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https://medium.com/@crowdholding/how-to-earn-cryptocurrency-without-investing-or-mining-9a996f27739f

How to earn cryptocurrency without investing or mining
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Author: phoenixdown_dee

Welcome to the /Bitcoin Sticky FAQ

You've probably been hearing a lot about Bitcoin recently and are wondering what's the big deal? Most of your questions should be answered by the resources below but if you have additional questions feel free to ask them in the comments.
It all started with the release of the release of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper however that will probably go over the head of most readers so we recommend the following videos for a good starting point for understanding how bitcoin works and a little about its long term potential:

• Video 1: Introduction to Bitcoin - Andreas Antonopoulos
• Video 2: The Trust Machine
• Video 3: Bitcoin 101 - Balaji Srinivasan

Some other great resources include Lopp.net, the Princeton crypto series and James D'Angelo's Bitcoin 101 Blackboard series.
Some excellent writing on Bitcoin's value proposition and future can be found at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute.
Some Bitcoin statistics can be found here and here. Developer resources can be found here. Peer-reviewed research papers can be found here.
Potential upcoming protocol improvements and scaling resources here and here.
The number of times Bitcoin was declared dead by the media can be found here (LOL!)

Key properties of Bitcoin

• Limited Supply - There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins created and they are issued in a predictable fashion, you can view the inflation schedule here. Once they are all issued Bitcoin will be truly deflationary. The halving countdown can be found here.
• Open source - Bitcoin code is fully auditable. You can read the source code yourself here.
• Accountable - The public ledger is transparent, all transactions are seen by everyone.
• Decentralized - Bitcoin is globally distributed across thousands of nodes with no single point of failure and as such can't be shut down similar to how Bittorrent works. You can even run a node on a Raspberry Pi.
• Censorship resistant - No one can prevent you from interacting with the bitcoin network and no one can censor, alter or block transactions that they disagree with, see Operation Chokepoint.
• Push system - There are no chargebacks in bitcoin because only the person who owns the address where the bitcoins reside has the authority to move them.
• Low fee scaling - On chain transaction fees depend on network demand and how much priority you wish to assign to the transaction. Most wallets calculate on chain fees automatically but you can view current fees here and mempool activity here. On chain fees may rise occasionally due to network demand, however instant micropayments that do not require confirmations are happening via the Lightning Network, a second layer scaling solution currently rolling out on the Bitcoin mainnet.
• Borderless - No country can stop it from going in/out, even in areas currently unserved by traditional banking as the ledger is globally distributed.
• Trustless - Bitcoin solved the Byzantine's Generals Problem which means nobody needs to trust anybody for it to work.
• Pseudonymous - No need to expose personal information when purchasing with cash or transacting.
• Secure - Encrypted cryptographically and can’t be brute forced or confiscated with proper key management such as hardware wallets.
• Programmable - Individual units of bitcoin can be programmed to transfer based on certain criteria being met
• Nearly instant - From a few seconds to a few minutes depending on need for confirmations. Transactions are irreversible after one or more confirmations.
• Peer-to-peer - No intermediaries with a cut, no need for trusted third parties.
• Portable - Bitcoins are digital so they are easier to move than cash or gold. They can even be transported by simply memorizing a string of words for wallet recovery (while cool this method is generally not recommended due to potential for insecure key generation by inexperienced users. Hardware wallets are the preferred method for new users due to ease of use and additional security).
• Scalable - While the protocol is still being optimized for increased transaction capacity, blockchains do not scale very well, so most transaction volume is expected to occur on Layer 2 networks built on top of Bitcoin.
• Divisible - Each bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, which means you don't have to worry about buying an entire bitcoin.
• Designed Money - Bitcoin was created to fit all the fundamental properties of money better than gold or fiat

Where can I buy bitcoins?

Bitcoin.org and BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com are helpful sites for beginners. You can buy or sell any amount of bitcoin (even just a few dollars worth) and there are several easy methods to purchase bitcoin with cash, credit card or bank transfer. Some of the more popular resources are below, also check out the bitcoinity exchange resources for a larger list of options for purchases.

• Cash app
• Gemini
• Swan
• Bitstamp
• BitFinex
• Xapo
• Kraken
• Cex
• LocalBitcoins
• LibertyX
• P2P exchange list (decentralized)

Here is a listing of local ATMs. If you would like your paycheck automatically converted to bitcoin use Bitwage.
Note: Bitcoins are valued at whatever market price people are willing to pay for them in balancing act of supply vs demand. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Preev is a useful site that that shows how much various denominations of bitcoin are worth in different currencies. Alternatively you can just Google "1 bitcoin in (your local currency)".

Securing your bitcoins

With bitcoin you can "Be your own bank" and personally secure your bitcoins OR you can use third party companies aka "Bitcoin banks" which will hold the bitcoins for you.

• If you prefer to "Be your own bank" and have direct control over your coins without having to use a trusted third party, then you will need to create your own wallet and keep it secure. If you want easy and secure storage without having to learn computer security best practices, then a hardware wallet such as the Trezor, Ledger or ColdCard is recommended. Alternatively there are many software wallet options to choose from here depending on your use case.
  
• If you prefer to let third party "Bitcoin banks" manage your coins, try Gemini but be aware you may not be in control of your private keys in which case you would have to ask permission to access your funds and be exposed to third party risk.
  

Note: For increased security, use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere it is offered, including email!
2FA requires a second confirmation code to access your account making it much harder for thieves to gain access. Google Authenticator and Authy are the two most popular 2FA services, download links are below. Make sure you create backups of your 2FA codes.

Google Auth	Authy	OTP Auth
Android	Android	N/A
iOS	iOS	iOS

Watch out for scams

As mentioned above, Bitcoin is decentralized, which by definition means there is no official website or Twitter handle or spokesperson or CEO. However, all money attracts thieves. This combination unfortunately results in scammers running official sounding names or pretending to be an authority on YouTube or social media. Many scammers throughout the years have claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. Websites like bitcoin(dot)com and the btc subreddit are active scams. Almost all altcoins (shitcoins) are marketed heavily with big promises but are really just designed to separate you from your bitcoin. So be careful: any resource, including all linked in this document, may in the future turn evil. Don't trust, verify. Also as they say in our community "Not your keys, not your coins".

Where can I spend bitcoins?

Check out spendabit or bitcoin directory for millions of merchant options. Also you can spend bitcoin anywhere visa is accepted with bitcoin debit cards such as the CashApp card. Some other useful site are listed below.

Store	Product
Gyft	Gift cards for hundreds of retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, CVS, Lowes, Home Depot, iTunes, Best Buy, Sears, Kohls, eBay, GameStop, etc.
Spendabit, Overstock and The Bitcoin Directory	Retail shopping with millions of results
ShakePay	Generate one time use Visa cards in seconds
NewEgg and Dell	For all your electronics needs
Bitwa.la, Coinbills, Piixpay, Bitbill.eu, Bylls, Coins.ph, Bitrefill, LivingRoomofSatoshi, Coinsfer, and more	Bill payment
Menufy, Takeaway and Thuisbezorgd NL	Takeout delivered to your door
Expedia, Cheapair, Destinia, Abitsky, SkyTours, the Travel category on Gyft and 9flats	For when you need to get away
Cryptostorm, Mullvad, and PIA	VPN services
Namecheap, Porkbun	Domain name registration
Stampnik	Discounted USPS Priority, Express, First-Class mail postage

Coinmap and AirBitz are helpful to find local businesses accepting bitcoins. A good resource for UK residents is at wheretospendbitcoins.co.uk.
There are also lots of charities which accept bitcoin donations.

