A few days ago gazillion posts about KOINOS got published on our HIVE chain. KOINOS, the project of ex-Steemit INC employees - Andrew Levine, Michael Vandenberg, Theoretical, Steve Gerbino, Nathaniel Caldwell and Ron Hamenahem - launched the KOIN mining project. KOIN is the token for the upcoming KOINOS blockchain. KOINOS blockchain is planned to be released sometime early 2021 as mainnet, and a few months earlier as testnet.

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I jumped into the mining side of things just a few hours after start of the whole thing, now about 4 days ago. The reason: Everything I've read (whitepaper and posts) and watched (YouTube videos) about KOINOS gave me energy to want to be part of this project.

IN A NUTSHELL

KOINOS is a new blockchain in development solving the issues in the blockchain world for mass adoption. This is the most compelling reason why I'm so interested in this project. In my view, mass adoption MUST be supported by any blockchain that will survive next decade and longer.

One of the key problems to be ready for mass adoption, is performance of the blockchain. For mass adoption, we need an almost unlimited performance, which various other projects are claiming to solve, but none of them did actually solve the issues, yet.

Another key aspect for mass adoption is: fee-less transactions, meaning free transactions on the chain. Many chains don't offer fee-less transaction, limiting the use cases for these chains. Other chains (like HIVE) may offer fee-less transaction, but the core of the HIVE chain does not allow unlimited performance, has no support of smart contracts, and lacks the ability to launch new tokens (sure, we have HIVE-engine, but that one is not to much decentralised, and is not part of the HIVE chain itself).

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KOINOS promise us to deliver everything the blockchain world needs for mass adoption, native from the chain.

They also promise us they will deliver a chain for which no hardforks are required when core elements of managing the chain needs adjustments. Think of consensus algorithms, governance structure and resource management. All these will be implemented as smart contracts which can be changed by consensus, without the need to upgrade the blockchain itself. Even when the community likes to update the consensus algorithm, or change the governance structure, these can be implemented by changing the smart contracts, and doesn't allow an upgrade of the chain.

In analogy: Think of our own HIVE chain for which we have a defined way of working with 20 witnesses - and a spare one - co-deciding the direction of the chain. When we like to change this, to include eg 40 witnesses, or we want a different model, maybe a model used by BTC; The HIVE chain needs to be recoded and hardforked since this logic is build into the chain. With KOINOS all this is implemented in smart contracts which are pieces of software running on top of the KOINOS blockchain. These pieces of software can be recoded and applied, without the need to upgrade the blockchain itself.

HOW COOL IS THAT!?

Note: Over the last 4 years we've seen many hardforks of our chain, some went smooth, some not... Like the one we are going though as we speak; A good example why we don't want to see hardforks. Hardforks shall be limited as much as possible, preferably no hardforks at all in the lifetime of a blockchain.

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To kick start the KOINOS blockchain project, the team launched the KOIN mining project. The aim of the team is to make their chain as decentralised as possible. For this reason they decided to make mining super simple... Well, as simple as can be in the crypto universe.

Packages are downloadable from GitHub for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. The package installation is like installing any other application you have running on your laptop. Through a graphical user interface (GUI) you can control the miner with only a very few parameters to set. Very simple indeed!

Less complex is the fact mining is executed using the Ethereum chain. One need to connect an Ethereum wallet to the miner. One need to send funds to the Funder wallet of the miner. One need to understand the Proof Frequency to set. But rest assured: Everything is well documented and a Discord channel is available with helpful people in case you have questions.

^{created by text giraffe (source)}

MY ASSESSMENT

In the first few days of my own mining adventure, I was learning about what to do with eg the Proof Frequency and deciding how much Ether I like to spend on a daily bases versus how much KOIN I wanted to earn.

Since mining is on the Ethereum chain - the mining side of things is implemented in an Ethereum smart contract - transaction fees applies. This is a bit unfortunate in my opinion. But the good side is this will - likely - set some minimum value to KOIN on exchanges later on.

Ethereum fees fluctuate a lot, while the amount of KOIN rewards for the same amount of work is decreasing over time. I'm not sure, but it seems the return for the same effort reduced with a factor of 3 to 4 in the matter of days, compared to the first 12 to 24 hours of the mining project. Reason why I still am experimenting a bit how to continue my own mining efforts.

Mining KOIN is based on Proof of Work (kinda like how Bitcoin is mined, but without the competition between different miners) therefore the work required for the same return is increased over time.

Though the KOINOS team tell us they want to large level of decentralisation, I wonder how decentralised the KOINOS blockchain will be in the end. Four days into the mining project, we can see a few addresses mining a tremendous amount of KOIN. I've seen at least one individual around throwing a lot of money and a whole LOT of computer resources at it and taking in a large part of the minted KOIN.

Having access to AWS engineers (colleagues at my place of work), I was (maybe still am) thinking of doing something similar: Get a shitload of CPU cores and start massive mining. That said, I should've done this in the first 24hrs, since when the rewards 4 days into the mining project, already decreased with a factor 3 to 4, I wonder how profitable mining really is.

In the end it all depends on the value of KOIN when it gets to the exchanges. In the coming 180 days (176 days by now), 100 Million KOIN will be minted. When KOINOS can deliver on their promisses, it should be possible to reach a 100 Million dollar market cap easily. This basically means, 1$ per KOIN. Far off from the current market price of 3 to 4ct set at Uniswap.

Remember, current market price through Uniswap is determined by a super low liquidity, so therefore it does not represent the real market price.

That said, we have a team making promisses, without any technology being available as we speak. They may deliver, or they may not deliver. Thats the question. I bet they will! :)

In the end, it's like investing in some cool concept. Investing in concepts only, is something very risky.

That said, I do like to take a risk now and then :) What about you?

^{created by text giraffe (source)}

NJOY

a HIVE original
_{all images by edje unless stated otherwise}

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Experiences from a None Tech Early Day Miner | incl Guidebook to everything about and around KOINOS

IN A NUTSHELL

HOW COOL IS THAT!?

MY ASSESSMENT

USEFUL KOINOS LINKS

NJOY