Forem: Manbir Singh Marwah

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Manbir Singh Marwah — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 16:30:57 +0000

Manbir Singh Marwah

Jan 16 '21

Decoding Developer Relations in a Blog 🥑

#devrel #community #technology #entrepreneurship

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5 min read

The Venture Capital Landscape in Blockchain & Crypto: A Micro Thesis

Manbir Singh Marwah — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 21:38:40 +0000

Industry Overview

Blockchain and crypto as an industry is redefining how we organize and lead the economy, and creating a massive paradigm shift; accelerating us towards a digitized and decentralized future. The emergence of Bitcoin as the world’s first decentralized currency and the most sovereign asset, has led to the world experimenting with how we can introduce more transparent, immutable and censorship-resistant systems that are more robust and equitable on an individual-level, and not just for the centralized monopolies who’ve become powerful enough to own our data and digital identity over the internet.

According to CoinDesk Research, 2021 was an exceptional year for crypto assets as both retail and institutional investors piled into assets–both new and old–fueling the total cryptocurrency market capitalization to grow 185%, from $773 billion to $2.2 trillion.

Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH) continue to dominate the larger part of crypto market, with prices outperforming relative to traditional macroeconomic assets–BTC soaring over 2500% and ETH over 1700% within a timeframe of 5 years (source: CoinMarketCap charts).

According to a CoinDesk Report:

The total market cap of cryptocurrency grew from under $100B in mid-2017 to over $2.5T in 2021 (source: CoinMarketCap charts).
According to a BCG report, the crypto market is expected to grow roughly five-fold by 2030.
There have been plenty of use cases around blockchain and crypto emerging over the past few years, including Decentralized Finance (DeFi; $50M+ TVL), NFTs (~$41B Market Cap in 2021) , gaming, DAOs and the metaverse.

“DeFi would represent the 31st largest US bank by total assets under management”

Peer-to-peer financial transactions, self-custodial wallets, staking pools, decentralized exchanges and aggregated market-makers have been significantly contributing towards the growth of DeFi.

“The NFT market remains hot, and we’re beginning to see mainstream adoption”

“DAOs have accumulated over $10B in treasury assets under management”

“Interest by people in the metaverse has exploded, with land sales totaling nearly $2B”

Emerging + Noteworthy Startups

Moonpay

Moonpay provides cryptocurrency sellers and exchanges (e.g. Binance, OpenSea and OKEX) with the technology required to allow everyday consumers to buy and sell cryptocurrency using traditional payment rails (known as On-Ramps and Off-Ramps).
Year founded: 2018
Location: Miami, FL
Funding: $642M (Series A)
Investors: Tiger Global and Coatue

Chainalysis

Chainalysis wants to bring some law and accountability to the wild west world of blockchain. The startup has developed an investigation, compliance and risk-management tool that helps solve crypto criminal cases. Chainalysis has managed to sell its tool to companies in over 60 countries.
Year founded: 2014
Location: New York, USA
Funding: $536.6M (Series F)
Investors: Accel, Blackstone, Dragoneer, Bank of New York Mellon and Emergence Capital

Dapper Labs

Dapper Labs is involved in both NFT production, NFT custody, and blockchain gaming. In particular, they’re the company behind high-profile NFT projects like CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot and UFC Strike.
Year founded: 2017
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Funding: $607M (Series D)
Investors: Coatue, a16z, Google Ventures, Version One Ventures, BOND and GIC

Top Investors - VC Funds and Firms

Grayscale

Established in 2013, Grayscale Investments has become one of the world’s largest digital currency asset managers. By April 2021, Grayscale’s net AUM totaled $45.1 billion. This digitally-native company is SEC-registered and operates within regulatory frameworks mandated by the SEC. It offers a diverse range of digital currency-based products.
Assets Under Management: Aave, Algorand, Bitcoin, Cardano, Chainlink, Cosmos, Ethereum, Polkadot, Polygon, Solana, Uniswap and more.

Andreessen Horowitz

Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage start-ups and established growth companies, and has been on the forefront of crypto investments lately.
Assets Under Management: Maker, dYdX, Compound, Dfinity, Ava Labs and more.

Multicoin Capital

Founded in May 2017, Multicoin Capital has since risen to become one of the top investment firms that focus on investing in cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, and blockchain companies. It is a crypto fund manager with a presence in three key locations: Austin, New York, and Beijing.
Assets Under Management: Arweave, Audius, Ethereum, Livepeer, The Graph and more.

