by the nodes that voted in the previous winning block
8. Node generating the winning block and all provisioners (not limited to committee) are rewarded with DUSK

As you may have noticed, due to step 6 adding an empty block if consensus is not reached, a fork will never occur.

How does this solve the problem of the rich getting richer?

Interestingly, while the greater amount of DUSK you stake increases your chance of being selected to becoming a provisioner, it also reduces the amount of return you receive in such a manner that even if you were to split your stakes to aim to create several provisioners, it would not outweigh the chance reduction in being selected. As such, this promotes decentralisation of stakes and DUSK.

Real world use case

At the moment, it has been confirmed that a real estate fund in Malta has been in the works to tokenise their security and organise an STO with DUSK Network. In a simple scenario, if this real estate fund owns 100 properties and organises an STO with the properties as backing and sells 500 out of 1000 tokens, if you purchase 100, you will technically own 10% of the fund and the properties. This includes any returns via rent or capital growth that the properties are responsible for. Through STOs like this, means that a cheap and effective way into property investment or similar is available if you did not have the money to full invest in one alone.

What about Identity Verification or KYC (Know Your Customer)?

In order to meet regulations and legal requirements for ownership transfer of securities, identity verification is needed (otherwise how can you prove you own a particular asset later?). In these cases, the Dusk protocol allows for a Confidential Security Token Standard that allows third parties to issue security tokens that can only be transferred to an address with the identity verification data passing regulatory requirements.

The development team

The team responsible for the development is split into three components.

Dusk Core

This is made of an internal team gathered by Dusk Network and are responsible for the core elements of the network, such as the Segregated Byzantine Agreement consensus mechanism and the Secure Tunnel Switching system. Led by;

Emanuele Francioni

Project and Tech Lead

Dmitry Khovratovich

Lead Cryptographer

Matteo Ferretti

Lead VM Architect

Dusk R&D

As suggested, this team is responsible for researching and development of improved methodologies and balancing of the ecosystem such as rewards output and reputation system. This will directly provide the necessary information to the other two development branches.

Fulvio Venturelli

Lead Researcher

Toghrul Maharramov

Senior Researcher

Dawn Public Development

Rather than employing purely internal development, having community developers ensure that fresh ideas are always in abundance and are not bound by the constraints of the team. Dawn developers are compensated as is appropriate by the foundation after the code has been reviewed and approved. This branch will focus on user experience, localisation, wallets and block explorers.

The business team

Business Development Team

Expanding business influence, acquiring potential partnerships and developing relations is all part of the work left to this team. Without anyone to use the infrastructure that you have built, it would be kind of pointless wouldn’t it? The team is composed of the marketing team, advisors and partners.

Jelle Pol

Business & Product Dev

Jeske Eenink

PR & Communication

Pascal Putman

Business & Project Manager

Mels Dees

Partnerships & Business Dev

Tokenised Securities Consortium

In order to launch STOs, a major use case for the Dusk Network as ICOs were to Ethereum, a group well experienced in the domain of IPOs and their requirements are required.

Advisors

No team is complete without a team of advisors to fill in the gaps where needed, usually with the wealth of experience in their respective industries.

James Roy Poulter

The Reserve

Aylon Morley

Wentworth Hall Family Office

Gary Quin

Credit Suisse

Richard Sanders

CipherBlade

Marcel Roelants

BitPay

Nicolas Cimon

Cross Border Consulting

Want to read more of these stories? Check out my website and subscribe for the newsletter; https://butwhybitcoin.com/

Dusk Network Explained was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After the ICO boom of this past year and the lengthy bear market we are currently in we have seen many projects flounder and lose value drastically as speculation is no longer enough to keep prices up. As we wait for the next catalyst and signs of a reversal to bull market conditions, it is a perfect time to re-evaluate your investments and consider what will be poised to gain the most in the coming months.

