The Divi project, taking the stress out of sending crypto to a random string of numbers by providing password protection on receipt and custom address naming and picture.
What is the Divi project
Every time you send a crypto transaction you have to triple and even quadruple check all the addresses and pages. You then send off your transaction into the abyss waiting for it to show up at the receiving end as a pending transaction or completed transaction. That can be a pretty tense moment that can take anywhere from minutes to hours and has had me second guessing myself many a time.
What the Divi project aims to do is remove all of this stress and complication by hiding some of the nuts and bolts from the users and breaking it down into something more simple.
https://www.diviproject.org/ - Webapge
https://diviproject.org/files/Divi-WP-2.pdf - White paper
The Divi project will do this by offering many unique features that should have been a staple from the get go on bitcoin. Wallet addresses can be customized so you can remember your address. You can also associate a picture with your address. So anyone can instantly recognize you and your address when doing transactions. You will also be able to password protect transactions. So if you send a transaction both parties will see it has arrived and the password can be requested and input to conclude the transaction. For example my address might be EvilmonkeyDivi instead of a random string of numbers.
It will be a cross between proof of stake and masternodes with Tiers allowing those with a very small amount of divi to also run a node. It will have one click masternode installation.
This is the core of Divi but it is much more. On the surface you may think it sounds less secure but the opposite is true once you read how Divi works.
User app
The app will be where everything is controlled. By default the most complicated settings and crypto phrases would not be visible in Divi to make it easier for new users to understand crypto.
Everything will be displayed so you should never need to pull up a calculator. You will be able to display in whatever currency you want and possibly even multiple currencies at once (hint hint devs). There will be features that allow you to store left over fractions in a savings bank or donate to charities( Divi will have some charity features built into it).
New users will be guided by simple terms that can either be expanded or hovered over to get a more detailed explanation (hopefully this makes it into the app as it was just a discussion I had with one of the devs at this point).
Hopefully the app will also cater to advanced users and have an advanced mode.
It will be available on mobile and desktop versions.
Masternodes
Divi has a very unique approach to masternodes. There will be tiers with small bonuses for running higher tier nodes. This allows even small players to run a Tier one masternode. Nodes will not require static IP's. They also plan to have a very very simple masternode setup that anyone can do with only a few clicks called The MOCCI (Masternode One Click Cloud Install). This is complete and ready to go but needs testing once the blockchain is live.
The nodes and staking(POS) also run a lottery system where 11 lucky people per week will win a bonus of 250 DIVX and one will win 2500 DIVX. This is a work in progress and they want the lottery to be a per account rather than how many tokens you are holding and the exact details will be worked out during the beta stages.
Other cool features
- Pockets
Divi will have something called pockets. So you can have your main address which is visible to the world but not necessarily linked to you if you don't want it to be. Just like any other blockchain, you can scan it and see the activity but the person controlling that is anonymous unless they make themselves known. Then you can have private hidden pockets that no one can see inside. The details around this are yet to be decided as the tech behind this might require a closed encrypted sidechain or something similar.
- Searchable addresses.
Want to find say a shop or company. Search for it and find it by its name. It will display things like user ratings, links etc (I assume kind of like google does) is it verified etc so people cant setup fake shops and address.
- Chat with owners of wallets.
Initially it will forward basic info like an email address but eventually a real time chat would be incorporated. This is totally optional and you would be able to disable this feature.
- Oraclet System
Field for future features. Currently you can put things like tiny URL in there so there is extra info linked to your wallet should someone search you try to make a deposit to your address.
- API
Connection to major exchanges for converting DIVI to other coins. (If Divi supported multi wallet functions this would open up even more doors).
- Request Money / Billing
Send or schedule messages within the wallet with
a link so a contact can easily pay you, and even pre-decide what pocket you
want the money deposited into.
- Auto Split
When money comes in, you can have have it automatically
re-distributed to other wallets or pockets according to preset percentages.
Great for business partners.
- Taxes
Using the Auto Split feature, you can have the taxes for the products
you sell automatically split off into a separate pocket.
- Piggy Bank
Want to save money for something special? Automatically
set a small portion of your income into a pocket that even YOU can’t
access until a future date.
- Scheduled payments.
Could be used to pay for things like subscriptions etc.
Feature they need to add
If you could do this with say an ERC20 supported transaction for automatically sending a transaction to an ICO so you don't have to be awake at stupid hours of the night. Again relies on multi wallet integration and supporting this function would require extra development. This is more wishful thinking on my part rather than a current feature. I have searched and not really come up with a solution for this. Though it could be quite easily implemented by other platforms also.