Merchant Resources

There are several benefits to accepting bitcoin as a payment option if you are a merchant;

• 1-3% savings over credit cards or PayPal.
• No chargebacks (final settlement in 10 minutes as opposed to 3+ months).
• Accept business from a global customer base.
• Increased privacy.
• Convert 100% of the sale to the currency of your choice for deposit to your account, or choose to keep a percentage of the sale in bitcoin if you wish to begin accumulating it.

If you are interested in accepting bitcoin as a payment method, there are several options available;

• BTCPay
• Square cash
• Stripe
• Coinify
• Wyre
• Blockonomics (direct to your wallet)

Can I mine bitcoin?

Mining bitcoins can be a fun learning experience, but be aware that you will most likely operate at a loss. Newcomers are often advised to stay away from mining unless they are only interested in it as a hobby similar to folding at home. If you want to learn more about mining you can read more here. Still have mining questions? The crew at /BitcoinMining would be happy to help you out.
If you want to contribute to the bitcoin network by hosting the blockchain and propagating transactions you can run a full node using this setup guide. If you would prefer to keep it simple there are several good options. You can view the global node distribution here.

Earning bitcoins

Just like any other form of money, you can also earn bitcoins by being paid to do a job.

Site	Description
WorkingForBitcoins, Bitwage, Cryptogrind, Coinality, Bitgigs, /Jobs4Bitcoins, BitforTip, Rein Project	Freelancing
Lolli	Earn bitcoin when you shop online!
OpenBazaar, Purse.io, Bitify, /Bitmarket, 21 Market	Marketplaces
/GirlsGoneBitcoin NSFW	Adult services
A-ads, Coinzilla.io	Advertising

You can also earn bitcoins by participating as a market maker on JoinMarket by allowing users to perform CoinJoin transactions with your bitcoins for a small fee (requires you to already have some bitcoins.

Bitcoin-Related Projects

The following is a short list of ongoing projects that might be worth taking a look at if you are interested in current development in the bitcoin space.

Project	Description
Lightning Network	Second layer scaling
Blockstream, Rootstock and Drivechain	Sidechains
Hivemind and Augur	Prediction markets
Tierion and Factom	Records & Titles on the blockchain
BitMarkets, DropZone, Beaver and Open Bazaar	Decentralized markets
JoinMarket and Wasabi Wallet	CoinJoin implementation
Coinffeine and Bisq	Decentralized bitcoin exchanges
Keybase	Identity & Reputation management
Abra	Global P2P money transmitter network
Bitcore	Open source Bitcoin javascript library

Bitcoin Units

One Bitcoin is quite large (hundreds of £/$/€) so people often deal in smaller units. The most common subunits are listed below:

Unit	Symbol	Value	Info
bitcoin	BTC	1 bitcoin	one bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis
millibitcoin	mBTC	1,000 per bitcoin	used as default unit in recent Electrum wallet releases
bit	bit	1,000,000 per bitcoin	colloquial "slang" term for microbitcoin (μBTC)
satoshi	sat	100,000,000 per bitcoin	smallest unit in bitcoin, named after the inventor

For example, assuming an arbitrary exchange rate of $10000 for one Bitcoin, a $10 meal would equal:

• 0.001 BTC
• 1 mBTC
• 1,000 bits
• 100k sats

For more information check out the Bitcoin units wiki.
Still have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or stick around for our weekly Mentor Monday thread. If you decide to post a question in /Bitcoin, please use the search bar to see if it has been answered before, and remember to follow the community rules outlined on the sidebar to receive a better response. The mods are busy helping manage our community so please do not message them unless you notice problems with the functionality of the subreddit.
Note: This is a community created FAQ. If you notice anything missing from the FAQ or that requires clarification you can edit it here and it will be included in the next revision pending approval.
Welcome to the Bitcoin community and the new decentralized economy!

