Enjin Coin is a cryptocurrency for virtual goods created by Enjin. Enjin is the “largest gaming community platform online” with over 250,000 gaming communities and 18.7 million registered gamers.
The Enjin team is designing the coin completely around gaming with the goal of it being the most usable cryptocurrency for the industry. The project includes the Enjin Coin as well as a suite of software development kits (SDKs) that developers can integrate into their games and communities. Bringing blockchain to gaming helps to reduce the high fees and fraud that’s prevalent in the transfer of virtual goods.
Enjin Coin is an ERC20 token built on the Ethereum network. With that, the project not only acts as a cryptocurrency but also has smart contract capabilities. It’s also one of the first projects testing the Raiden Network, Ethereum’s version of the Lightning Network.The Enjin Coin platform provides a laundry list of features through its public API and SDKs. To keep things brief, though, we’ll only be discussing a few of the major ones in this article.
Virtual Goods
The largest value Enjin Coin brings to the gaming community is in its creation and management of virtual goods. Developers on each platform can easily create a currency unique to their community that’s backed by Enjin Coin as the parent currency. This gives the coins all the benefits of the blockchain (speed, cost, security, etc…) while still staying customized to their respective platforms.
Because each asset is recorded on a single Registry smart contract, all EnjinSmart Wallets recognize them. And, you can exchange virtual goods for Enjin Coins at any time. This creates an interconnected ecosystem of games and communities in which you can even transfer assets across platforms (more on this below).
Beyond currencies, this functionality also applies to privilege tokens as well as unique game items like swords or attack attributes.
Enjin Coin Ecosystem
Payment Gateway
Additionally, the Enjin Coin SDK includes a decentralized payment gateway. The gateway is robust, allowing you to create customized carts, invoices, refunds, etc., on top of it. It also provides a widget to accept Enjin Coin and/or Customized Coin payments on your website.
The payment gateway only charges a small fee in Ethereum on each transaction – nothing additional.
Utilizing functionality from the Smart Wallet, you, as a user, can set up automatic payments to games and websites that you list as a Trusted Platform. This adds faster and more trustworthy payments to normal subscription services.
Enjin Crypto Wallet
Smart Wallet
The Enjin Smart Wallet is the component that connects everything together. The wallet supports the virtual goods from every one of your Trusted Platforms and is synced to your Ethereum address.
You’re able to trade coins and items outside of the gaming environment to any other user with a Smart Wallet. Through the wallet, you send transactions via a Transaction Request that the other party can either approve or deny. On top of that, you can also set rules and thresholds to automatically prevent undesired transactions.
Efinity
At the start of 2018, the Enjin Coin team announced plans for Efinity, a channel network solution to help Enjin scale more effectively. Efinity, like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, consists of numerous game channels in which a game can perform a near infinite amount of transactions quickly and with almost zero cost.
Other Features
Beyond these three features, Enjin Coin also includes virtual goods stores, subscription services, trading escrows, and “top lists” for items, servers, teams, and/or games.
Enjin Coin (ENJ) Supply
There’s a total supply of 1 billion Enjin Coins (ENJ) with just over 760 million currently in circulation. The team distributed 80 percent of ENJ to crowdsale participants and split the remaining tokens between themselves, advisors, and incentive programs.
When users create custom assets, the corresponding value in ENJ is removed from the ecosystem decreasing the circulating supply. This, in turn, should increase the value of individual ENJ tokens.
Enjin Coin Team & Progress
Enjin, the company behind Enjin Coin, is the largest online gaming community creation platform. Started in 2009, the company receives 60 million views per month and transacts millions of U.S. dollars each month in their community stores. The team is deploying Enjin Coin across the entire Enjin CMS platform – over 250,000 gaming websites.
Advisors to the project consist of Anthony Diiorio (Ethereum co-founder) and Pat LaBine (previous producer and technical director at Bioware). Enjin has also formed partnerships with Unity, PC Gamer, and NRG eSports.
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The team held a successful ICO in late 2017 in which they raised ~$35 million between the private and public rounds. Although it’s still a relatively young project, the team spent the last quarter of 2017 building the Platform API, Mobile Smart Wallet, and a Java SDK alongside creating a Minecraft plugin. They were busy in 2018 as well, creating various platform plugins, Efinitiy, numerous other SDKs, and the EnjinX blockchain explorer.