Many people are expecting an ETF or regulated exchange such as Bakkt to be the push the market needs to turn around, but what will that look like for smaller projects? If new money comes into the market where will it go and what projects are worth looking into? In my opinion adoption is the most important factor to be on the lookout for. There’s no better place to look than in an already emerging market sector that has recently exploded and continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Sharing Economy

In the past decade we have seen companies like Uber and AirBnB grow substantially in user base and disrupt their traditional markets. Over 1 in 4 adults in the United States used some form of sharing economy service in 2017, with that number expected to continually grow. In fact, it is expected to continue its upward trajectory with an increase in market size from $15 Billion in 2014 to $335 Billion by 2025. Part of the reason for this is the abundance of smartphones and the fact that technology has progressed to the point that this is a viable and successful option.

If you look at the demographics, the user base is made up of a younger crowd, with millennials being the primary userbase. This younger generation is more willing to embrace the ideals behind a sharing economy and are technologically savvy enough to take full advantage. They value experiences as opposed to ownership and are more trusting of others than older generations, making them ideal early adopters of these services. They share everything, including their lives on social media, which helps to spread awareness and marketing.

This age range is also the most aware and interested in cryptocurrencies as they are the quickest to adopt new technologies. This is important as the next step for sharing economy apps will be taking advantage of blockchain technology and the creation of decentralized apps, and this will be an easy change to make in terms of adoption. We can already see it happening right now!

U-Bicycle is currently the 4th largest bike sharing platform in the world, with service available in over 200 cities on 4 continents. Their app is simple to use and allows for users to rent a bicycle or make their idle bike available for others to rent. What makes them different is that they are the first sharing service platform to be based on the blockchain. They will utilize UChain and its platform specifically for the sharing economy to tokenize their marketplace.

By utilizing UChain and its technical solution, U-Bicycle will store all the user and transaction data in a secure and efficient manner. This leads to increased user engagement, higher operation efficiency, and benefits to safety and security. Decentralization and blockchain technology can help alleviate the need for middle-men while instilling trust in the systems in place, which is ideal in this type of application.

Adoption as the Next Step

While it’s easy to see the benefits of the sharing economy on the blockchain and how UChain is ready to tackle this from simply reading their whitepaper, as we’ve seen this past year, speculation will only get you so far. Development and progress on a projects goals are incredibly important to give investors confidence, but there is still the lack of adoption that is hurting the overall market. This year has seen plenty of projects fail to reach their goals, be over ambitious, or cease development after funding, but of the projects that have maintained a presence, what stands out?

The next wave of investors will come looking for projects with something tangible and usable. UChain is ahead of most projects already with their partnership with U-Bicycle and the vast user base they provide. With over 100 million users and 1 million daily transactions, U-Bicycle is an established product with a large reach. This allows UChain to skip the slow and arduous task of user acquisition and lets them launch their mainnet with a working product that is seeing real world use.

This gives Uchain a tremendous leg up and a great way to prove the use case for their token. Since it’s designed for sharing economy projects and is easily adaptable, this will lead the way for further partnerships and increased adoption. Instead of relying on external factors to decide the token price, UChain has a chance to pave their own path forward with real world adoption and the ability to be used by millions of people worldwide.

To find out more about this undervalued gem, check out their official channels:

UChain Website: https://uchain.world/

UChain Whitepaper: https://uchain.world/css/img/pdf/uchain-whitepaper-dbe5656d6c.pdf

UChain Telegram: https://t.me/UchainEcosystem

UChain Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UChain

The Sharing Economy and the Future of Blockchain Markets was originally published in Good Audience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The sharing economy

Just let this sink in: the world’s biggest accommodation provider owns no estate and the leading taxi company owns no vehicles (besides its autonomous car fleet).

Airbnb and Uber are just two success stories of businesses that did things differently. Their initial intent was to provide a platform for people to start sharing instead of just purchasing, renting or leasing. They initiated an entire new industry called the sharing economy, which grew from just a few startups in 2008 to a multi-billion industry in 2018 with a projected continued growth rate of 23% annually until 2025.

The traditional sharing economy is improving to become future-proof with the sharing economy 2.0. Until recently a large percentage of transaction fees for arranging a service or product went towards the platform service providers. This new sharing economy 2.0 standard adds blockchain technology and smart contracts to the space which eliminates the expensive middleman. Tokenization is also an improvement on the previous standard as it creates a dynamic ecosystem where user engagement to the platform is encouraged through incentives. Companies building on a platform can create and distribute their own tokens.