Disclaimer: This is my editing, so there could be always some misunderstandings and exaggerations, plus many convos are from 'spec channel', so take it with a grain of salt, pls.
--------------------------------------------------​
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Luigi Vigneri [IF]어제 오후 8:26
Giving the opportunity to everybody to set up/run nodes is one of IOTA's priority. A minimum amount of resources is obviously required to prevent easy attacks, but we are making sure that being active part of the IOTA network can be possible without crazy investments.
we are building our solution in such a way that the protocol is fair and lightweight.
​
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:24
IOTA is not "free to use" but it's - fee-less
you have tokens? you can send them around for free
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:25
you have no tokens? you have to pay to use the network
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:25
I think it is a smart way to avoid the spamming network problem
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:26
owning tokens is essentially like owning a share of the actual network
and the throughput it can process
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:26​
if you don't need all of that yourself, you can rent it out to people and earn money
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:27
mana = tokens * time since you own them
simplified
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:27
the longer you hold your tokens and the more you have, the more mana you have
but every now and then you have to move them to "realize" that mana
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:28
Is there any other project that is using a Mana solution to the network fee problem ?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:28
nah
the problem with current protocol is that they are leader based
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:29
you need absolute consensus on who the current leaders are and what their influence in the network is
that's how blockchains works
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:29
if two block producers produce 2 blocks at the same time, then you have to choose which one wins
and where everybody attaches their next block to
IOTA works differently and doesn't need to choose a single leader
we therefore have a much bigger flexibility of designing our sybil protection mechanisms
in a way, mana is also supposed to solve the problem of "rewarding" the infrastructure instead of the validators
in blockchain only the miners get all the money
running a node and even if it's one that is used by a lot of people will only cost
you won't get anything back
no fees, nothing
the miners get it all
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:31
in IOTA, the node operators receive the mana
which gives them a share of the network throughput
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:32
because in blockchain you need to decide whose txs become part of the blocks
and it's not really based on networking protocols like AIMD
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:33
And the more Mana your node have, the more trust your node has and you have more to say in the FPC, is that correct?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:33
yeah
a node that has processed a lot of txs of its users will have more mana than other nodes
and therefore a bigger say in deciding conflicts
its a direct measure of "trust" by its users
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:34
And choosing committee for dRNG would be done on L1 protocol level?
Everything regarding Mana will be L1 level, right?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:35
Yeah
Mana is layer1, but will also be used as weight in L2 solutions like smart contracts
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:35
And you are not dependant on using SC to implement this
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:35
No, you don't need smart contracts
That's all the base layer
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:37
'Time' actually takes into account things like decay
So it doesn't just increase forever
It's close to "Demurrage" in monetary theory
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lekanovic어제 오후 11:36
For projects to be able to connect to Polkadot or Cosmos, you need to get the state of the ledger.
Will it be possible to get the Tangle state?
If this would be possible, then I think it would be SUPER good for IOTA
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:38
Yeah but polkadot is not connecting other dlts
Just inhouse stuff
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Hyperware어제 오후 11:39
Is there still a cap on mana so that the rich don't get richer?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:39
Yes mana is capped
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TangleAccountant어제 오후 11:39
u/Hans Moog [IF] My first thought is that the evolution of this renting system will lead to several big mana renting companies that pool together tons of token holders mana. That way businesses looking to rent mana just need to deal with a reliable mana renting company for years instead of a new individual every couple of months (because life happens and you don't know if that individual will need to sell their IOTAs due to personal reasons). Any thoughts on this?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:41
u/TangleAccountant yes that is likely - but also not a bad thing - token holders will have a place to get their monthly payout and the companies that want to use the tangle without having tokens have a place to pay
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TangleAccountant어제 오후 11:42
Oh I completely agree. That's really cool. I'll take a stab at creating one of those companies in the US.
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:42
And everybody who wants to run a node themselves or has tokens and wants use the tangle for free can do so
But "leachers" that would want to use the network for free won't be able to do so
I mean ultimately there will always be "fees", as there is no "free lunch".
You have a certain amount of resources that a network can process and you have a certain demand.
And that will naturally result in fees based on supply / demand
what you can do however is to build a system where the actual users of that system that legitimately want to use it can do so for free,
just because they already "invest" enough by having tokens
or running infrastructure
they are already contributing to the well-being of the network through these two aspects alone
it would be stupid to ask those guys for additional fees
and mana essentially tries to be such a measure of honesty among the users
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Hyperware어제 오후 11:47
It's interesting from an investment perspective that having tokens/mana is like owning a portion of the network.
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:48
Yeah, you are owning a certain % of the throughput and whatever the price will ultimately be to execute on this network - you will earn proportionally
but you have to keep in mind that we are trying to build the most efficient DLT that you could possibly ever build
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semibaron어제 오후 11:48
The whole mana (tokens) = share of network throuput sounds very much like EOS tbh
Just that EOS uses DPoS
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:50
yeah i mean there is really not too many new things under the sun - you can just tweak a few things here and there, when it comes to distributing resources
DPoS is simply not very nice from a centralization aspect
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:50
at least not the way EOS does it
delegating weights is 1 thing
but assuming that the weight will always be in a way that 21 "identities" run the whole network is bad
in the current world you see a centralization of power
but ultimately we want to build a future where the wealth is more evenly distributed
and the same goes for voting power
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:52
blockchain needs leader selection
it only works with such a centralizing component
IOTA doesn't need that
it's delusional to say that IOTA wouldn't have any such centralization
but maybe we get better than just a handselected nodes 📷
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Phantom3D어제 오후 11:52
How would this affect a regular hodler without a node. Should i keep my tokens elsewere to generate mana and put the tokens to use?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:53
you can do whatever you want with your mana
just make an account at a node you regularly use and use it to build up a reputation with that node
to be able to use your funds for free
or run a node yourself
or rent it out to companies if you just hodl
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semibaron어제 오후 11:54
Will there be a build-in function into the node software / wallet to delegate ("sell") my mana?
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Hans Moog [IF]어제 오후 11:55
u/semibaron not from the start - that would happen on a 2nd layer
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dom어제 오후 9:49

suddenly be incentive to hold iota?

to generate Mana
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Hyperware오늘 오전 4:21
The only thing I can really do, is believe that the IF have smart answers and are still building the best solutions they can for the sake of the vision
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dom오늘 오전 4:43
100% - which is why we're spending so much effort to communicate it more clearly now
we'll do an AMA on this topic very soon
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M [s2]오늘 오전 4:54
u/dom​ please accept my question for the AMA: will IOTA remain a permissionless system and if so, how?
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dom오늘 오전 4:57
of course it remains permissionless
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dom오늘 오전 5:20
what is permissioned about it?
is ETH or Bitcoin permissioned because you have to pay a transaction fee in their native token?
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Gerrit오늘 오전 5:24
How did your industry partners think about the mana solution and the fact they need to hold the token to ensure network throughput?
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dom오늘 오전 5:26
u/Gerrit considering how the infrastructure, legal and regulatory frameworks are improving around the adoption and usage of crypto-currencies within large companies, I really think that we are introducing this concept exactly at the right time. It should make enterprise partners comfortable in using the permissionless network without much of a hurdle. They can always launch their own network if they want to ...
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Gerrit오늘 오전 5:27
Launching their own network can’t be what you want
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dom오늘 오전 5:27
exactly
but that is what's happening with Ethereum and all the other networks
they don't hold Ether tokens either.
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Gerrit오늘 오전 5:32
Will be very exciting to see if ongoing regulation will „allow“ companies to invest and hold the tokens. With upcoming custody solutions that would be a fantastic play.
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:34
It's still possible to send transactions even without mana - mana is only used in times of congestion to give the people that have more mana more priority
there will still be sharding to keep the network free most of the time
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:35
but without a protection mechanism, somebody could just spam a lot of bullshit and you could break the network(수정됨)
you need some form of protection from this
📷
M [s2]오늘 오전 5:36
u/Hans Moog [IF] so when I have 0 Mana, I can still send transactions? This is actually the point where it got strange...
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:37
yes you can
unless the network is close to its processing capabilities / being attacked by spammers
then the nodes will favor the mana holders
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:37
but having mana is not a requirement for many years to come
currently even people having fpgas can't spam that many tps
and we will also have sharding implemented by then
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M [s2]오늘 오전 5:39
Thank you u/Hans Moog [IF] ! This is the actually important piece of info!
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Basha오늘 오전 5:38
ok, i thought it was communicated that you need at least 1 mana to process a transaction.
from the blogpost: "... a node with 0 mana can issue no transactions."
maybe they meant during the congestion, but if that's the case maybe you should add that
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:42
its under the point "Congestion control:"
yeah this only applies to spam attacks
network not overloaded = no mana needed
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 5:43
if congested => favor txs from people who have the most skin in the game
but sharding will try to keep the network non-congested most of the time - but there might be short periods of time where an attacker might bring the network close to its limits
and of course its going to take a while to add this, so we need a protection mechanism till sharding is supported(수정됨)
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Hans Moog [IF]오늘 오전 6:36
I don't have a particular problem with EOS or their amount of validators - the reason why I think blockchain is inferior has really nothing to do with the way you do sybil protection
and with validators I mean "voting nodes"
I mean even bitcoin has less mining pools
and you could compare mining pools to dpos in some sense
where people assign their weight (in that case hashing power) to the corresponding mining pools
so EOS is definitely not less decentralized than any other tech
but having more identities having weight in the decision process definitely makes it harder to corrupt a reasonable fraction of the system and makes it easier to shard
so its desirable to have this property(수정됨)
​
-------------------------------------------------
​
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Antonio Nardella [IF]오늘 오전 3:36

https://twitter.com/cmcanalytics/status/1310866311929647104?s=19

u/C3PO [92% Cooless] They could also add more git repos instead of the wallet one, and we would probably be #1 there too..
​
​
​

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Edit: TL;DR added in the comments
 
Hey all, I've been researching coins since 2017 and have gone through 100s of them in the last 3 years. I got introduced to blockchain via Bitcoin of course, analyzed Ethereum thereafter and from that moment I have a keen interest in smart contact platforms. I’m passionate about Ethereum but I find Zilliqa to have a better risk-reward ratio. Especially because Zilliqa has found an elegant balance between being secure, decentralized and scalable in my opinion.
 
