There’s certainly no doubt about it, blockchains and distributed ledger technologies pose a world-changing advancement in the way we do business and interact with each other, and how our world's economy can function as a whole.
Blockchain is certainly a buzzword for a reason, but who’s actually changing the world and creating real value?
EOS - A powerful infrastructure for DApps
EOS is a complete solution for hosting apps on the blockchain, intended to provide a platform that can scale and is affordable to access.
The project is complimented with the EOS Hackathons and EOS VC fund that has pledged to invest $1bln into apps that are built on the EOS platform.
The EOS project certainly has brought an immense amount of value to the world.
With a smart contract API available in C/C++, Web Assembly and RPC, it’s really no surprise the project has grabbed the attention of so many developers and entrepreneurs, who are looking for a blockchain software protocol to build their apps on.
Back during their ICO period, EOS was one of the largest coin offerings the world had seen yet, raising a total $196.9 million in Ethereum and returning a handsome ROI to investors who got in early, with several significant rallies seeing the token hit a high of $18 at first, followed by an all time high of $22.
When starting at a humble sub-dollar range only 3 months prior - the token has since lost 90% of its value during the bear market, although whilst still trading above $2 it’s still made gains YTD (year-to-date) with a huge potential for more upside.
Dapps Built on the EOS Blockchain
There are a plethora of apps being built on the EOS platform, both for financial application and also for gaming. With the EOS developers portal providing easy access for dapp creators who wish to learn how the platform works and how to get started.
The apps range from fictional quests featuring magic and spaceships, to social experiments and Prospectors a MMORTS (Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Economic Strategy) which is a interesting take on online multiplayer gaming.
Prospectors puts you in the middle of the gold rush, where an actual cryptocurrency is used to represent items in the game! All of this is powered under the hood by EOS.
EOS Smart Contracts
Developers will be pleased to find besides the essentials such as node and wallet software, a smart contract dev kit is also provided, and also a javascript development library which makes creating front ends and interacting with the smart contract from the UI a breeze.
With well-organised documentation and GitHub repositories featuring support for OSX, Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora the EOS ecosystem is easy to access, with a vast array of tools available for the command line for both Web Assembly and C/C++ libraries.
LTO Network
Saving public funds from endless paper pushing and bureaucracy is a wonderful gift cryptocurrency is bringing to the world.
So far, LTO Network has saved the Dutch and Belgian governments over $30mln in cutting overheads, money that’s now being put back to good use - being used for green projects.
This is due to the innovative technology used in LTO that enabled the administrative overheads of their cross border waste transport system to be eradicated, removing paperwork and replaced with LTO’s hybrid private blockchain technology.
LTO network nodes, enables decentralized parties to interact with one another. In this application, waste disposal is enabled by tracking the amount in kilograms, and location of the disposer to enable regulated transport - via a control center from source all the way to the processor.
Upon pickup of the waste, the LTO nodes update the status and authorities from either side can monitor the processing via smartphone apps carried by the drivers, waybridge staff and officers of the waste disposal firms.
All stakeholders are updated live in real time with LTO network, eliminating manual data input work and paper pushing. Whilst also providing a more legitimate cryptographically enforced workflow, that is better for the environment.
STEEM
If you want to get paid for publishing your writings, Steemit is an option out there.
Steemit, built on STEEM, has its own cryptocurrency and entirely blockchain-based independent publishing platform. After just a few years of being online - Steemit has grown a world of its own. But STEEM blockchain is a lot more than Steemit.
STEEM is one of the most scalable blockchains in the world and it already has more transactions than its competitors. It's amazing transaction completion time really sets it apart from the rest. Due to this, it has been the foundation of the massive content platform Steemit. It is also being used to develop games, funding platforms, and other content platforms.
The flagship application on STEEM is Steemit. The idea is simple, you share content. People can vote for it, or resteem it. This is basically Steemit’s version of a retweet or share on other social platforms.
Picture each resteem giving the content a bit of a push to help the momentum rise. Each one of these interactions is given a small monetary value in STEEM, although it’s only worth a few cents per share - there’s great power in numbers. This is a good display of how scalable STEEM is.