The cryptocurrency industry

After having an entire year of prosperity, the year 2018 has not brought cryptocurrency investors many financial gains yet. The fact that media outlets are reporting that traditional institutions, governments and businesses are looking to enter the new digital asset class of cryptocurrency doesn’t seem to have an effect on the market capitalization. The continued down trend or accumulation phase in the cryptocurrency market capitalization has no signs of being over and done with. In the meantime investors need to be more critical in supporting new and existing blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. Investors can benefit from going back to the basics and research projects that have real world use cases. This approach intends to reduce risk because quality projects, with actual use cases, tend to have a much higher chance at surviving bear markets and prosper once the market sentiment returns on a positive note.

UChain has a unique benefit of being backed by the UB Group, a holding company with several sharing economy actors with established footholds worldwide and a massive user base ready for migration onto the blockchain. UChain proposes a blockchain based Sharing Economy 2.0 solution that is comprised of a network that enables dApps to be deployed on the platform.

While UChain is currently trading below its initial ICO price, like most other cryptocurrency projects, it presents a perfect entry opportunity for those keen enough to recognize its potential.

UB Group

With a parent company that facilitates over 30 million users worldwide in the sharing economy industry, UChain can benefit greatly from their resources. UB Group holding is one of the world’s leading internet companies that is specialized in the sharing economy. Some of the leading brands in the Asian region that are under UB Group holding’s umbrella, besides UChain, are U-bicycle (the fourth largest bicycle sharing platform in the world) U-Car (car sharing services), U-park (smart parking service provider), GrabCycle (South-East Asia’s first bike-sharing marketplace app), LocalKing (market leader in transport sharing in Taiwan) and X-bike (frontier brand in bike-sharing in Chinese colleges).

Sharing economy entities can integrate seamlessly into UChain’s ecosystem. UChain has been continually developing their platform to be able to launch near the end of 2018. This will offer companies the opportunity to transfer to their platform and join the ecosystem early on. In a time where investors seem to be more critical regarding which projects to invest in, UChain should stand out with their large user base and real world use cases.

The sharing economy has opened itself up to countless projects that can benefit from sharing their products and or services.

Sharing economy use cases

The P2P sharing economy isn’t solely about ride sharing and the sharing of accommodation. The use cases are endless. One of the most successful applications of the sharing economy is bike sharing, which has seen a tremendous growth over the past years with bike sharing ventures popping up in almost all major cities in the world. Electric scooter sharing startup Bird, which reached the ‘unicorn’ status for being valued at 2 billion USD already, is expanding globally at a rapid pace. Food sharing platforms are popping up on various locations around the world. You can use your neighbors tools on sharing platforms like toolsity. In China even umbrellas can be shared.

UChain’s evolution

As I see it, UChain will be a gamechanger in the global sharing economy by allowing the ecosystem deployment of various dApps that can achieve real world adoption and a substantial market share in the global sharing economy industry. There is a shift taking place where investors focus on projects with real world use cases which can initiate mainstream cryptocurrency adoption. Together with the release of UChain’s mainnet, that is just around the corner (Q4 2018), what better project to invest in than a project that has an excellent risk/reward ratio as it has seen a decline in total market value, just like other cryptocurrency projects. Whether or not we have entered the accumulation phase in the cryptocurrency industry, doesn’t really matter as I feel this is a great moment to add to my UChain investment at a discount.

I feel confident that UChain will thrive towards becoming one of the leading projects in the global sharing economy 2.0. They are future-proof because of their decentralized nature and implemented blockchain technology which includes the use of smart contracts.

For more information about UChain, you can visit their official channels.

UChain official channels

UChain website: https://uchain.world/

UChain whitepaper: https://uchain.world/css/img/pdf/uchain-whitepaper-dbe5656d6c.pdf

UChain Telegram: https://t.me/UchainEcosystem

UChain Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UChain

A thirty million people sharing economy use case was originally published in Good Audience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Financial inclusion refers to the ability of individuals to access financial products and services in order to meet their needs. The needs that should be met include saving, transacting, making and receiving payments, receiving credit, and insurance. The products and services have to be affordable and useful to the target population so that the desired goals can be met.