No project has dominated this market yet. Enjin Coin’s largest competitors are GameCredits and WAX, but there are significant differences between them. According to Enjin CMO Elija Rolovic, Enjin Coin is the “Ethereum of Gaming” while the competitors are just simply “tokenizing their centralized games/marketplaces.”
The Enjin team hasn’t published a 2019 roadmap yet.
Trading
Enjin Coin has had a fairly predictable trading run since its launch in November 2017. It followed the market with a huge run up in December and early January 2018 before falling throughout 2018 to its current price of about ~$0.038 (~0.0000096 BTC). The ENJ price saw a few convergent spikes in mid to late January as well as February and April, but these don’t seem to be related to any news in particular. We can probably chalk up these movements to overall market trends.
In a more bullish market, additional partnership announcements and product releases may lead to an increase in the price. And, of course, more people using Enjin Coin in online gaming should positively affect the price as well.
Where to Buy ENJ
You can purchase ENJ with BTC and ETH on Binance. It’s also traded on Liqui and Kucoin but with much less volume.
If you don’t own any Bitcoin or Ethereum, you should first buy some with U.S. dollars on a platform like GDAX (now Coinbase Pro).
Where to Store ENJ
Because it’s an ERC20 token, you have plenty of options on where to store ENJ. A popular online option is MyEtherWallet while the Ledger Nano S is a solid choice for a hardware wallet.
Ideally, though, you should use the official Enjin Wallet. It’s available for Android and iOS mobile devices. Other than ENJ, you’re also able to store BTC, ETH, LTC, as well as all ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 tokens in the wallet. The team will continue to add support for other altcoins too.
Conclusion
Enjin Coin is adding the benefits of blockchain to the over $17 billion virtual goods market. The team is working to prevent fraud in the gaming industry and provide true ownership to virtual goods holders. Created and backed by gaming giant Enjin, the project has a solid foundation of support.
However, Enjin still has much to prove. It’s impossible to predict how successful it will be, but if it’s current achievements and team are any indicator, Enjin Coin could have a bright future ahead.
Civic is a personal identity verification protocol that leverages distributed ledger technology to better manage digital identities. As with blockchain projects focusing on quality verification for consumer products, Civic envisions a safer, cheaper, more efficient identity verification method for individuals and industries around the globe.
Imagine how many times you’ve had to go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process. Whenever you apply for a new job, open a bank account, or participate in an ICO, you have to submit proof of identity and wait for it to be verified. Depending on the service, this could take days or weeks, as organizations have to spend the time and resources authenticating this information with outdated systems.
Civic offers a new-age solution to this problem, one where a single input of your personal identity information allows any organization or service to cross-check it on the blockchain without asking you to provide the same data twice–personal identity verification that is transferable from one service to another.
In this Civic guide, we cover what you need to know, including:
Civic’s network accommodates three different–but interdependent–entities: users, validators, and service providers. The users are anyone who wishes to use the protocol to register an identity. Civic makes this easy and safe with its Secure Identity app.
Validators are responsible for verifying an identity’s authenticity on the blockchain’s distributed ledger. They can then sell this information to service providers who need to verify their customer’s identities, exchanging the data for CVC. Civic is built on the Ethereum blockchain and uses smart contracts to oversee data attestation and payout for this work.
Secure Identity App
To get started with Civic, you need to download the Secure Identity app, either in its mobile or web form (or both). Setting up the application, you enter a variety of personal identity information, including your name, address, social security or tax identification number, passport number, driver’s license, etc. Without utilizing usernames and password, multi-factor biometrics, such as fingerprint scan, secure the application to keep it fully in your control.
The application also encrypts personal information with a private key issued by a third party wallet. This encryption provides a buffer between Civic and its users, giving you the peace of mind that Civic won’t access personal identity info without your consent.
In fact, Civic doesn’t store any personal information on the blockchain directly. Instead, it stores attestations of this information for reference. Storing references to the data instead of the data itself ensures that you are always in control of your own sensitive identity information while also providing proof that the validators have confirmed the authenticity of your data.
Civic Security Measures
Secure Identity Platform and Ecosystem
As we went over earlier, validators and service providers make up the other half of the network. Whereas the Civic app accommodates users on the front-end, validators and providers are responsible for back-end services. These services include identity attestation and KYC confirmation.
Civic Identity System
Validators are responsible for verifying identities for the network, both on the blockchain and for service providers. If you want to submit personal identifying information to a service provider (e.g., an exchange, a bank, etc.), you submit the relevant info from your Civic app to a validation contract. These smart contracts act as escrow services for the transaction and provide validators with the identity data. After attesting that the information is authentic, the validators hash it onto the network.