Content submissions are given awards also based on the number of interactions they get, which work like an accelerant to the fire. Bringing more and more eyeballs to your content. This shows, again, the ability of the underlying technology. Thousands of articles and comments are made every day, and each submission has the ability to receive a reward which is split between the curators and the author. All these transactions go through smoothly without causing system cobgestion.
A New Era?
When we STEEM's main app, Steemit, to the conventional social networks, it’s such a heretic. It’s so revolutionary, I’m surprised that more people are not talking about it.
Why publish on other networks that give you literally nothing back in return, when you can get paid, even if just cents, on steemit? It's world changing for writers who wish to publish their views on an independent platform, regardless of editorial restraints and censors. This is about as free and wild as it can get.
The more people who use Steemit, the more it will grow. So, make sure to join in, and contribute - or just give something you like a resteem, every little bit helps.
NEM / XEM (New Economy Movement)
Nem is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology, written from scratch in Java. It’s key features are support for tokens (akin to Ethereum’s ERC20 token specification) and a low power requirement, as it is a Proof-of-stake algorithm and does not require ASIC miners.
A private incarnation of the platform named Mijin is available for commercial blockchain applications and is currently being used by financial institutions, and private companies mainly in Japan initially, but also growing support internationally.
90% Savings for Institutional Banking
The aim of the Mijin project is to cut banking costs by up to 90% and make banking more secure. It has been tested in 2015 by Japan's largest trust bank, SBI Sumishin Net Bank.
Running a private Mijin blockchain costs only 50k JPY (approx $460 USD) and enables banks to issue an infinite amount of tokens.
You can see why over 300 companies have already adopted NEM, as it can be setup as an asset and easily be run as a private blockchain, without need for large mining overheads
For the consumer wanting to use the public NEM mainnet rather than setup a private blockchain - there is a very low barrier to entry also, and anyone wanting to deploy a token on the NEM mainnet, claiming their assets namespace cost only a fraction of a dollar at current market price.
Implementing web-based NEM powered payment option, or using the nano wallet - are both easy to work with and provide a wealth of functionality to the customer and developer that essentially puts the power of being their own bank into their hands and next to no setup cost!
Dedicated To The Future
As of July 2018, the NEM foundation opened an incubator in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to serve as a co-working space and accelerator in blockchain development in southeast Asia.
The incubator projects set up by NEM foundation can also be found spread across the world, Popping up in financial hubs such as the NEM Blockchain Hub in Melbourne, Australia and becoming a member of the fintech association of Hong Kong.
NEM Teams are scattered across the globe having dedicated outfits in advancing the adoption of NEM in Brazil, China, Chile, Columbia, Nigeria, Ukraine, Thailand and Singapore!
Ripple XRP
The Ripple project aims to provide frictionless payment transfers, claiming to be able to save $16.5 billion in fees - if companies switched to its xRapid product. Ripple team states XRP can cut global bank settlement fees by up to 60%.
In today's world, cross-border payments are settled through a chain of banks with each step along the way becoming a potential delay, point of failure or added cost.
Ripple enables instant point-to-point settlement, reducing liquidity requirements and providing better tracking and visibility on the transaction in real time.
Instead of holding local currency, banks can consolidate their liquidity into XRP, pooling their assets to service international transfers reducing the need for bridge currencies.
The most obvious cost reduction is in foreign exchange, Ripple acts very well in reducing the cost to transfer funds internationally, essentially rewiring the global financial network to work via XRP as a conduit will create incomparable cost-efficiency, and free up money that would otherwise be lost in transfer fees!
But is it Working?
Innovation is not common in conventional fiat based systems, as making money from transfer fees is good business for the banks - but in October of 2018, TransferGo’s CEO Daumantas Dvilinskas stated the company has lowered costs by 90% in some areas of his business!
He also noticed a sharp drop in transaction settlement times, now being less than 30 seconds. According to Dvilinskas since partnering with Access Bank to provide Ripple enabled services, TransferGo has seen a 315% growth in just one month.
“We just launched our first xCurrent transactions from everywhere in Europe to India through a partnership with Access Bank. Ripple helped us build and manage this relationship.”
Now in an effort to grow the TransferGo user base to 100 million users (from a current 1mln), TransferGo has announced that it’s making cross-border payments completely free to customers around the world, due to the huge savings Ripple has enabled the company to benefit from.
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