Negative Consequences of Poor Financial Inclusion

The financially underserved population largely consists of people in the developing or underdeveloped regions of the world who operate in the informal economy. This lack of access to financial services has had significant negative effects on their lives and the economy in general.

To begin with, the world’s poor population have no reliable means of making and receiving daily payments. This inability to transact reliably on a daily basis hinders their upward mobility. It sets them on a path to failure and keeps them in a vicious cycle of dependency where their only access to finances is through unscrupulous means.

Secondly, lack of access to financial products and services means limited access to credit. A majority of the world’s poor population work in the informal sector. They grow crops on a small scale and keep animals. Others are artisans who sell wares to the population while others are small-scale vendors who sell basic items such as food and vegetables. However, despite their ability to make further investments in their little enterprises and improve their lives, they lack access to credit which would have helped them achieve such a goal.

For instance, it has been shown that owners of small enterprises in most parts of the world have the ability to make further investment into their assets if they had access to credit facilities. The investment would lead to more profitable businesses. Stall owners can also increase their existing stock and product range if they had access to credit. Farmers can invest in more livestock and generate animal products which are a raw material for essential food products, such as meat and milk, worldwide. Artisans can also buy more raw materials and make more products if they had access to credit. Therefore, poor financial inclusion has prevented the growth of businesses and enterprises by people from the informal sector.

Thirdly, the world’s poor population are unable to make savings which can go a long way towards improving their lives. Savings help people build up financial resources that can be used to grow an enterprise or improve life in general. For instance, a farmer can save to acquire more livestock in the future so as to increase his produce and income. Savings also shield people from failure during uncertain times.

In a scenario where a deadly disease afflict a farmer’s livestock killing half of the population, a farmer with considerable savings can tide over this situation. The farmer can use the cash to restore his heard and avoid failure. He can maintain his production and income despite the calamity. Therefore, poor access to financial products has limited the ability of the poor people to save and have the opportunity to improve their lives.

Lastly, the lack of financial inclusion prevents the world’s poor population from accessing insurance. Risks and financial shocks are part and parcel of any business. Insurance helps individuals to cope with the vulnerabilities associated with risks and financial shocks. For instance, livestock farmers can insure their animals against disease and natural calamities. By being insured these farmers are protected from falling into poverty because the continuity of their income stream through production is guaranteed.

Why Financial Inclusion is Important

Financial inclusion is needed for all and sundry, and especially the world’s poor population working in the informal sector. The inclusion helps individuals to make daily payments reliably. It helps them to access credit which can be invested in their small-scale income-generating activities. It also helps people save their cash so that they can make future investments or respond to unforeseeable risks.

Financial inclusion improves access to insurance products and services which are critical towards addressing vulnerabilities in any type of business.

Financial Inclusion Efforts

There have been efforts by different stakeholders to bring financial products and services to the poor population in rural areas. In Bangladesh, two financial technology companies (CloudWell and Green Delta Insurance) have collaborated to offer payment and insurance services to farmers in rural areas. Governments in developing countries such as Zimbabwe have enacted laws that allow farmers to use their livestock as collateral to obtain credit. Despite the efforts, issues of trust and transparency have prevented such projects from achieving their full potential.

Sentinel Chain

Sentinel Chain is a project created to help rural farmers access financial products and services, thereby, improving their lives. The project solves the issue of trust and transparency by utilizing blockchain technology to identify, quantify, and verify asset ownership.

The world’s poor population are often richer than they are portrayed to be. Take for instance, the 5.3 billion poor people who do not have full rights to the property they live in and the land they farm. It has been estimated that if these people were given titles for their lands, it would unlock around $9.3 trillion in assets. Poor people are often seen engaged in traditional activities and have livestock and other animals which are the foundation for their lives. However, such assets are considered “dead capital” because they are not recognized by financial institutions. The institutions face challenges in establishing and verifying ownership, and quantifying the assets. As a result, farmers cannot use their livestock nor their land to access financial products such as credit and insurance.

Sentinel Chain addresses the problem by using blockchain technology to quantify, identify, and verify ownership of livestock. A system of tamper-proof and theft-proof RFID tags are used to label all the livestock. There also exist a smartphone application used to read the tags and store the information regarding the identity and ownership of each livestock on a blockchain. The whole ecosystem enforces trust and transparency which is an incentive for financial provides to start offering their products and services to the farmers.

