First of all: I (Futuredigicoin = FDC) gathered all information by having an interview with dev NullFunction (=Null), checked Shield related websites, checked their discord and asked questions to various members. After collecting all information I created this review of Shield. If you're somebody who loves to buy promising coins cheap, read further!
What's Shield ?
Shield is the first truly secure, anonymous peer to peer cryptocurrency, resistant to both 51% attacks and the future threat posed by quantum computing, while maintaining unparalleled transaction times with minimal accompanying fees.
Core specifications
No ICO, no premine: no large whales present?
When I read no ICO, no premine I was thinking: "this could be a project with many small investors."
Many small invistors often means no large price fluctuations. No large price fluctuations with a relatively limited amount of XSH seems interesting for investors.
But after taking a closer look at coinmarketcap (= CMC) you get a quick insight of the supply distribution. There's a max. supply of 660,000,000 XSH. In Octobre 2017 there's the start of Shield. Now, February 26th there's already a circulating supply of 494,742,500. That's almost 75% distributed in 5 or 6 months!
Besides a large distribution, almost 30% of it's supply is in hands of 25 owners. WOW! There goes the illusion of no big whales.
How it's possible Shield's already on 75% of total supply
I'll explain further how the large distribution arose. After asking Null about this development it appeared that at the start of Shield the rewards where very high. So if you were an early bird, you received big rewards on your investment. That's (in my opinion) why it's possible 30% of the circulation supply is owned by 25 people.
Hardforked
Eventually, the Shield blockchain was hardforked to increase blocktime, not because of concerns about fast growing supply, but to reduce the relatively large number of orphans on the Pools. The fork took place at 375k blocks from iirc. The rewards table can be found here
After the hardfork the rewards were reduced cascading.
Block 0 to 14,000 : 8,000 coins
14,000 to 28,000 : 4,000 coins
28,000 to 42,000: 2,000 coins
42,000 to 210,000: 1,000 coins
210,000 to 378,000: 500 coins
378,000 to 546,000: 250 coins
546,000 to 714,000: 125 coins
714,000 to 2,124,000: 62 coins
2,124,000 to 4,248,000: 32 coins
Max supply far away
The fork slowed things down. But I was still wondering if Shield wouldn't reach its maximum supply quickly. Null guaranteed me that by the hardfork with cascading rewards and by a later switch of POW to PoS the maximum amount will be reached in a few years.
Decision made by community
So it's clear the rewards were high at the start. Shield is hardforked to slow things done. We don't know the faces behind the whales, but's it's clear how those whales arose. I can not say whether this is fair or not. However, Null indicated that the hardfork was done after consultation with the Shield community.
Exchanges
1.) coinexchange
2.) southxchange
3.) crypto-bridge
4.) tradesatoshi
5.) coinsmarkets Watch out, they use 9 instead of 8 decimals
6.) Next.exchange Next exchange to be listed on
What's special about Shield? 1.) Masternodes
We have more insight of the whales, but what makes Shield really stands out to other cryptocurrency?
First thing is masternodes. What are masternodes? It is an added feature to garantue a secure anonimity. .
So what does a Masternode? A masternode uses the same wallet software as the ordinary node with the same blockchain. A masternode performs extra services on the network. The extra services consist first of increased privacy of the transactions. Second, masternodes has direct transactions. A masternode is also a decentralized budget system. In addition, there are a number of advantages to a master node with respect to a normal node.
For the delivery of the services, master nodes are also paid a certain amount of the remuneration of each block. This can serve as a passive income to the masternode owners minus the user costs.
So when you possess a masternode you create an extra income every month. You only have to own a certain amount of coins. At shield this amount is 200.000 XSH and a server with dedicated IP and 100% uptime. What does it cost in real money. Around $ 10,000 in XSH. Is this much? That's up to you to decide. The rewards? You get 35% of all blockrewards divided by the amount of masternodes.
What's special about Shield? 2.) Quantum proof
Shield wants to be the safest fastest cryptocurrency on the market. That sounds pretty special to me, because no other coin has it.
What's special about Shield? 3.) Marketplace
Introducing: ‘The Shield Economy’ - A Decentralized Marketplace Powered by the SHIELD Currency
The SHIELD Economy is a fork of the Openbazaar Marketplace, providing the SHIELD community with an outlet to buy and sell goods or services - all with the speed, anonymity and security that SHIELD currency has to offer. The development team has been chomping at the bit to announce this exciting milestone on the SHIELD roadmap, and hope the public is just as excited to start using it!
Shield believes a new marketplace will allow a greater usability of SHIELD, while it also attracts a wider audience and expands the global SHIELD community.
The Shield Economy will also provide established businesses with a more accessible entry point to begin using - and benefiting from - Shield as a currency. With the business users in mind, Shield intends to implement a verification system, allowing businesses to register as ‘official verified users’ on the marketplace to increase user confidence and improve both brand awareness, and integrity for the seller.
What's special about Shield? 4.) Project Integrate: cross media wallet
SHIELD for everyone.
"To bring Shield to the masses, the custom Shield tipping system will be made available on a wide range of popular social media platforms and messenger applications. Shields intention is to increase Shields accessibility by allowing payments to be made on whichever platform is most convenient and comfortable for Shield users. Optimal usability and freedom of choice are of the utmost important. Shield will endeavour to bring Shield tipping to as many platforms as possible."
After reading this info I had some extra questions:
FDC: "What's a tipping system? A kind of social media bounty to spread the news for Shield?"
Null: "Not at all, it's actually more like a cross-media wallet"
FDC: a cross media wallet?!?
Null: "Yes, the idea is that you have a webwallet which is connected to your social media usernames. So when someone wants to send you XSH but only knows you from social media it can send it that way. Here is a work-in-progress technical breakdown. Click the link to read more.
FDC: "What's the purpose of this cross media wallet? It seems donating will be easier. Paying in XSH will be easier. It seems a next step to enlarge Shield to the mass?
Null: You already summed it up pretty well."
What's special about Shield? 5.) Casino bets with shield?
At medium.com Shield published november 22nd the following post:
"We have already talked to someone who is developing a kind of casino for alts with the purpose to support the developers of alts that get posted on it. The developer of the casino is very interested in SHIELD and was already working on a webapp and though that SHIELD would be a great first “test” subject. He will be giving us, the SHIELD devs a percentage if all the bets done with SHIELD on his website. We don’t know how much yet. We will be looking at more of these projects in the future but this one is close to being finished."
After asking feedback of Null I got the following reply: "I'm not sure, we haven't had much contact in the last little while, we might just have to make our own."
Could this be the next new future project for Shield??
My conclusion
I don't have any Shield in posession (yet). But would I buy after this review? I certainly consider. Shield has:
1.) potential to be 'the' new payment currency for the future
2.) promising projects
3.) capabele dev which much Knowledge
4.) active community
Cons :
1.) large whales could influence the price. But for long term projects it doesn't have to be a problem
2.) not enough marketing at the moment.
3.) expensive masternodes 200.000XSH. (could be profitable if marketing develops and price goes up)
More Shield information?
Would you like to know more about shield? visit their website, join their discord and social media. Find out what they have to offer and decide for yourself if it's worth investing.
Official Site
Bitcointalk
Discord
Twitter
Gitlab
Medium
Reddit
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