More key players to watch: Paradigm, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, CoinFund, Arrington Capital, Bitwise, Galaxy Digital, ConsenSys Ventures, Binance Labs and Draper VC.

Early Stage Company for Evaluation

5-year search growth: 528%
Year founded: 2014
Location: Seattle, WA
Latest funding round: January 5, 2022 | $19.1M (Series A)

Coinme was originally started as a network of Bitcoin ATMs made possible via partnerships with CoinStar and MoneyGram. Coinme recently launched an app that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrency (including the option to pay via Mastercard and Visa). In the US, their ATMs can be found in 15,000+ locations nationwide.

Why Coinme?
One of the biggest barriers to crypto is still by far, mass adoption. Most of the people who are accustomed to the traditional banking and financial services, would prefer to buy crypto using a credit or a debit card. Coinme allows doing exactly that, with an option to purchase through their physical ATM - so it would work just like you would withdraw fiat from your bank account. If Coinme partners with self-custodial wallets like MetaMask, it would be a game changer as no central intermediary would be required for a user to purchase crypto through traditional ways of transacting, and having full control over their crypto. Not just that, Coinme can also act like a fiat on-ramp and off-ramp provider for such products, allowing self-custodial wallet users to purchase crypto using a debit card directly from their wallet, just like Wyre and Transak. Furthermore, Coinme supports Visa and Mastercard––two of the industry leaders that have been breaking into crypto lately, so they would also want to support the product.

Merits of investing:

Their vision supports mass adoption of crypto and banking the unbanked in a decentralized way
Coinme has partnered with MoneyGram and Coinstar, and has been featured in Forbes, CNBC, CoinDesk, Fortune and TechCrunch
Backed by Pantera Capital, MoneyGram, Blockchain.com and Digital Currency Group

Demerits of investing:

Coinme wallet is not self-custodial
Big alternatives exist, but not all offer ATM, Visa and Mastercard support

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

A Beginner's Guide to Crypto Research

Manbir Singh Marwah — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:23:57 +0000

When you start investing in crypto projects, you'll hear the term 'Do Your Own Research' quite often. Everyone tells that, but no one tells how. :(

Say no more! In this blog, we'll take a look at how you can research a crypto project from a retail investor's point of view, along with some platforms and tools that can help you with it. So let's get straight into it...

1. The Mission

Look into what type of real world or on-chain problem the project is trying to solve. Then look at the statistics on where the project currently stands in terms of solving that particular problem.

Was the project founded 5 years back and is still struggling to provide some real world value? Was the project founded last year and already has plenty of use cases? How decentralized it is/aims to be? Try to investigate around the fundamentals of a project and if you believe that the project is on the right path, your gut might wanna hold that.

2. Community

The biggest strength of any blockchain network lies in its community. Community of not just investors, but also nodes, validators, developers and stakeholders—basically anyone who can impact the project in a considerable amount.

Dig-in deeper to check how big and supportive the community is. You can take a look at their Telegram/Slack/Discord channels, the buzz on their social media and YouTube, what type of investors are backing and why they believe in the project; evolution never happens individually but with the community. Credibility and reputation plays a major role in driving the project's growth.

3. Whitepaper

A whitepaper is the most essential, professionally-crafted document that gives the investors technical insights, explains the project's concepts, working methodology, token fundamentals and an overview of the long-term vision or the roadmap.

For a successful ICO, measurable value proposition, and building the trust, a properly documented whitepaper is an absolute necessity for any project.

As an obvious example, here's the official Bitcoin whitepaper, which in today's standard, might not be the most comprehensive or buzzworthy, but was well ahead of its time in the year it got published.

4. Technology

The underlying technology behind a project is one of the most important factors to not just determine how a project stands against its competitors, but also how futureproof and scalable it is.

For example, Ethereum has plenty of use cases and offers features such as Smart Contracts, DApps, EVM, DAOs and stablecoins. Any project with such extensive use cases and a supportive network is pretty much unlikely to fail in the future, and more likely to add more utility and build traction over time (not a financial advise).

5. Roadmap

A roadmap provides a clear or a nearly-clear summary of the future vision of the project in terms of prototyping and development, code releases, listings, audits, partnerships and other major events that affects the development or price action.