Sentinel Chain enables farmers to monetize their livestock. The information stored on the blockchain gives farmers the opportunity to offer their animals as collateral in exchange for credit from a financial institution. Additionally, the blockchain technology uses its own form of cryptocurrency known as the Sentinel Chain-Token (SENC). With its value tied to local currencies, it will help farmers make fast and easy transactions. Sentinel Chain will revolutionize the lives of rural farmers by enabling them to access capital and markets that they can use to improve their lives.

Into a Hopeful Future

Financial inclusion is probably the biggest hurdle in the global path towards prosperity. We live in complex times and our activities throughout human history have created a complex ecosystem on this planet we call home. Natural calamities and climate change compound an already complex global economy. In such times, access to financial services and the ability to save, invest and hedge risks is important for every individual. It is not just the obligation of governments to help bring about financial inclusion, the participation of every entrepreneur wishing to effect a lasting change is important. Sentinel Chain’s effort to help improve financial inclusion is a fine amalgam of using cutting edge technology and the social obligation of creating a prosperous world.

To support the Sentinel Chain or to simply know more about its activities, please follow it on Twitter or join its Telegram group.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by + 374,685 people.

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Financial Inclusion and why it is Important was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

BitMex accused of manipulating Ethereum prices and CEO claims price will fall below $100

Past few days for Ethereum have been pretty tough. Despite its relative recovery from the recent low prices, things remain shaky. Recently, BitMex CEO Arthur Hayes has been spotted FUDDING Ethereum in a group chat and telling people to short it.

BitMex CEO has also been on record calling Ehtereum a double digit shitcoin on August 14th claiming that the coin will drop under the $100 mark.

All of this has stirred up the speculation that BitMex is manipulating the price of Ethereum and being one of the main reasons behind the recent dump.

More Ethereum FUD: Most ICOs haven’t cashed out their Ethereum yet

A new page done by Diar.co shows that most of the ICOs with public wallets are still holding their Ethereum. The estimate is that ICOs still hold around $600m in Ether. The recent crash of Ethereum has been speculated to be caused by ICOs dumping their ethereum to cash out, but with the recent revelations, the FUD around Ethereum only increased. This is even more worrying since the ICOs may choose to dump Eth with any possible dump which my hamper the chances of Ethereum’s price to rise again. The full list of ICOs and their Ethereum holdings can be found here.

World Economic Forum Report highlights 65 different possible use cases for the Blockchain for a better planet

On September 14th, the World Economic Forum has released a reporthighlighting 65 possible use cases for the Blockchain technology to help make the planet better. the 30 page report has discussed some of the possible uses that can be explored. Some of the areas explored include:

• Incentivizing Circular Economics
• See-Through Supply Chains
• Decentralized and Sustainable Resource Management

The WEF page also touches on the current state of the technology and its untapped potential

As the technology matures and is applied across a wider set of sectors and systems, there is both a challenge and an opportunity to realize blockchain’s potential — not just for finance or industry, but for people and the planet.

The report is available to download here with a complete details on the areas mentioned above as well as other very promising fields

Founder of OKex Exchange Detailed by Chinese Authorities Over Fraud Allegations

Earlier in the week, founder of OKex Exchange, Star Xu, was detained by Chinese police of allegations of fraud. Allegations rooted from Xu’s potential involvement with a project called WFEE coin.

After questioning, Xu was able to prove that he had no involvement with WFEE coin and was able to walk free that day.

Xu seems to have been cooperative throughout the process and was able to prove that he was not associated with the project. He claimed that it was normal for this to happen and that he was fulfilling his “duty” by cooperating with the authorities.

As of now, nothing has come of the allegations and things seem okay for the OKex founder.

Discussions of the Week

This week’s selected discussions include:

1- I just thought of a use case for blockchain

2- I paid instantly my dinner tonight with crypto, this is adoption

3- BrainBlocks launches Point of Sale

Meme of the Week

Technical analysis of the week

Disclaimer: this is not financial or investment advice, and we are not a registered financial or investment advisory boutique. This is also not a buy, sell, or hold recommendation for this project.