Below I post my analysis of why from all the coins I went through I’m most bullish on Zilliqa (yes I went through Tezos, EOS, NEO, VeChain, Harmony, Algorand, Cardano etc.). Note that this is not investment advice and although it's a thorough analysis there is obviously some bias involved. Looking forward to what you all think!
 
Fun fact: the name Zilliqa is a play on ‘silica’ silicon dioxide which means “Silicon for the high-throughput consensus computer.”
 
This post is divided into (i) Technology, (ii) Business & Partnerships, and (iii) Marketing & Community. I’ve tried to make the technology part readable for a broad audience. If you’ve ever tried understanding the inner workings of Bitcoin and Ethereum you should be able to grasp most parts. Otherwise, just skim through and once you are zoning out head to the next part.
 
Technology and some more:
 
Introduction
 
The technology is one of the main reasons why I’m so bullish on Zilliqa. First thing you see on their website is: “Zilliqa is a high-performance, high-security blockchain platform for enterprises and next-generation applications.” These are some bold statements.
 
Before we deep dive into the technology let’s take a step back in time first as they have quite the history. The initial research paper from which Zilliqa originated dates back to August 2016: Elastico: A Secure Sharding Protocol For Open Blockchains where Loi Luu (Kyber Network) is one of the co-authors. Other ideas that led to the development of what Zilliqa has become today are: Bitcoin-NG, collective signing CoSi, ByzCoin and Omniledger.
 
The technical white paper was made public in August 2017 and since then they have achieved everything stated in the white paper and also created their own open source intermediate level smart contract language called Scilla (functional programming language similar to OCaml) too.
 
Mainnet is live since the end of January 2019 with daily transaction rates growing continuously. About a week ago mainnet reached 5 million transactions, 500.000+ addresses in total along with 2400 nodes keeping the network decentralized and secure. Circulating supply is nearing 11 billion and currently only mining rewards are left. The maximum supply is 21 billion with annual inflation being 7.13% currently and will only decrease with time.
 
Zilliqa realized early on that the usage of public cryptocurrencies and smart contracts were increasing but decentralized, secure, and scalable alternatives were lacking in the crypto space. They proposed to apply sharding onto a public smart contract blockchain where the transaction rate increases almost linear with the increase in the amount of nodes. More nodes = higher transaction throughput and increased decentralization. Sharding comes in many forms and Zilliqa uses network-, transaction- and computational sharding. Network sharding opens up the possibility of using transaction- and computational sharding on top. Zilliqa does not use state sharding for now. We’ll come back to this later.
 
Before we continue dissecting how Zilliqa achieves such from a technological standpoint it’s good to keep in mind that a blockchain being decentralised and secure and scalable is still one of the main hurdles in allowing widespread usage of decentralised networks. In my opinion this needs to be solved first before blockchains can get to the point where they can create and add large scale value. So I invite you to read the next section to grasp the underlying fundamentals. Because after all these premises need to be true otherwise there isn’t a fundamental case to be bullish on Zilliqa, right?
 
Down the rabbit hole
 
How have they achieved this? Let’s define the basics first: key players on Zilliqa are the users and the miners. A user is anybody who uses the blockchain to transfer funds or run smart contracts. Miners are the (shard) nodes in the network who run the consensus protocol and get rewarded for their service in Zillings (ZIL). The mining network is divided into several smaller networks called shards, which is also referred to as ‘network sharding’. Miners subsequently are randomly assigned to a shard by another set of miners called DS (Directory Service) nodes. The regular shards process transactions and the outputs of these shards are eventually combined by the DS shard as they reach consensus on the final state. More on how these DS shards reach consensus (via pBFT) will be explained later on.
 
The Zilliqa network produces two types of blocks: DS blocks and Tx blocks. One DS Block consists of 100 Tx Blocks. And as previously mentioned there are two types of nodes concerned with reaching consensus: shard nodes and DS nodes. Becoming a shard node or DS node is being defined by the result of a PoW cycle (Ethash) at the beginning of the DS Block. All candidate mining nodes compete with each other and run the PoW (Proof-of-Work) cycle for 60 seconds and the submissions achieving the highest difficulty will be allowed on the network. And to put it in perspective: the average difficulty for one DS node is ~ 2 Th/s equaling 2.000.000 Mh/s or 55 thousand+ GeForce GTX 1070 / 8 GB GPUs at 35.4 Mh/s. Each DS Block 10 new DS nodes are allowed. And a shard node needs to provide around 8.53 GH/s currently (around 240 GTX 1070s). Dual mining ETH/ETC and ZIL is possible and can be done via mining software such as Phoenix and Claymore. There are pools and if you have large amounts of hashing power (Ethash) available you could mine solo.
 
The PoW cycle of 60 seconds is a peak performance and acts as an entry ticket to the network. The entry ticket is called a sybil resistance mechanism and makes it incredibly hard for adversaries to spawn lots of identities and manipulate the network with these identities. And after every 100 Tx Blocks which corresponds to roughly 1,5 hour this PoW process repeats. In between these 1,5 hour, no PoW needs to be done meaning Zilliqa’s energy consumption to keep the network secure is low. For more detailed information on how mining works click here.
Okay, hats off to you. You have made it this far. Before we go any deeper down the rabbit hole we first must understand why Zilliqa goes through all of the above technicalities and understand a bit more what a blockchain on a more fundamental level is. Because the core of Zilliqa’s consensus protocol relies on the usage of pBFT (practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) we need to know more about state machines and their function. Navigate to Viewblock, a Zilliqa block explorer, and just come back to this article. We will use this site to navigate through a few concepts.
 
We have established that Zilliqa is a public and distributed blockchain. Meaning that everyone with an internet connection can send ZILs, trigger smart contracts, etc. and there is no central authority who fully controls the network. Zilliqa and other public and distributed blockchains (like Bitcoin and Ethereum) can also be defined as state machines.
 
Taking the liberty of paraphrasing examples and definitions given by Samuel Brooks’ medium article, he describes the definition of a blockchain (like Zilliqa) as: “A peer-to-peer, append-only datastore that uses consensus to synchronize cryptographically-secure data”.
 
Next, he states that: "blockchains are fundamentally systems for managing valid state transitions”. For some more context, I recommend reading the whole medium article to get a better grasp of the definitions and understanding of state machines. Nevertheless, let’s try to simplify and compile it into a single paragraph. Take traffic lights as an example: all its states (red, amber, and green) are predefined, all possible outcomes are known and it doesn’t matter if you encounter the traffic light today or tomorrow. It will still behave the same. Managing the states of a traffic light can be done by triggering a sensor on the road or pushing a button resulting in one traffic lights’ state going from green to red (via amber) and another light from red to green.
 