You can find the roadmap on the project's website and updates around the same on their social media. It's the responsibility of project maintainers to timely update on the roadmap and deliver as per the same. So if they're not doing that, it's a major red flag.

As an example, here's the ETH2.0 roadmap on ethereum.org.

6. Tokenomics and Price Action

Past price action of a cryptocurrency can play a major role in determining how it performs in the future. Make sure to look at the price charts of the project, compare it with its ICO, and do a basic sentiment analysis.

Tokenomics (token+economics) deals with the qualities around supply and demand of the token, its utility and the governance model. It is driven by some of the key factors like the maximum supply of the token, current circulating supply, use cases, ownership incentives, future scarcity, etc. These questions might help understanding the tokenomics of a project:

What is the current ranking of the project in the market? The farther it goes from the top 100, the riskier it gets.
How are the coins being created, and will there be any limit to the maximum that can ever exist?
What's the current circulating supply? The more scarce, the better.
How does the overall token distribution looks like in the wallets; Is there any influential individual or institutional investor holding some? That depicts trust—a green flag. Are a few wallet addresses collectively holding too much value from the supply? That depicts peak risk—a red flag.
Are the use cases scalable? That might drive the demand of the token in the future.
Additionally, try to find some information that indicates if a large number of coins are lost, burned, or somehow unusable.

Two of the best websites to research about tokenomics, price action and market data are CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko.

7. The Team

One of the most overlooked aspects of investing in a crypto project is to explore the team members behind the project. What are their qualifications? Which projects have they contributed to, earlier? Do they have a proven track record and established trust factor in the community? Do they publicly interact in the group chat or do AMAs?

You can often find project founders or engineers hanging out in their Telegram/Discord communities. Feel free to have a chat with them to see what they have to say!

8. Listings

Another major factor that drives the accessibility of a crypto is which major exchanges it is listed on. If it's listed on most of the leading exchanges like Binance, Coinbase and FTX, chances are that it has gained enough trust and credibility to be available for the majority of people in the market.

Apart from centralized exchanges, it's another plus if the token is available on most DEX (Decentralized Exchange) platforms and aggregators, for example Uniswap, 1inch, PancakeSwap, etc. Mostly, a cryptocurrency project is listed on a DEX platform before it gets listed on centralized exchanges. If the team provides any commitment for a token's listing in the future, that's a huge plus too.

9. Past Commitment and Efficiency

Look into the how the project has been delivering on its promises in the past. Is the team properly communicating about the ongoing development? Is there an on-time delivery of the features and upgrades? How has been the team in terms of collaborating with other projects? Is the team working on educating the investors and developers working on building solutions on top of the project?

The more meaningful efforts there are by the team, the better. Public Relations and Developer Relations play a vital role in creating an impact.

10. Risk Factor

Every investor has a different risk appetite. But no one ever wants to get into a project that's so risky that it might not even be there in the market after a year from now.

Some basic questions can tell a lot about the risk factor of a project. How is the overall volatility of the price action? Is it driven too much by the sentiments (or Elon's hype 👀)? Are the investors willing to hold it for the long term? Is there a maximum supply of a trillion tokens? Are there significantly better alternatives already available in the market? There can be dozens of such questions. It's always better to stay away from the projects that don't provide any meaningful contribution to the industry or are merely driven by hype.

That being said, happy hunting for your next crypto investment!

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

What is Regulation and Compliance in Blockchain?

Manbir Singh Marwah — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 08:10:33 +0000

Regulation in Cryptocurrencies

Regulation, in general, refers to a set of rules or laws that govern how something should be executed. While it might sound exactly opposite to the 'decentralized' nature of crypto, it is important to have regulation as a basic set of guidelines in crypto that tells what's ethical behavior and what's not, because not only does that contribute to the overall adoption, but also makes sure that there is a fair market for everyone participating. It plays a major role in establishing trust especially in the early stages. That’s an overview on why we need regulation in crypto in a few words; let’s take a deeper look.

Why Do We Need Regulation?

Regulation is necessary for any asset that is not a legal tender in a nation; including stocks and gold. For example, the Prime Minister of India recently enforced a mandatory hallmarking for gold as a part of gold regulation across the country. Hallmarking provides guarantee of purity of the valuable metal—something that’s needed in case of gold, and also ensures that customers get a fair value for their new jewellery purchases as well as their exchanged or collateralised gold. But you might be thinking that it is something that would not be needed in case of cryptocurrencies, as gold is very different. While that does make sense, regulation in cryptocurrencies is a bit different as well. Let’s talk about the reasons why we need regulation for cryptocurrencies.