All Technical Analysis is provided by Emil. Follow him on TG for more of his work.

#BTC #1D #COINBASE

As mentioned last week, $6600 was an important level — the resistance was too strong and BTC bounced back.

BTC bounced off $6200 and we can expect further bearish price action.

Short term resistance: ±6400

You can find my target under $6000 with explanation in this post.

ETH #Weekly #Coinbase

ETH found support above $200 this week and reached a high of almost $230.
If the psychological support around $200 does not hold and BTC dumps below $6000, ETH will reach prices under 150$.

In case of an upward movement ETH finds is first strong resistance around $275

Best of the Week:

SiaCashCoin with a 480%% gain

Worst of the Week

Mindexcoin with a -65.4% loss

Meme of the Week

Just don’t use a paper wallet!

Source

Just for Fun

Today’s video was found on this thread where titled “Footage of Goldman Sachs discussing Bitcoin with the FED!”

The scene is originally from the show Mr. Robot Season 2 Episode 11

Upcoming Events

• Sept. 18 BITREWARDS Amazon Offers
• Sept.19 Bitcoin Cboe XBT Expiration Date
• Sept.19 World Ethical Data Forum
• Sept.22 EOS London Hackathon
• Sept.24 High Performance Blockchain (HPB) Mainnet Launch

This newsletter is a 93Head production in cooperation with The Writers Club.

Contact me on Telegram

Disclaimer: this is not financial or investment advice, and we are not a registered financial or investment advisory boutique. This is also not a buy, sell, or hold recommendation for this project.

All Technical Analysis is provided by Emil. Follow him on TG for more of his work.

BTCUSD 1D on Coinbase

#1D

BTC recent top on 4th September 2018 the was $7400, which was a big weekly resistance and approximately a retracement of 60% go the last downward movement.

Even though price action is very bearish at the moment, Bitcoin has not created a lower low (yet) and formed a triangle with higher lows and lower highs.

#1W

In the weekly we can see that BTC formed a bearish engulfing candle — which indicates further downward movement in the next days.

Also worth mentioning is, that BTC held above the 100EMA so far, so keep an eye on that.

Short term resistances: ±$6600
±$6800

Short term support:
$6200-$6000

If BTC breaks below $6000 the next price I’m watching is $5500 as this was the price of the last correction before the run to $20.000

ETH #Weekly #Coinbase

Ethereum took a big hit and broke an important support level — $300 and is currently at a lower price than 1 year ago.

(Low 52 weeks ago: $202.25)

If ETH can’t find support between 200–180 the next important zone to watch is $150-$130, which would be another ~25% price decrease.

In case of an upward movement, ETH faces the following resistances:
±$200
±$250
±$300

Best of the Week:

Webcoin with a 329%% gain

Worst of the Week

PKG Token with a -53% loss

Weekly News

It has been one hell of a week for Cryptocurrencies. Just when everyone started having hope that we are back on track to recovery, An Article on Business Insider was released titled:

Goldman Sachs is ditching near-term plans to open a bitcoin trading desk, instead focusing on a key business for driving Wall Street investment in crypto

Once the article took off, the snowball effect started and the market dumped instantly. USD Tether was the top gainer on September 6th 24hr chart.

One of the biggest losers in this series of events was Ethereum which to its lowest points since last year. As of writing this Newsletter, Ethereum is now sitting on roughly $200.

On September 6, Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez spoke on the Business Insider report calling it Fake News.

I think one of the wonderful things about us is that we get written about a lot. I never thought I would hear myself use this term but I really have to describe that news as Fake news — Martin Chavez, CFO of Goldman Sachs

The market is still reacting to all the pieces that have been put out, but things are definitely at an unease at the moment.

Another story we got from Business Insider this week states that

Coinbase is exploring a crypto ETF and is seeking help from BlackRock

Business Insider has revealed that Coinbase has been exploring the prospect of a Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) with the backing of Wall Street Giant BlackRock.

Crypto ETFs have been the main talk in the Cryptosphere recently. Applications for Crypto ETFs are everywhere now with the backing of different institutions. Simply put, trading different cryptocurrencies today is not an easy task for the average middle aged investor who which is limiting the adoption of cryptocurrencies. The approval of Crypto ETFS is estimated to significantly affect the adoption of cryptocurrencies and make it easier for the average investor to join the market.