Roadmap
Blockchain and tokens
The Divi Project is a decentralized Proof Of Stake (POS) and masternode protocol/cryptocurrency and ecosystem. So you can earn tokens by staking in your wallet or by running a masternode.
You will able to use Divi to spend in online markets and fees will be generated every time you make a transaction. You will also use it to do various premium options such as customizing your addresses. Divi will be using a portion of the ICO funding as incentive to get online stores to use it. They already have tentative partnership deals with a few online stores.
Many of these will be exclusive to Divi which will attract new users. The plan is to have cool and unique stuff that you can only buy with Divi. Pretty cool idea if they can pull it off. The past experience of some of the team members will be invaluable here.Divi are building their own blockchain which will be completely open source. They are not a fork of any particular blockchain but use several as building blocks such as Pivx and namecoin. I asked the question and it would be very difficult to build this on the Ethereum network or any other network. Personally I think Neo would actually probably be the easiest one because of its flexibility. But having their own blockchain technology makes it that much harder for someone to copy their ideas.
DIVI and DIVX, what is the difference? The ICO will be run on the Ethereum network and DIVX will be an ERC20 token. When the Divi blockchain is complete you will be able to trade DivX for Divi 1:1 when the blockchain goes live.
DivX tokens will be burnt when you exchange this is direct from the Devs and is not yet in the white paper as of writing this.
ICO Token Sale and Fund Distribution
The Divi Project tokens distribution plan. ERC20 compliant tokens on the Ethereum
blockchain via a smart contract.
• DIVX tokens will be created at the point of contribution.
• Additional tokens, based on 20% of the total sold, will be created
and held by The Divi Project treasury, for founders, team members,
brand ambassadors, and Adoption projects and incentives.
So essentially 20% of the max supply will go to founders and influencers and 80% to ICO contributors.
• Minimum: 5000 Ether - If for some reason we don’t reach this
minimum target, we will return all tokens to the participants.
• Maximum Cap: 100,000 Ether - If the sale reaches the cap, the sale
will close. (or 30 million USD).
Note all dates are based on estimates as the token sale due to the nature of the sale so they maybe out by a few days. Refer to the website to see actual dates.
Token Sale (Oct 12 - Nov 11)
Phase 1 (Oct 12 - 21)
1 Ether = 500 DIVX + 30% bonus = 650 DIVX
= 0.0015384 Ether per DIVX
= $0.46 at US$300/Ether
Phase 2 (Oct 22 - Nov 1)
1 Ether = 500 DIVX + 15% bonus = 575 DIVX
= 0.0017391 Ether per DIVX
= $0.52 at US$300/Ether
Final Phase (Nov 2-11)
1 Ether = 500 DIVX
= 0.002 Ether per DIVX
= $0.60 at US$300/Ether
Private Funding
There was a small private funding stage open only to a very small amount of people to raise somewhere around $200,000 for early expenditure. It follows the same
Fund Distribution
See whitepaper for details as the fund distribution is just a guide and can change slightly at anytime.
Concerns
Security
There really is a small red flag around named an identifiable addresses. Eventually there will be ties to real people and their accounts and they could become targets. But that is personal choice. The level of security is optional. It is all about utilizing pockets and how you use your smart addresses and how much you store in there. Ultimately you can have a custom address that has no links back to you if you prefer.
Roadmap and timeline
There is a 6 month waiting period from the ICO to when the blockchain is ready. This is an issue and a major downside to the Divi project. People start to lose interest after a few months. The roadmap needs to be updated with more details to show what progress is planned over this 6 month period including alpha and beta releases and what these beta releases show.
The ICO
Personally I don't think the Divi project know what investors want from an ICO. It really shows in some areas, and they should have gotten more advice. Bonus periods should be very clear and not activate on blocks. They should be at an exact time period. This can all be hidden on the website I guess but it is not ideal and just adds complication.
Because the coins are minted via smart contract as you purchase them they are kind of locked into this method.
Most ICO will pre mint and burn left over coins or mint at the end of the ICO.
No Vesting period is a major red flag. This allows founders and advisers to instantly cash out when the coin hits exchanges as they hold insider knowledge. This could technically happen using exchanges like Etherdelta right from the get go.
If the advisers, influencers and founders believe in Divi they will assign a vesting period. A cash out is very unlikely and if the team is serious it won't happen at all. But if it did happen it could create a cascade. This is often looked at as a double cash grab if some of the team are paid from ICO funds as well as holding tokens. I am not 100% clear on the distribution etc.
