Even though 2018 has been a rather confusing year for cryptocurrency, it was also the year that the crypto world officially became "the" habitat of aspiring new visions, of which, according to the Vitae Whitepaper and as stated by the founder Michael Weber himself in his YouTube Channel , the one set for Vitae is the highest: Growing Global Prosperity which translates as distributing wealth by giving people more opportunities to earn. Considering the frighteningly increasing wealth gap, there is no doubt for the need of such vision but I would like the leave the "big talk" aside for now and focus on what we have at hand.
A General Look
As a habitat, the crypto world is as free as a pool of mud; however, because it is the same pool of mud that gives the adobe to build a Neolithic settlement, gets children all dirty playing and traps animals to their last breath; it requires a keen eye to tell the difference between a determined project, a fun experiment and a scam. Let's see how Vitae is doing in the mud pool.
The most obvious telltale sign of a crypto scam is an ICO with a large volume premined tokens wrapped in a marketing boom. Vitae has neither. 1 million out of 100 million hardcap is premined which is acceptable to start off a blockchain project with masternode and POS systems. 4/5 of the premined tokens are going to be burned to initiate supernodes in November, the rest is also going to be distributed in other ways. There is no intention to fast-sell masternodes or supernodes either, hence the relatively very high 10000 or 20000 Vitae collateral. The tokens distributed to the community comes from the masternodes and staked tokens owned by the team. On the other hand, marketing is focused on growing the community, with no sale-focused marketing as seen in ICO's. The project is clearly open to distribution and decentralization which suits Vitae's "Growing Global Prosperity" vision greatly.
As far as determination goes, based on the information above, it is safe to say the project is meant for long term. Vitae is not a one developer's project; there is an established team which is present on Discord. The amount of effort spent on the Vitae Discord Channel is admirable. There is also the coding done to configure the PIVx based blockchain into Vitae prospects. The anti-inflation concept based on burning tokens in exchange of supernodes is a true long term vision. Although the main focus of development is the upcoming Social Rewards Website, Vitae is keeping the development details confidential before release so I'm unable to comment on the work done on that regard but based on the overall development so far, Vitae definitely looks sincere about developing a project that can reach their high goals.
Distribution (How to Earn)
As stated above, the motto of Vitae is distributing wealth by providing opportunity to earn. While the supernodes and the Social Rewards Website are waiting to be released, it is currently possible to earn Vitae via staking, masternodes and the constant airdrops/bounties/contests taking place in the Vitae Discord Channel.
For staking and masternodes; visit this page to download a wallet and check the wallet guide for staking and masternode guide for vps set up, check the masternode stats at MasterNodes.Pro, purchase Vitae at Cryptopia, CoinExchange, BitexLive or Block DX. When investing, bear in mind the changes that might occur to the token value and the reward structure with the upcoming supernode and Social Rewards Website release.
In the Vitae Discord Channel, there is constant airdrop both by the Vitae Team and by the community sharing with each other. To catch the rain, first go to bot-commands channel and type //register to create your account. Then go to greenhouse-rules to read the rules and head over to vitae-rains. You'll catch almost all rains if you post once in every fifteen to thirty minutes; and yes you can just spam as long as you stay within the rules. To celebrate certain events, the Vitae Team does large airdrops at pre-announced times. Last time they dropped 10000 Vitae (1 Vitae = 1$) when the twitter account reached 1000 followers. They are going to drop 20000 when it reaches 5000 followers so please do follow the Vitae Twitter.
Check the pinned message in twitter-bounty channel, you can tweet about Vitae and join the contest. If you are interested in making videos, go to video-bounty and check the pinned message. You can type //earn in bot-commands to see many other ways that you can earn Vitae, unfortunately an article bounty is not one of them :( When you have more than 20 Vitae, you can stake them right in Discord, there is a pool of 40000 Vitae, visit greenhouse-interface channel and read the pinned message. The amount you can earn is not just peanuts, first only rain then with staking it is possible to earn tokens with a good value at the 1 Vitae ~ 1$ current rate. As an example, I exchanged Vitae for Steem to promote this post.
In any case, if you have questions, the help channel is active 24/7 and there is always someone who can and would like to answer any question from basic to most complex. And if you are bored you can always find a channel to chat, play dice or make a Vitae meme and post in memes-only.
Final Thoughts
I remember the time Web 2.0 was invented. We were talking how it was going to break the hegemony on information. Well, thanks to Web 2.0, we did get a place on www to share ourselves but it didn't break the hegemony. The centralized powers managed to find their way to establish control. When I look at the blockchain technology and its by-products including this very platform, not for a second I think that the future is going to be decentralized; for one reason and one reason only: Although these technologies promote decentralization, none of them offers a defense mechanism against centralized power. Which means even in cryptocurrency form, the money is going to be centrally controlled but just like in Web 2.0 or Tor or P2P sharing, thanks to blockchain technology, we are going to have an option. With that in mind, do not take Vitae's "growing global prosperity" motto as a blown-up selling argument to hoodwink people into a fantasy future where everyone is going to be rich. It is a window of opportunity, giving us a different chance and it certainly has the potential.
