You many have heard me talk about Polyswarm before, but I have not really done a deep dive. I figured it was a good time as it has now become my third biggest crypto investment behind Hive and Algroand.
The Basics
Polyswarm is a decentralized threat intelligence market on the Ethereum (Eth) blockchain which is made possible using ETH smart contracts. Polyswarm is looking to capitlize and provide incentivizes for rapid innovation in the $8.5B/yr anti-virus and automated cyber threat intelligence space. Their model looks to provide precise economic incentives that reward timely and accurate threat intelligence concerning the malintent of files, network traffic and URLs. PolySwarm defines a real-time threat detection ecosystem involving enterprises, consumers, vendors and geographically-diverse security experts. Think of them as the Pokemon Go of threat detection!
How it Works
Experts develop and hone competing “micro-engines” that autonomously investigate the latest threats, attempting to outperform their competition. PolySwarm’s “Proof of Work” is threat detection accuracy: the market rewards experts who are best able to defend enterprises and end users. Everyday users can provide data for these engines and get rewarded for their data.
Relative to today’s ad hoc market, PolySwarm will lower the barrier to entry, provide broader coverage options, discourage duplicative effort and ensure interoperability among products and threat intelligence feeds. Economically, PolySwarm functions as a skill-required twist on a prediction market2 with thousands of micro-engines (“workers”) investigating the latest in malware evolution at machine speed - no human in the loop.
PolySwarm is developed by PolySwarm Pte. Ltd. with funding derived from the sale of ERC20-compatible Nectar (“NCT”) utility tokens. Check out the team here
Nectar (NCT) Tokenonomics
NCT is their utility token, which is used to reward honest market participation through the collection and distribution of Fees to value adding, active participants.
On PolySwarm, threat intelligence producers ("Engines") earn tokens by analyzing threats. Engine owners buy tokens to supply their Engines with NCT to participate in the Marketplace. Other token holders can buy/sell tokens to help supply Engines owner's needs.
Users receive rewards for generating passive DNS data and staking other user's threat intelligence productivity.
User NCT Rewards Program
It's pretty easy to sign up and start earning NCT for browsing the web and sending DNS data to Polyswarm. Full directions can be found on their site
- Create an account at https://polyswarm.network, if you haven't already.
- Install and Setup the Browser Extension.
- Download the NectarNet Beta Browser Extension .zip file.
- Double-click the ppdns-chrome-extension-v1.0.8-zip file to unzip it.
- Open Chrome/Brave and access chrome://extensions/
Check Developer mode - Click on Load unpacked extension
Select the ppdns-chrome-extension-v1.0.8 folder that you unzipped. - Navigate to https://polyswarm.network/
- Log in or Sign up
- Navigate to Settings -> Rewards
- Review and accept the Terms and Privacy Policy
- Click the "Join" button
- Navigate to Settings -> API Keys
- Copy your API key to the clipboard.
- Open the Extensions dropdown and click the ppdns extension.
- Paste the API key into the field.
Redeeming
Once have some NCT in you can Redeem those tokens by withdrawing and transfering them to your personal ETH/NCT wallet. Before you can Redeem tokens, you must Configure Withdrawals on your Rewards Wallet.
Below is my current balance after already transferring out 1000 NCT.
Chart
Price Prediction
I could see this company reaching 1.5 billion, which would put NCT token around $1. I know that's a long way from the current price of $0.01740, but looking at the ATH and what they are trying to do for Wed 3.0 I see big things happening.