Something to note: a validator could be the service provider itself, and for a user identity’s first commit to the network, it likely would be. Moreover, in order to confirm a user’s identity, validators need to crosscheck their information with some other source (e.g., public records, financial records). A government, for example, would provide a wealth of information as an identity authenticator.
CVC Token and Civic Marketplace (Identity)
Once a validator verifies identity information, other service providers can buy access rights to this information on behalf of a user with CVC, Civic’s utility token. Validators can also sell rights to the information, with the user’s consent, on the Civic Marketplace, recently branded Identity. When a service provider pays for identity information, the CVC is placed in a validation contract. And, once the validator provides proof of the identity information, both it and the user receive CVC in return. This service is flexible, too, as validators can pick and choose which information to verify per a service provider’s request.
Say a service provider, like a credit score company, needs access to a client’s credit history and bank account information. After communicating with the user, the service provider would submit a data request to a prior validator, maybe a credit card company, bank, or other financial institution. This validator would retrieve the hash for the requested information from the blockchain to attest it with the information that the client currently provides. If everything checks out, the validator is paid for these services (as is the user) and the service provider approves the client’s identity.
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Civic Team and Roadmap
Co-founder and CEO Vinny Lingham is a serial entrepreneur with over ten years of e-commerce experience. A member of the Bitcoin Foundation, he’s also one of the sharks on Shark Tank South Africa.
Jonathan Smith, the project’s CTO and co-founder, has more than 15 years of experience with developing, technical analytics, and management for entities like Deloitte and RBS.
Civic Founders
Civic already has a working product in its web and mobile app. And if you wanted to today, you could submit information to the network for attestation–so long as there’s a validator to verify it. In the 3rd quarter of 2018, the team rebranded the Civic Marketplace to Identity as well as implemented smart contracts and added support for fiat rates.
It seems that the team’s focus has shifted from the core Civic offering to the Identity marketplace. The roadmap for the final quarter of 2018 included open-sourcing Identity and providing a Validator Toolkit. However, it appears that neither of those tasks has been accomplished yet.
In 2019, the team plans to create Requester and Credential Wallet Toolkits. And, their ultimate goal is to have Identity fully launched sometime in the second quarter.
Competitors
Because Civic is an identity management solution, it’s two largest blockchain competitors are SelfKey (KEY) and THEKEY (TKY). As you probably figured out, Civic’s biggest differentiator from the other two is the absence of the word key from its name. Jokes aside, even though all three projects focus on identity management, they go about it in different ways.
Civic and SelfKey utilize the Ethereum blockchain while THEKEY sits atop NEO. It should come as no surprise, then, that THEKEY is more focused on the Asian market than the other two. Civic also emphasizes the use of biometrics which the other two competitors don’t share.
Trading
The CVC token trading history has been disappointing, even considering the current bear market. After reaching $0.65 (~0.000183 BTC), its all-time high BTC value, one short month after launching, its done nothing but fallen. Although CVC’s USD value rose during the 2017 bull market, its BTC value didn’t come anywhere near its former high, demonstrating a poorer performance than the rest of the market.
Even the project’s highly publicized (and most likely expensive) purchase of Identity.com in July 2018 couldn’t help the price. The CVC price is currently trading around $0.05 (~0.0000141 BTC). LineCandleOHLCpowered byUSDEURCNYGBPIndexExtStockP2PB2B1D1W1M3M1YALLValue$0.5243Mar 31AprApr 08Apr 12Apr 16Apr 20Apr 240.400.450.500.550.600.650.70 Volume$2,871.51Mar 31AprApr 08Apr 12Apr 16Apr 20Apr 240100,000200,000 Mar 31AprApr 08Apr 12Apr 16Apr 20Apr 24
CVC derives its value from activity on the Identity marketplace. Until this product goes live, it’s difficult to see the price gaining any traction. However, news of a partnership with a notable corporation or government entity could give this project the kickstart it needs.
Where to Buy CVC
Binance dominates the CVC market, accounting for almost 50 percent of the token’s 24-hour volume in either BTC or ETH. Bittrex and Huobi are two other popular options.
Where to Store CVC
As an ERC20 token, you can store CVC in an Ethereum wallet. Your choices include MyEtherWallet, Ledger Nano S, Trezor, and MetaMask, to name a few.