With public blockchains like Zilliqa, this isn’t so straightforward and simple. It started with block #1 almost 1,5 years ago and every 45 seconds or so a new block linked to the previous block is being added. Resulting in a chain of blocks with transactions in it that everyone can verify from block #1 to the current #647.000+ block. The state is ever changing and the states it can find itself in are infinite. And while the traffic light might work together in tandem with various other traffic lights, it’s rather insignificant comparing it to a public blockchain. Because Zilliqa consists of 2400 nodes who need to work together to achieve consensus on what the latest valid state is while some of these nodes may have latency or broadcast issues, drop offline or are deliberately trying to attack the network, etc.
 
Now go back to the Viewblock page take a look at the amount of transaction, addresses, block and DS height and then hit refresh. Obviously as expected you see new incremented values on one or all parameters. And how did the Zilliqa blockchain manage to transition from a previous valid state to the latest valid state? By using pBFT to reach consensus on the latest valid state.
 
After having obtained the entry ticket, miners execute pBFT to reach consensus on the ever-changing state of the blockchain. pBFT requires a series of network communication between nodes, and as such there is no GPU involved (but CPU). Resulting in the total energy consumed to keep the blockchain secure, decentralized and scalable being low.
 
pBFT stands for practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance and is an optimization on the Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm. To quote Blockonomi: “In the context of distributed systems, Byzantine Fault Tolerance is the ability of a distributed computer network to function as desired and correctly reach a sufficient consensus despite malicious components (nodes) of the system failing or propagating incorrect information to other peers.” Zilliqa is such a distributed computer network and depends on the honesty of the nodes (shard and DS) to reach consensus and to continuously update the state with the latest block. If pBFT is a new term for you I can highly recommend the Blockonomi article.
 
The idea of pBFT was introduced in 1999 - one of the authors even won a Turing award for it - and it is well researched and applied in various blockchains and distributed systems nowadays. If you want more advanced information than the Blockonomi link provides click here. And if you’re in between Blockonomi and the University of Singapore read the Zilliqa Design Story Part 2 dating from October 2017.
Quoting from the Zilliqa tech whitepaper: “pBFT relies upon a correct leader (which is randomly selected) to begin each phase and proceed when the sufficient majority exists. In case the leader is byzantine it can stall the entire consensus protocol. To address this challenge, pBFT offers a view change protocol to replace the byzantine leader with another one.”
 
pBFT can tolerate ⅓ of the nodes being dishonest (offline counts as Byzantine = dishonest) and the consensus protocol will function without stalling or hiccups. Once there are more than ⅓ of dishonest nodes but no more than ⅔ the network will be stalled and a view change will be triggered to elect a new DS leader. Only when more than ⅔ of the nodes are dishonest (66%) double-spend attacks become possible.
 
If the network stalls no transactions can be processed and one has to wait until a new honest leader has been elected. When the mainnet was just launched and in its early phases, view changes happened regularly. As of today the last stalling of the network - and view change being triggered - was at the end of October 2019.
 
Another benefit of using pBFT for consensus besides low energy is the immediate finality it provides. Once your transaction is included in a block and the block is added to the chain it’s done. Lastly, take a look at this article where three types of finality are being defined: probabilistic, absolute and economic finality. Zilliqa falls under the absolute finality (just like Tendermint for example). Although lengthy already we skipped through some of the inner workings from Zilliqa’s consensus: read the Zilliqa Design Story Part 3 and you will be close to having a complete picture on it. Enough about PoW, sybil resistance mechanism, pBFT, etc. Another thing we haven’t looked at yet is the amount of decentralization.
 
Decentralisation
 
Currently, there are four shards, each one of them consisting of 600 nodes. 1 shard with 600 so-called DS nodes (Directory Service - they need to achieve a higher difficulty than shard nodes) and 1800 shard nodes of which 250 are shard guards (centralized nodes controlled by the team). The amount of shard guards has been steadily declining from 1200 in January 2019 to 250 as of May 2020. On the Viewblock statistics, you can see that many of the nodes are being located in the US but those are only the (CPU parts of the) shard nodes who perform pBFT. There is no data from where the PoW sources are coming. And when the Zilliqa blockchain starts reaching its transaction capacity limit, a network upgrade needs to be executed to lift the current cap of maximum 2400 nodes to allow more nodes and formation of more shards which will allow to network to keep on scaling according to demand.
Besides shard nodes there are also seed nodes. The main role of seed nodes is to serve as direct access points (for end-users and clients) to the core Zilliqa network that validates transactions. Seed nodes consolidate transaction requests and forward these to the lookup nodes (another type of nodes) for distribution to the shards in the network. Seed nodes also maintain the entire transaction history and the global state of the blockchain which is needed to provide services such as block explorers. Seed nodes in the Zilliqa network are comparable to Infura on Ethereum.
 
The seed nodes were first only operated by Zilliqa themselves, exchanges and Viewblock. Operators of seed nodes like exchanges had no incentive to open them for the greater public. They were centralised at first. Decentralisation at the seed nodes level has been steadily rolled out since March 2020 ( Zilliqa Improvement Proposal 3 ). Currently the amount of seed nodes is being increased, they are public-facing and at the same time PoS is applied to incentivize seed node operators and make it possible for ZIL holders to stake and earn passive yields. Important distinction: seed nodes are not involved with consensus! That is still PoW as entry ticket and pBFT for the actual consensus.
 
5% of the block rewards are being assigned to seed nodes (from the beginning in 2019) and those are being used to pay out ZIL stakers. The 5% block rewards with an annual yield of 10.03% translate to roughly 610 MM ZILs in total that can be staked. Exchanges use the custodial variant of staking and wallets like Moonlet will use the non-custodial version (starting in Q3 2020). Staking is being done by sending ZILs to a smart contract created by Zilliqa and audited by Quantstamp.
 
With a high amount of DS; shard nodes and seed nodes becoming more decentralized too, Zilliqa qualifies for the label of decentralized in my opinion.
 
Smart contracts
 
Let me start by saying I’m not a developer and my programming skills are quite limited. So I‘m taking the ELI5 route (maybe 12) but if you are familiar with Javascript, Solidity or specifically OCaml please head straight to Scilla - read the docs to get a good initial grasp of how Zilliqa’s smart contract language Scilla works and if you ask yourself “why another programming language?” check this article. And if you want to play around with some sample contracts in an IDE click here. The faucet can be found here. And more information on architecture, dapp development and API can be found on the Developer Portal.
If you are more into listening and watching: check this recent webinar explaining Zilliqa and Scilla. Link is time-stamped so you’ll start right away with a platform introduction, roadmap 2020 and afterwards a proper Scilla introduction.
 
Generalized: programming languages can be divided into being ‘object-oriented’ or ‘functional’. Here is an ELI5 given by software development academy: * “all programs have two basic components, data – what the program knows – and behavior – what the program can do with that data. So object-oriented programming states that combining data and related behaviors in one place, is called “object”, which makes it easier to understand how a particular program works. On the other hand, functional programming argues that data and behavior are different things and should be separated to ensure their clarity.” *
 
Scilla is on the functional side and shares similarities with OCaml: OCaml is a general-purpose programming language with an emphasis on expressiveness and safety. It has an advanced type system that helps catch your mistakes without getting in your way. It's used in environments where a single mistake can cost millions and speed matters, is supported by an active community, and has a rich set of libraries and development tools. For all its power, OCaml is also pretty simple, which is one reason it's often used as a teaching language.
 
