Happy Monday! The market added around $20 Billion over the weekend and promptly gave it all back. Here at Ledger Capital we are hard at work getting ready for our official launch at the end of June. Don’t worry, we’re still going to be bringing you daily crypto news.
3 things you need to know:
One: Block.one released EOS 1.0 on Saturday. After the conclusion of a year long ICO which raised more than $4 Billion worth of Ether, the shippable version of the EOS software has been released.
Regulation: Unlike other projects, Block.one has decided to take no part in the actual launch of the EOS main net, they have simply provided the software. You may be aware of the controversy surrounding the wording of the terms of the ICO, where Block.one explicitly stated that any funding provided through the ICO would be viewed as a donation, and that Block.one would have no obligation to provide anything in return. The reality is they had to word it that way in order to avoid classification as a security under the eyes of governments around the world.
Launch: The launch of the mainnet has been left completely up to the community. The efforts are largely being led by block producer candidates (groups vying to be one of the twenty-one nodes in the EOS DPOS system). There are over one hundred and fifty block producer candidates competing for twenty-one slots. The largest mainnet is expected to launch within the next thirty-six hours, however there will inevitably be groups that launch their own versions of the EOS software. Exchanges will likely choose to support the version of the software with the largest consensus in the community. One interesting implication of multiple EOS mainnets is that others may in fact gain traction and hold value, meaning that token holders will essentially get multiple versions of their EOS tokens on separate chains, akin to Bitcoin and all of its forks. This could prove to be a huge boon for ICO participants.
Two: IOTA reveals Qubic. And it’s as complicated and promising as anyone could have hoped for. A lot of people don’t know that Qubic was the original reason IOTA was created. It needed an underlying protocol to work, so IOTA was developed to support it. Check out the original bitcointalk announcement thread…
So what is it? Boiled down, Qubic can be considered an answer to Ethereum. The protocol allows for oracles, smart contracts and outsourced computation to be bundled and used all in a feeless, fast and secure manner.
Qubic is the protocol that allows for creation of “Qubics” which are smart contracts with built in oracles. Qubics are processed via the IOTA tangle and publish results to the tangle as well. Theoretically, the cost of computation would be extremely low due to how the tangle achieves consensus. The computational power required to run Qubics would be given out as tasks to anyone that wanted to run a Qubic node, similar to the Golem project.
Implications: If Qubic is successful, there doesn’t seem to be a place for there distributed protocols that include fees. The launch date for the Qubic protocol has not been released, likely due to the fact that it is very far out. This is one of the most ambitious projects in the cryptocurrency space right now, and also one of the riskiest. Many of the features have not been proven out, so it’s definitely a long term play.
If you have the time, check out the website, as it goes into more detail. What I have described here is pretty high level.
Other takeaways: Known announcements always dump price. Buy the hype sell the news is something that you should always do. Sometimes there will be nagging voice saying, “well what it the announcement is huge, and price pumps!” Truth is it almost always doesn’t. You may lose 1/10 times, but the 9/10 will more than make up for it.
Three: Ripple pours $50M into universities for blockchain research. Ripple is giving $50M to 17 different universities for research into blockchain technology. Ripple says it will put over $50 million, as well as its own expertise and "technical resources," into funding the initiative's first group of university partners. The institutions will be able to set their research topics independently, according to the announcement.
Ripple is taking the advancement of blockchain seriously, and has been one of the projects at the forefront pushing blockchain tech to traditional areas of innovation. Like them or hate them, Ripple does a good job of engaging legacy institutions.
What I’m reading today:
4 Key Details every ICO whitepaper should include
ICOs have been one of the best and worst things about crypto over the past year. The good: They have radically disrupted the traditional venture capital model by allowing companies to raise capital directly. The bad: The ease of raising capital has led to a tremendous amount of scams and unfounded hype. Also, they totally butchered the word whitepaper. I just think BS whenever I see a company with a “whitepaper”.
My issue with white papers is the fact that they are often not well written, not comprehensive and do not contain enough information for intelligent investment into a crypto project. My gripes are well outlined by Kevin Choi in his piece about the future of white papers. He proposes four details that every whitepaper should have concisely explained.
The reason why the native token would have any value. Projects need to have a robust tokeconomic model that explains where the true demand and value from the token lies. Just saying a token is needed to interaction with the platform doesn’t give it value
The content of the blockchain itself. You should understand exactly what type of data the blockchain is being used to store and why. Answering this question will help frame why a blockchain is actually needed.
Relevant technical details. A lot of white papers will just throw in a technical-looking math formula in the middle of a white paper for no reason, and with no context. Make sure that the details that are included are relevant…and if they aren’t it could be a sign that the team isn’t being as transparent as they should be.
The reason and degree for decentralization. Many things are better off centralized, and often times whitepapers just claim decentralization for the sake of having the buzzword. Actually explaining the benefit of decentralization should be required.
I encourage reading the whole article, and adding the questions added to your arsenal when you analyze a white-paper for long term investment.
Around the corner:
List of upcoming crypto events/releases
BlockchainNW will be held on July 5
The Augur mainnet is launching on July 9
Market Outlook:
Nothing has changed since Friday. Waiting…waiting….
Well, actually there was ad that ran in Times Square over the weekend. What do you guys think, will this induce mass FOMO?
Spread the knowledge.
If you’re going to be at BlockchainNW, let us know. cryptoampm@gmail.com.