Final Thoughts
With Civic, reusable KYC and personal identity information could streamline identity verification for any relevant service. Service providers don’t have to expend the effort and money to verify a user’s identity. As long as a validator on the network has done the legwork for them, they only need to pay a fee in Civic to have the information process in real time. Users also don’t have to recommit the same information to different organizations in tireless succession–saving additional time and effort.
Behind all of this is the promise of greater identity security and integrity. The Civic app’s encryption and biometric locking mechanisms give users complete control over their identities, while the blockchain’s own encryption and distributed nature keep this information free from theft and exposure without user consent.
Formerly known as Matic Network, Polygon is an interoperability and scaling framework for building Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
It is still centered around the MATIC token, which is used for governance, staking, and gas fees.
In February 2021, Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution Matic Network rebranded as Polygon—an interoperable blockchain scaling framework.
Here, we’ll explore what Polygon has set out to achieve, and how it differs from blockchain interoperability projects such as Polkadot and Cosmos.
What is Polygon?
Previously known as Matic Network, Polygon is a framework for building interconnected blockchain networks.
It seeks to address some of Ethereum’s major limitations—including its throughput, poor user experience (high speed and delayed transactions), and lack of community governance—using a novel sidechain solution.
Rather than being a simple scaling solution like its predecessor Matic Network—which uses a technology known as Plasma to process transactions off-chain before finalizing them on the Ethereum main chain—Polygon is designed to be an entire platform designed for launching interoperable blockchains.
Through Polygon, developers can launch preset blockchain networks with attributes tailored to their needs. These can be further customized with a growing range of modules, which allow developers to create sovereign blockchains with more specific functionality. https://www.youtube.com/embed/PKw0RTT1Hp4?autoplay=0&mute=0&controls=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co&playsinline=1&showinfo=0&rel=0&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&enablejsapi=1&widgetid=1
How does Polygon work?
Polygon’s architecture can best be defined as a four-layer system composed of the Ethereum layer, security layer, Polygon networks layer, and execution layer.
The Ethereum layer is essentially a set of smart contracts which are implemented on Ethereum. These smart contracts handle things like transaction finality, staking, and communication between Ethereum and the various Polygon chains. The security layer runs side by side with Ethereum and provides a “validators as a service” role which allows chains to benefit from an additional layer of security. Both the Ethereum and Security layers are optional.
Did you know?
A sidechain is a semi-independent blockchain that works in tandem with an associated ‘main chain’—usually to improve its speed or capabilities.
Beyond this, there are two mandatory layers. The first is the Polygon networks layer, which is the ecosystem of blockchain networks built on Polygon. Each of these has its own community and is responsible for handling local consensus and producing blocks. The second is the Execution layer, which is Polygon’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) implementation used for executing smart contracts.
Chains launched on Polygon are capable of communicating both with one another and with the Ethereum main chain thanks to Polygon’s arbitrary message passing capabilities. This will enable a variety of new use-cases, such as interoperable decentralized applications (dapps) and the simple exchange of value between diverse platforms.
Polygon: Ethereum’s Internet of Blockchains
Polygon is designed to facilitate a future where different blockchains no longer operate as closed-off siloes and proprietary communities, but instead as networks that fit into a broader interconnected landscape.
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Its long-term goal is to enable an open, borderless world in which users can seamlessly interact with decentralized products and services without first having to navigate through intermediaries or walled gardens. It aims to create a hub that different blockchains can easily plug into, while simultaneously overcoming some of their individual limitations—such as high fees, poor scalability, and limited security.
Polygon uses a variety of technologies to achieve this expanded vision, these include:
POS Chain: Polygon’s main chain is an Ethereum sidechain known as the Matic POS Chain, which adds a proof-of-stake (POS) security layer to blockchains launched on Polygon.
Plasma Chains: Polygon makes use of a scaling technology known as Plasma to move assets between the root chain and child chains via Plasma bridges.
ZK-rollups: An alternative scaling solution used to bundle a large number of transfers off-chain into a single transaction, using zero-knowledge proofs for the final public record on the Ethereum main chain.
Optimistic rollups: A solution that runs on top of Ethereum to facilitate near-instant transactions through the use of “fraud proofs”.
As you might have noticed, Polygon intends to incorporate more than one scaling solution, in keeping with its goal of minimizing barriers to entry by attempting to reduce transaction fees to a bare minimum. By taking a multi-pronged approach to the issue of scaling, Polygon is hedging its bets, should any other scaling solution fail to accomplish its purpose.
What’s so special about it?