Scilla is blockchain agnostic, can be implemented onto other blockchains as well, is recognized by academics and won a so-called Distinguished Artifact Award award at the end of last year.
 
One of the reasons why the Zilliqa team decided to create their own programming language focused on preventing smart contract vulnerabilities is that adding logic on a blockchain, programming, means that you cannot afford to make mistakes. Otherwise, it could cost you. It’s all great and fun blockchains being immutable but updating your code because you found a bug isn’t the same as with a regular web application for example. And with smart contracts, it inherently involves cryptocurrencies in some form thus value.
 
Another difference with programming languages on a blockchain is gas. Every transaction you do on a smart contract platform like Zilliqa or Ethereum costs gas. With gas you basically pay for computational costs. Sending a ZIL from address A to address B costs 0.001 ZIL currently. Smart contracts are more complex, often involve various functions and require more gas (if gas is a new concept click here ).
 
So with Scilla, similar to Solidity, you need to make sure that “every function in your smart contract will run as expected without hitting gas limits. An improper resource analysis may lead to situations where funds may get stuck simply because a part of the smart contract code cannot be executed due to gas limits. Such constraints are not present in traditional software systems”. Scilla design story part 1
 
Some examples of smart contract issues you’d want to avoid are: leaking funds, ‘unexpected changes to critical state variables’ (example: someone other than you setting his or her address as the owner of the smart contract after creation) or simply killing a contract.
 
Scilla also allows for formal verification. Wikipedia to the rescue: In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics.
 
Formal verification can be helpful in proving the correctness of systems such as: cryptographic protocols, combinational circuits, digital circuits with internal memory, and software expressed as source code.
 
“Scilla is being developed hand-in-hand with formalization of its semantics and its embedding into the Coq proof assistant — a state-of-the art tool for mechanized proofs about properties of programs.”
 
Simply put, with Scilla and accompanying tooling developers can be mathematically sure and proof that the smart contract they’ve written does what he or she intends it to do.
 
Smart contract on a sharded environment and state sharding
 
There is one more topic I’d like to touch on: smart contract execution in a sharded environment (and what is the effect of state sharding). This is a complex topic. I’m not able to explain it any easier than what is posted here. But I will try to compress the post into something easy to digest.
 
Earlier on we have established that Zilliqa can process transactions in parallel due to network sharding. This is where the linear scalability comes from. We can define simple transactions: a transaction from address A to B (Category 1), a transaction where a user interacts with one smart contract (Category 2) and the most complex ones where triggering a transaction results in multiple smart contracts being involved (Category 3). The shards are able to process transactions on their own without interference of the other shards. With Category 1 transactions that is doable, with Category 2 transactions sometimes if that address is in the same shard as the smart contract but with Category 3 you definitely need communication between the shards. Solving that requires to make a set of communication rules the protocol needs to follow in order to process all transactions in a generalised fashion.
 
And this is where the downsides of state sharding comes in currently. All shards in Zilliqa have access to the complete state. Yes the state size (0.1 GB at the moment) grows and all of the nodes need to store it but it also means that they don’t need to shop around for information available on other shards. Requiring more communication and adding more complexity. Computer science knowledge and/or developer knowledge required links if you want to dig further: Scilla - language grammar Scilla - Foundations for Verifiable Decentralised Computations on a Blockchain Gas Accounting NUS x Zilliqa: Smart contract language workshop
 
Easier to follow links on programming Scilla https://learnscilla.com/home Ivan on Tech
 
Roadmap / Zilliqa 2.0
 
There is no strict defined roadmap but here are topics being worked on. And via the Zilliqa website there is also more information on the projects they are working on.
 
Business & Partnerships
 
It’s not only technology in which Zilliqa seems to be excelling as their ecosystem has been expanding and starting to grow rapidly. The project is on a mission to provide OpenFinance (OpFi) to the world and Singapore is the right place to be due to its progressive regulations and futuristic thinking. Singapore has taken a proactive approach towards cryptocurrencies by introducing the Payment Services Act 2019 (PS Act). Among other things, the PS Act will regulate intermediaries dealing with certain cryptocurrencies, with a particular focus on consumer protection and anti-money laundering. It will also provide a stable regulatory licensing and operating framework for cryptocurrency entities, effectively covering all crypto businesses and exchanges based in Singapore. According to PWC 82% of the surveyed executives in Singapore reported blockchain initiatives underway and 13% of them have already brought the initiatives live to the market. There is also an increasing list of organizations that are starting to provide digital payment services. Moreover, Singaporean blockchain developers Building Cities Beyond has recently created an innovation $15 million grant to encourage development on its ecosystem. This all suggests that Singapore tries to position itself as (one of) the leading blockchain hubs in the world.
 
Zilliqa seems to already take advantage of this and recently helped launch Hg Exchange on their platform, together with financial institutions PhillipCapital, PrimePartners and Fundnel. Hg Exchange, which is now approved by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), uses smart contracts to represent digital assets. Through Hg Exchange financial institutions worldwide can use Zilliqa's safe-by-design smart contracts to enable the trading of private equities. For example, think of companies such as Grab, Airbnb, SpaceX that are not available for public trading right now. Hg Exchange will allow investors to buy shares of private companies & unicorns and capture their value before an IPO. Anquan, the main company behind Zilliqa, has also recently announced that they became a partner and shareholder in TEN31 Bank, which is a fully regulated bank allowing for tokenization of assets and is aiming to bridge the gap between conventional banking and the blockchain world. If STOs, the tokenization of assets, and equity trading will continue to increase, then Zilliqa’s public blockchain would be the ideal candidate due to its strategic positioning, partnerships, regulatory compliance and the technology that is being built on top of it.
 
What is also very encouraging is their focus on banking the un(der)banked. They are launching a stablecoin basket starting with XSGD. As many of you know, stablecoins are currently mostly used for trading. However, Zilliqa is actively trying to broaden the use case of stablecoins. I recommend everybody to read this text that Amrit Kumar wrote (one of the co-founders). These stablecoins will be integrated in the traditional markets and bridge the gap between the crypto world and the traditional world. This could potentially revolutionize and legitimise the crypto space if retailers and companies will for example start to use stablecoins for payments or remittances, instead of it solely being used for trading.
 
Zilliqa also released their DeFi strategic roadmap (dating November 2019) which seems to be aligning well with their OpFi strategy. A non-custodial DEX is coming to Zilliqa made by Switcheo which allows cross-chain trading (atomic swaps) between ETH, EOS and ZIL based tokens. They also signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a (soon to be announced) USD stablecoin. And as Zilliqa is all about regulations and being compliant, I’m speculating on it to be a regulated USD stablecoin. Furthermore, XSGD is already created and visible on block explorer and XIDR (Indonesian Stablecoin) is also coming soon via StraitsX. Here also an overview of the Tech Stack for Financial Applications from September 2019. Further quoting Amrit Kumar on this:
 

There are two basic building blocks in DeFi/OpFi though: 1) stablecoins as you need a non-volatile currency to get access to this market and 2) a dex to be able to trade all these financial assets. The rest are built on top of these blocks.