Coinbase combining with the Wall Street giant BlackRock is a significant move towards ETFs as the two may complete each other to reach the targeted ETF approval.

New SEC Commissioner is Pro-Crypto

With all the ETF applications and with the rumored Coinbase/BlackRock ETF, news come of the new commissioner of SEC. Mr. Elad Roisman has been selected for the position and his stance on cryptocurrency seems to be a positive one. In his Speech, Mr. Roisman talks about the importance of “approach(ing) these new challenges in a fair and transparent manner,” and emphasized on the need to “examine and re-examine its rules, regulations, and guidelines”

Story of the Week — Is Ethereum Dead?

This has been a red week in crypto in general but nothing has felt the impact as much as Ethereum did. This massive drop in price from All-Time-Highs to its lowest levels since last year has got the whole cryptosphere if it is really over for Ethereum.

Ethereum is without a doubt one of the most influential projects in the sphere of Blockchain. With the introduction of smart contracts, the possibilities for the project were unlimited. I am quite sure that when Vitalik conceptualized Ethereum, he did not envision a fund raising mechanism for ICOs. However, this is a decentralized space and the use of each project will be based on the space requirements despite what that project capabilities entail. With time, Ethereum’s main use case simply became a fundraising tool over the blockchain. ICOs would launch over the Ethereum Network and have the ERC20 tokens deployed in the fund raise. This saw the price of Ethereum rise to almost $1500 during its peak in January when it was ICO spring in the blockchain. ICOs were raising funds left, right, and center and the main way to do that was using ETH. This increase in demand naturally saw the price surge up exponentially.

Today, things are different. We are in ICO winter. Your average investor is being very careful with his or her money. In fact, we may be witnessing the death of ICOs overall. It is slow and painful and it has certainly taken its toll on the Ethereum price. In fact, in a recent interview with Bloomberg even Vitalik himself doubted the possibilities of possible future gains in the blockchain.

There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore. — Vitalik Buterin

With this in mind, barring the appearance of a sudden new use case for Ethereum, it is entirely possible that we don’t see the previous highs Ethereum hit. This has probably been the most common discussion around the cryptosphere over the past week. Is there light at the end of the tunnel for Ethereum?

There might be.

Ethereum 2.0 is being developed as we speak. The network is expected to combine:

• Proof of Steak — PoS (Beacon Chain,Casper)
• Sharding
• eWASM

While everything is still under development, we can’t really have a definitive answer on the future of Ethereum (or at least the future of the price). There seems to be a need for a new significant use case for Ethereum that can substitute the old use case of ICOs which seems to be ending. Will the future give us a new use case? Only time will tell.

Discussions of the Week

This week’s selected discussions include:

1- Ethereum dump — wasn’t this always going to happen?

2- Just got my first ever payment of BAT Tokens from Brave as a Publisher. It’s miniscule, but amazing to see the ecosystem ACTUALLY functions!

3- Goldman Sachs Caused The Markets To Drop Just Days After A Mystery 10,000 BTC Short Position Was Opened

Meme of the Week

This week’s Meme of the Week is the ever giving Bitconnect meme. The meme that never seems to die. Apparently, people are STILL trying to get BCC listed on some exchanges. Not only that, but there is an active community trading it still. Amazing. Gotta get rid of those bags somehow!

Thankfully (or not), the rekt gifs have slowed down this week with the steady upwards movement. Doesn’t hurt to share one though

Just for Fun

Reddit user u/mooky-bear has created a light bulb that changes color and intensity based on the BTC/USDT price data from Binance.

might as well just bought a red light bulb man!

Source

Upcoming Events

• Sept. 13 Pchain Testnet 1.0 Launch
• Sept.14 Global Litecoin Summit: Global Litecoin Summit from Sep 14–15 at South San Francisco Center
• Sept.14 Bitcoin Gold (BTG) Bittrex Delisting
• Sept.15 EOS Platform Launch and Airdrop

This newsletter is a 93Head production. Contact me on Telegram, or find my other posts on Medium.

Weekly Rekt #001— Market update & News was originally published in TheWritersClub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.