The likely hood of this being an issue is small. Check out their videos and you can quickly see the sincerity behind the team and it is in their best interest to succeed.
Divi would be traceable on Etherscan so you can see what is going on. Some of this will be distributed to advisers and influences so you would want to see at least half of it untouched while it is Divx and similar to when it changes to Divx.
Update from the Divi Team: Vesting period is being looked into.
Adoption
While staking and masternodes is cool and will generate a huge amount of interest. Divi needs a use beyond transferring Divi around and generating coins. But I believe their model will be adopted by most masternode systems going forward and will become the new benchmark for masternode coins.
The suggested use would be in online markets to buy stuff. There is already some pretty cool online payment systems in the works. For Divi to compete with them would be a big undertaking. Currently they have a large budget (6 million) allocated from the ICO funds to incentivize existing online merchants to adopt them as a payment method. They also have a few already lined up ready adopt their syste. This is a great strategy to get adoption but I am not convinced it is enough.
It would require heavy adoption for the nodes and POS to be profitable and the eco system to function. It wouldn't be too difficult to work it out and they give an example in the white paper of the value of the coin being at 1$ which is around 2x the ICO price.
Personally I think getting multi wallet working on their platform and eventually getting it working so others can easily integrate into their ecosystem is the key to making Divi successful and achieving mass adoption. It could almost make Divi a game changer with the mass adoption of smart addresses. This will allow anyone to use whatever currency they want within the Divi ecosystem as long as the market supports it. It would also allow for advanced transactions and functions.
This would prove challenging as the concept of Divi is to make it valuable because people will want to use it to buy things. I honestly can't see this taking off until mass adoption is achieved unless there is other reasons to use the platform (such as custom addresses for other coins). It's value is in the customization of addresses, safe sending methods. Being able to bring this to other popular coins would be huge.
One of the founders mentioned to me that this wont matter soon because of Atomic drops. I am not so sure about this as atomic drops will still require a platform to pass through which will deduct fees. That platform would have to be integrated into your platform which would then probably mean issues with the smart address system. Supporting multiple coins even if it was just the top five in the interim should be pretty simple. If Divi as a payment method did take off having multi wallet could also mean very simple cheaper conversion to Divi via a simple a exchange within the ecosystem which would reduce the fees required to convert using API and the transaction fees associated. This would only be possible with a multi wallet setup. This is not part of the plan currently and is just me thinking out loud.
Scope
Very big project. Do they have enough talent and staff? By the looks around 5-7 Devs which is actually bigger than many other ICO's with large ambitions. The ICO is required to bring on additional dev staff . They ideally want to bring on several more development staff and they have confirmed ICO funds will be used to do this. At the time of writing this more dev staff were added.
With a successful ICO they should not have issues here.
Token supply and price
Current Eth price = $300 USD. Token price as of today will be 46-60 cents. Which is actually on the higher end of the scale as far as tokens sales go and will turn off some investors.
To avoid fractions they could also start using micro Divi on the platform which is pretty simple UI change if required. EG 1000 micro divi = 1 Divi.
The max amount of tokens is unknown. It will be somewhere around 1.5 million and 65 million depending on how well the token sale goes for ICO purchases. The total will be 20% more on top of the total sold.
Cold storage
Security is a huge focus for Divi coin. The eco system current runs as pure liquidity. I am kind of worried about this or I didn't ask the right people the right questions. If a multi wallet solution was implemented this would needs to be heavily considered. There is a vault feature that could potentially be cold storage but the details are vague.
The upside is that the nodes control everything so if the founders are not doing a good job they can be outvoted. I didn't really dig into this question though so you will have to DYOR.
The Team
Noteable team members:
Ramez Naam, Michael Greenwood, and Nils Lahr. All ex Microsoft devs/team leaders.
Tim Sanders - ex CSO of Yahoo.
Toni Lane Casserly - Publicist - Co-Founder of CoinTelegraph
Mystery blockchain lead Dev: Currently under NDA as he is still working for another company. Will be revealed after the ICO.
The team looks ok. Nothing amazing but also nothing alarming. They have a few well known players and the Mystery Dev is kind of exciting.
The wallet looks to be the major dev requirement. The blockchain should require far less time.
The CEO Geoff was amazing and answered all my questions like a pro and very quickly. You can find them all on linked in a google.
Token Supply
The total supply on Divi increases a certain amount every few years. This is controllable and will limit masternode and staking profits. It all comes back to mass adoption.