 

So far, together with our partners and community, we have worked on developing these building blocks with XSGD as a stablecoin. We are working on bringing a USD-backed stablecoin as well. We will soon have a decentralised exchange developed by Switcheo. And with HGX going live, we are also venturing into the tokenization space. More to come in the future.”

 
Additionally, they also have this ZILHive initiative that injects capital into projects. There have been already 6 waves of various teams working on infrastructure, innovation and research, and they are not from ASEAN or Singapore only but global: see Grantees breakdown by country. Over 60 project teams from over 20 countries have contributed to Zilliqa's ecosystem. This includes individuals and teams developing wallets, explorers, developer toolkits, smart contract testing frameworks, dapps, etc. As some of you may know, Unstoppable Domains (UD) blew up when they launched on Zilliqa. UD aims to replace cryptocurrency addresses with a human-readable name and allows for uncensorable websites. Zilliqa will probably be the only one able to handle all these transactions onchain due to ability to scale and its resulting low fees which is why the UD team launched this on Zilliqa in the first place. Furthermore, Zilliqa also has a strong emphasis on security, compliance, and privacy, which is why they partnered with companies like Elliptic, ChainSecurity (part of PwC Switzerland), and Incognito. Their sister company Aqilliz (Zilliqa spelled backwards) focuses on revolutionizing the digital advertising space and is doing interesting things like using Zilliqa to track outdoor digital ads with companies like Foodpanda.
 
Zilliqa is listed on nearly all major exchanges, having several different fiat-gateways and recently have been added to Binance’s margin trading and futures trading with really good volume. They also have a very impressive team with good credentials and experience. They don't just have “tech people”. They have a mix of tech people, business people, marketeers, scientists, and more. Naturally, it's good to have a mix of people with different skill sets if you work in the crypto space.
 
Marketing & Community
 
Zilliqa has a very strong community. If you just follow their Twitter their engagement is much higher for a coin that has approximately 80k followers. They also have been ‘coin of the day’ by LunarCrush many times. LunarCrush tracks real-time cryptocurrency value and social data. According to their data, it seems Zilliqa has a more fundamental and deeper understanding of marketing and community engagement than almost all other coins. While almost all coins have been a bit frozen in the last months, Zilliqa seems to be on its own bull run. It was somewhere in the 100s a few months ago and is currently ranked #46 on CoinGecko. Their official Telegram also has over 20k people and is very active, and their community channel which is over 7k now is more active and larger than many other official channels. Their local communities also seem to be growing.
 
Moreover, their community started ‘Zillacracy’ together with the Zilliqa core team ( see www.zillacracy.com ). It’s a community-run initiative where people from all over the world are now helping with marketing and development on Zilliqa. Since its launch in February 2020 they have been doing a lot and will also run their own non-custodial seed node for staking. This seed node will also allow them to start generating revenue for them to become a self sustaining entity that could potentially scale up to become a decentralized company working in parallel with the Zilliqa core team. Comparing it to all the other smart contract platforms (e.g. Cardano, EOS, Tezos etc.) they don't seem to have started a similar initiative (correct me if I’m wrong though). This suggests in my opinion that these other smart contract platforms do not fully understand how to utilize the ‘power of the community’. This is something you cannot ‘buy with money’ and gives many projects in the space a disadvantage.
 
Zilliqa also released two social products called SocialPay and Zeeves. SocialPay allows users to earn ZILs while tweeting with a specific hashtag. They have recently used it in partnership with the Singapore Red Cross for a marketing campaign after their initial pilot program. It seems like a very valuable social product with a good use case. I can see a lot of traditional companies entering the space through this product, which they seem to suggest will happen. Tokenizing hashtags with smart contracts to get network effect is a very smart and innovative idea.
 
Regarding Zeeves, this is a tipping bot for Telegram. They already have 1000s of signups and they plan to keep upgrading it for more and more people to use it (e.g. they recently have added a quiz features). They also use it during AMAs to reward people in real-time. It’s a very smart approach to grow their communities and get familiar with ZIL. I can see this becoming very big on Telegram. This tool suggests, again, that the Zilliqa team has a deeper understanding of what the crypto space and community needs and is good at finding the right innovative tools to grow and scale.
 
To be honest, I haven’t covered everything (i’m also reaching the character limited haha). So many updates happening lately that it's hard to keep up, such as the International Monetary Fund mentioning Zilliqa in their report, custodial and non-custodial Staking, Binance Margin, Futures, Widget, entering the Indian market, and more. The Head of Marketing Colin Miles has also released this as an overview of what is coming next. And last but not least, Vitalik Buterin has been mentioning Zilliqa lately acknowledging Zilliqa and mentioning that both projects have a lot of room to grow. There is much more info of course and a good part of it has been served to you on a silver platter. I invite you to continue researching by yourself :-) And if you have any comments or questions please post here!

If you're new to MyBit and looking for information on how to get started, look no further. This post should answer all of the most frequently asked questions and help you find out what the MyBit project is all about.

What is MyBit?

MyBit is a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) platform that utilizes blockchain technology to allow people all over the world to invest in revenue generating assets, such as solar panels, cryptocurrency mining hardware, and Bitcoin ATMs. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg- the use cases are endless! Anything that generates revenue in a measurable, trustless way can be listed on our platform.
The best part is, these assets are able to be crowdfunded by users of the MyBit platform. You don’t need to buy an entire asset all by yourself, you are able to purchase a “stake” in an asset, and any revenue generated by said asset will be distributed equally among its investors, according to the percentage of their ownership stake. This means that revenue generating assets are no longer just for the rich- they are now for the masses, the working class citizens of the world. This allows for a fair chance for everyone to let their money work for them, instead of just having the rich get richer while the masses get poorer.
MyBit isn’t just for investors either. There are 3 different ways that users can utilize MyBit’s technology- the first way is investing, which we already discussed. The second way to utilize the platform is to become an “asset manager”. Not everyone has the capital to invest in an asset, so MyBit allows users to earn revenue by managing one for the investors. What exactly “managing” consists of, will vary depeding on the asset. But you can think of it as maintenance/security etc. For example, maybe you’re managing a cryptocurrency miner. You might need to check on it from time to time and make sure it’s running properly, connected to the internet, and in a safe/secure location.
The third way to utilize MyBit is a solution for enterprise/IoT (Internet of Things) partners. Companies who produce IoT hardware can integrate the MyBit API into their products and expose themselves to investors all over the world with our platform.

Where can I buy MyBit?

MyBit is currently listed on the following exchanges:

• Uniswap
• Probit exchange - MYB/USDT pair
• Probit exchange - MYB/BTC pair
• Kyber Exchange
• Bancor exchange

What wallet can I use to store my MyBit tokens?