The Polygon project is one of the more recent attempts at blockchain interoperability and scaling, and is designed to address some of the perceived limitations of interoperability projects such as Polkadot and Cosmos.
For one, it’s compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which makes it approachable to those accustomed to building apps on Ethereum and programming in Solidity; its rival Cosmos uses a WASM-based virtual machine.
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For another, Polygon’s shared security model is entirely optional; sovereign platforms don’t need to sacrifice any independence or flexibility for the sake of additional security if it is not needed. It also claims to be flexible enough to incorporate any scalability solution—beyond the current Plasma chains, ZK-rollups, and optimistic rollups planned.
A variety of projects have already been launched that make use of Polygon’s scaling technology, including:
💱 EasyFi – a decentralized borrowing and lending platform with support for undercollateralized loans.
🃏 Aavegotchi – a DeFi trading game based around non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
What is MATIC token?
Although Polygon has dramatically expanded on the vision laid out by Matic Network, it still uses the same utility token, known as MATIC.
The MATIC token is used for a variety of purposes in the Polygon ecosystem, including participating in network governance by voting on Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs), contributing to security through staking, as well as paying gas fees.
As of March 2021, it hasn’t yet been clarified whether the MATIC token will have any additional utility in the broader vision of Polygon.
Where and How to Buy MATIC
The MATIC token is currently one of the top 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and benefits from excellent liquidity. It is available to purchase and trade on a large number of cryptocurrency exchanges, including tier 1 platforms like Coinbase Pro, Binance, Huobi Global, and Poloniex, as well as the popular decentralized exchange Uniswap.
If you’re looking to get your hands on some MATIC, here’s how you do it using Binance—one of the exchanges with the highest liquidity for the asset. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll show you how to buy MATIC using your debit or credit card.
Step 1: First, you’re going to need to either create a Binance account or log in to your pre-existing account.
Step 2: Once logged in, hover over the ‘Buy Crypto’ option at the top of the site, and select the Credit/Debit Card option.
Image: Binance
Step 3: On the right, choose your payment currency and enter the amount you want to spend on MATIC. Then, select MATIC from the list of available cryptocurrencies in the drop-down menu.
Once you’re happy with your order details, click the ‘Buy MATIC’ button.
Image: Binance
Step 4: If you haven’t already completed identity verification, you’ll need to complete it now. Follow the on-screen steps to get your identity verified.
This process will usually take just minutes, after which you’ll see the payment screen shown below.
Image: Binance
Step 5: For the last step, enter your payment details and click the ‘Pay now’ button. Your order will then be processed at the best available rate, and your MATIC will be delivered straight to your Binance account wallet.
That’s it! You’re now the proud owner of MATIC.
The future
The race is on to be the first interoperability solution to go fully live. Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain and Plasma scaling solution are live, but developers can’t yet launch their own standalone or shared security chains on Polygon until these features are released. Likewise, neither ZK-rollups nor optimistic rollups have been launched on the network, with Plasma currently the only scaling solution available on Polygon.
Polygon’s rivals are also rushing to go live with their offerings. As of March 2021, Polkadot has yet to launch public parachains; and while Cosmos’ Stargate upgrade has seen the launch of its Interblockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), it won’t become fully operational until IBC transactions are enabled on the network.
🔥 We are thrilled to announce @OPTprotocol‘s first product, OpenMarket, will launch on Polygon!
🔮 OpenMarket enables anyone to speculate on virtually anything, combined with an intuitive UI that is designed to promote social interactions and a built-in AMM all under one roof. pic.twitter.com/DuerqnlH67
— Polygon (previously Matic) (@0xPolygon) March 5, 2021
Given that Polygon was only announced in February 2021, there isn’t yet a roadmap detailing how its development will move ahead or which features will be prioritized. However, the team behind Polygon has been busy forging partnerships with the likes of Mogul Productions, Umbria, Atari, and OpenPredict—which intends to launch its first speculation markets product on Polygon.
去年六月 Overwinter 升级之际，Zcash Windows 钱包软件唯一维护人员 D. Jane Mercer 因资金困境向社区发起威胁，称如果没有得到工作资助，他将停止客户端开发并打造新币与 Zcash 竞争。今年六月，Zcash 母公司前雇员 Simon Liu 同样因为股权纠纷向该公司发起高达 200 万美元的违约诉讼；九月 ECC 还与 Zcash 基金会就其商标引发争议。而今年五月以及九月 Zcash 透明度报告上先后显示的财政赤字，更是让其处境雪上加霜。