As long as adoption levels are overtaking production levels there is profits to be made.
Questions and answers
Custom addresses
I personally want the address that is just my name, for example "John". I asked this questions and I am pretty sure they had not fully considered this. Three letter addresses will be prize possessions, names will be prize possessions. I asked what were the minimum requirements and there probably is none. You could have the address x. Foreign characters like Chinese could be supported eventually. I also asked can I please reserve apple and Microsoft (as a joke). There will 100% be premium prices linked to some of these addresses. I am not sure how I feel about that. Personally I think apple and Microsoft should have no legal dibs on those addresses. That is the point of blockchain. You will have to pay to reserve an address to avoid people spamming and reserving the good ones.
I think I asked too many good questions because when asking them it was turned around as though they had already thought of that. "oh yes our dev person xx was talking to me about this the other day" ... it's possible I guess. I have other ideas but I will keep them to myself for now. But also their team has thought of the many many possibilities and outcomes and I was impressed.
"The governance system will assign human beings that make decisions about certain things, and will have the codes to various addresses where payments would go. Our masternode holders will really have to work for their money. But, with the 5-tiered system we may decide to assign various tasks to a single tier".
Spoofing
Can this be easily spoofed? Can someone easily copy my picture then make a new address from Divi110Evilmonkey and change it to Divi11OEvilmonkey, and somehow knows one of my friends and how to contact them outside of the divi network. I think yes and no. There is simple measures that counter this and fraud is likely to be rare, but is certainly is possible.
KYC
I think KYC has a massive role to play in this network. It is the next step in creating secure transfer. Verify you are who you say you are. Enable or disable this and get extra bonus and privileges for doing so. Totally optional and you wouldn't have to display who you were but at least you are verified should you do anything illegal. Obviously most users will not be keen but businesses will be 100% sure to get involved.
Address names would be similar to website renewals. You would have to keep paying to keep it active. You would want this to be reasonably priced and you would want something over say 8-10 characters to be next to free.
Multi Wallet Support
This is the dea lbreaker and the clincher of whether Divi will be successful or not right here. Divi thinks they can pull it all off with just Divi, I am not so confident.
Multiwallet support of the major crypto coins staring with Eth/BTC as the mostly likely ones. Within the divi ecosystem this will allow you to send ETH using password protection and unique addresses etc. The downside is the receiver will have to support this function via being a part of divi themselves. Which actually seems kind of trivial as if the users want it big exchanges will have to support it, but that creates a new problem where unique addresses will expand at an alarming rate.
There is many options for implementation of this. Divi could provide a simple tool that would create address automatically for users based on a users preference. For Example on bittrex I may have my Divi tool settings set to name any new wallets EvilMonkeyBittrex11998"COINNAME" So whenever I create a new address in bittrex it creates the standard address and also creates a new Divi address EvilMonkeyBittrex11998Ethereum as an example and this is linked back to the divi eco system. I would also be able to link a picture and hopefully password protection as well. It would be private. So if you wanted to send ETH to bittrex you could do it with password protection and picture + Name. You would still be able to send and receive using standard wallet addresses such as 0x320897423807xc87cx8vx etc. Obviously these would be hidden and you can only see them when logging into the various exchanges. This would come much later in the project if at all.
Competition
Bitquence
Another similar platform would be Bitquence which has some very similar ideas. Their selling point is going to be a universal wallet. This is currently in development. If they can pull it off it could be a major competitor as they plan to implement similar features. Though they are not planning any kind of smart addresses but you will be able to send transactions to friends via a simple facebook type contact, text or email.
UTRUST
There is several similar coins to Utrust but I mention it as it looks to be the best of them all. They are basically a better cheaper version of paypal + crytpo. They are currently in ICO stage right now but they are solely working on the payment method and nothing else. I think divi has a big project ahead of them to match what Utrust is doing. They could run a more simplified version that would still function.
Conclusion
Huge review. The Divi project is pretty exciting. I like everything about it except it is going to take 6 months to get here.
I am waiting for a more detailed road map and to see what we might get access to over that 6 month period perhaps alpha/beta access to the blockchain.
There are a few reasons not to invest such as the timeline but this is really biggest off putting thing for me.
I personally will likely invest. This is a very detailed review but they are adding more details daily.
The team is very open and active on slack and telegram. They have only JUST started advertising and releasing information about their ICO so you may not find too much on google as they have been flying under the radar.
Disclaimer
I am not advising for or against buying into the Divi project. That is for you to decide after you do your own research. My reasons for buying or not buying might differ from yours.