MyBit is an ERC-20 token, which means you can store it in any Ethereum wallet. We recommend using a hardware wallet such as the Ledger Nano S, but you can always use MyEtherWallet, MetaMask or any other Ethereum wallet you like. Just simply send your MyBit tokens to your Ethereum address. When sending your MyBit OUT of your Ethereum wallet, you will need a small amount of ETH to cover gas fees (network costs).

Who is on the MyBit team/Who is in charge?

MyBit was originally founded by our CEO, Ian. We then moved to a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) structure so all decisions would be made by community members through a voting mechanism. There were a few issues with the DAO structure, so we are currently (as of September 1st 2020) running in a more centralized manner for the time being. However, we are planning our development of a new DAO which will be more of a Kyber-style DAO. You can read more about this here.

What is the current status of the project?

As of the time of this post (August 2nd, 2020), we are currently in the process of migrating our platform to Version 2. Version 1 was our proof of concept and was used to successfully fund our first revenue generating asset. All of the development work for Version 2 is being completed as we speak. We aim to have Version 2 launched and fully functional by late September 2020, to early October 2020. Please check the weekly updates posted on this subreddit for the most up-to-date information.

What is the utility of the MyBit token?

The MyBit token is used in order to obtain voting power in the DAO (as mentioned above), and there will also be a small percentage of tokens that are burned every time an asset is funded on the platform. This means that MyBit (MYB) is a deflationary token, and theoretically should gain value as supply decreases and demand increases.

I heard there was a token swap, but I still have the original tokens from the ICO. How do I exchange them for the new MyBit tokens?

We have a guide for that, click here to see it! Please note, if you are using MyEtherWallet to do the swap, there is 1 thing missing from the guide- once you get to the final screen, it will not allow you to submit the transaction unless you type “0x” (without the quotes) into the “extra data” field.

Where can I find more info on the MyBit project?

You can find more information in the Wiki.
You can also visit our website at MyBit.io, or join us on Telegram.
I will be updating this post with more information as it becomes available. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me or find me in the Telegram. Don't forget to subscribe to this subreddit if you'd like to follow along with our journey and stay up to date on development.

When a thing is denied, something new starts at a higher level.
The update and iteration of the currency circle takes only a few days.
On August 13, Yam, the token of a popular DeFi project, plummeted by 98%, while YFI, another DeFi cryptocurrency, outran the digital currency Bitcoin Gold by value under capital operation.
According to their familiarity with DeFi, blockchain investors in 2020 can be divided into two categories. The "New" investors are active in DEXs such as UniSwap and Balancer, striving for hundredfold returns on investment amid fake projects, while the "old" investors stick to mainstream cryptocurrencies and advocate value investment in the three major CEXs.
Despite its long history, DEX did not prosper until recently. It has processed transactions of over US$520 million in the past 24 hours, and the trading volume for the past week has exceeded the figure across 2019.
But still, many people are stranger to DEX.
I. Will DEX shuffle the existing trading market?
Upon discovering something new, you can describe it, but never evaluate it superficially.
UniSwap occupies 55% of the entire DEX market. Celebrities in the circle enjoy discussing the changes brought by UniSwap on social media and how it will change the existing trading landscape.
On August 5, Jay, CEO of OKEX Exchange, publicly stated that "UniSwap can hardly replace the current mainstream exchanges." on Weibo.
He also listed two reasons:

1. With insufficient transaction depth, UniSwap cannot support large transactions;
   
2. UniSwap cannot set prices independently, but has to follow the prices set by other exchanges.
   

He also recognized UniSwap’s AMM model in the post.
Soon this post was criticized by Dovy, the founding partner of Primitive Ventures, to the effect that Jay had quite limited knowledge about DeFi and the reasons he proposed did not hold good.
She also mentioned the advantages of a new generation of DEX represented by UniSwap:
Traditional exchanges determine the price and market value according to a small number of chips in the market. By comparison, AMM relies on the entire LP pool to contribute liquidity, and a small number of chips will not lead to severe fluctuations in the price. The price follows the curve of the static liquidity pool within a time range, rather than the manually controlled order book.
2. Is UniSwap good enough to replace centralized exchanges?
Neither OK or Binance had expected that one day their arch rival was not each other, but the newly emerging decentralized exchanges.
With totally different operating methods and business models, DEX and CEX have their own merits.
CEX comes with evident problems. Ordinary users do not trust its security due to the rampant data cheating. For project developers, CEX requires high fees for token listing and maintenance.
The advantage of CEX lies in its low threshold and mature business model.
Just as Jay said, DEXs represented by UniSwap are still faced with great challenges posed by user habits. For example, UniSwap does not support limit orders or the candlestick chart, and users need to rely on a third-party Ethereum wallet for operation.
The innovative AMM model allows ordinary users and small market makers to get involved and earn market-making fees, reducing costs and improving liquidity.
According to the trading volume at this time, UniSwap may not be able to replace mainstream exchanges, but it is good enough to replace second and third-tier exchanges.
3. Is OneSwap an upgraded version or a copy of UniSwap?
"The success of UniSwap proves the necessity of the DEX that does not require permission and supports AMM in the market. However, UniSwap comes with two shortcomings. One is the lack of support for limit orders, which greatly restricts trading methods and liquidity; The other is the excessive transaction cost and poor transaction efficiency due to the limited processing capacity of Ethereum." - Yang Haipo
Recently, OneSwap, known as the upgraded version of UniSwap, announced that it will hit the market in early September, and has received an investment of US$10 million from CoinEX.
To develop an open-source centralized trading platform like OneSwap, it is easy to replicate the technique. But among so many Swap applications in the market, what advantages does OneSwap have over UniSwap?
1. Limit orders
Neither buyers or sellers of UniSwap can set prices independently; instead, they need to follow the prices set by other exchanges. If they want to buy tokens at a specific price, they have no choice but to wait till tokens at such a price appear in UniSwap, a waste of time.
Continuing the good practices of centralized exchanges, OneSwap supports the traditional order book based on rapid exchange, offering more flexible trading methods and further enhancing the liquidity of digital assets.
2. The candlestick chart and depth map
Without an order book, UniSwap has been criticized for its simple transaction interface which does not even contain the basic candlestick chart. As a result, it cannot satisfy numerous traders’ demand for data analysis.
To benchmark against the centralized exchange in terms of user experience, OneSwap has introduced functions such as the candlestick chart, order ticket, and depth map. Just like centralized exchanges with professional charts, OneSwap provided the price trend, trading volume, depth, and other information of different cryptocurrencies for users to set out informed trading plans.
3. Liquidity mining + transaction mining
UniSwap’s AMM model is believed to be a vital catalyst for its explosive growth. With an additional incentive mechanism of transaction mining besides liquidity mining, OneSwap leaves more core benefits to its users.
OneSwap will charge the Taker a fixed percentage of transaction fees based on the transaction amount, while the Maker does not need to pay. The transaction fees are divided into two parts: 60% for liquidity and 40% for the repurchase and burning of ONES. In transaction mining, both liquidity providers and traders will receive ONES as an economic incentive.
The market is looking forward to a new product that is as user-friendly as CEX and as safe as DEX. Is OneSwap qualified to meet such demands?