1. Minimizing Risk and Maximizing Investor Protection

Most of the cryptocurrencies bring a unique set of risks, which is normal since most of them are not backed by a tangible asset or securities, which means that they don’t have a clearly defined intrinsic value. So the prices are driven solely by supply and demand, which in-turn introduces the risk of market manipulation (ref.). Regulation helps minimize that in order to protect the investors from extreme market volatility.

2. Protection from Fraud and Cyber Attacks

According to CoinMarketCap, there are over 17,000 cryptocurrencies in the market as of February 2022. In case of coins and tokens that are speculative or not well established, there’s also a risk of fraud by the developers and stakeholders, since all the funds are stored virtually. To overcome this, a regulatory bill can ensure that the market offers only select assets that have solid fundamentals and a proven track record of standing strong through the test of time with the technology they offer.

3. Anti Money Laundering

Due to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, there’s a concern of money laundering and funding for illegal activities. This in-turn can possess a major threat as we don’t know if the surplus is flowing towards some illicit authority, scammers or terrorist groups, or getting converted from black to white money. Regulation helps in making sure that each transaction happens to-and-from an authorised party that holds the right to trade and invest within or outside a country. A simple solution such as a mandatory Know Your Customer (KYC) can keep a record of verifying the identity and rights of a trader or investor.

Not only these, but all such concerns altogether make it necessary to have certain rules and regulations for the crypto ecosystem to thrive in an economy.

What is Compliance?

Compliance, in general, refers to cooperating with and conforming to a framework in the form of rules and regulations defined by the governing authorities. While this might sound like ‘controlling’ how cryptocurrencies are driven in a market, compliance is important to ensure that we’re doing everything legally and ethically while being in the crypto market. It’s like law and order for crypto.

But why do we need compliance?

1. Classification

As of yet, crypto has a certain identity crisis that holds back the authorities from proceeding with a number of laws. Even though the Finance Minister of India considers crypto as an asset class, there’s no firm classification whether to consider it as a currency, commodity or an asset, which is a major part within the regulatory framework. Classifying crypto as a currency might be a threat to the national currency for any country. While classifying crypto into asset-class would be the most feasible way to regulate, it would be the best to wait for the government’s final take on this.

2. Taxation

There’s also ambiguity over taxation of cryptocurrencies because it would be interdependent with the rest of the clauses in the regulation and compliance bill. If we were to classify it as a currency, the taxes would be different from the case of classifying it as an asset or a commodity. Compliance addresses this issue in a broader sense.

3. Revenue Generation

One of the biggest concerns for compliance would be to address how the government can get the best possible revenue from the cryptocurrency market without putting up too much of a load on taxpayers. If the taxes are too high, it would profit the government but the profits on investors’ end would be significantly affected. If it’s the opposite case, the revenue on the government's end would be significantly lower. This is where the government would have to find a balance between profits for the national revenue and the profit for the retail investors.

Advantages of Regulation and Compliance

Here are 10 of the major advantages we’ll have through a proper regulation and compliance for the Indian market:

Helps create awareness, educate and build trust among general public
Pushes the country towards a digital economy
Legal backing by the government
Safety for the investors
Decline in scams
A proper structure to determine whether to classify crypto in assets, currencies, commodity or security
A base-framework for crypto taxes
Reporting mechanism for suspicious transactions
Ensures that cryptocurrencies do not hinder the flow of national currency
Staying ahead of the world by taking a step towards mass adoption, not just in term of investments, but also business, innovation and job creation

What step is the government taking?

As of February 2022, there’s no concrete set of framework by the Government of India on cryptocurrency regulation and compliance, but the government is actively looking into ways to regulate it for the best interest of the public as well as the national economy, until a formal bill is rolled out. On 1st February 2022, the Finance Minister of India announced 30% crypto tax as a part of the 2022 budget.

The Indian government is also looking into launching the nation’s own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which will hopefully provide liquidity to the Indian crypto market, and also help non-tech-savvy people better understand and learn about digital finance in a safer way, in-turn fostering the rest of the aspects around crypto such as DeFi, NFTs and DAOs. Apart from regulation, it would be interesting to see how the government plans to drive the education initiatives for not just the youth, but also people in the elderly age-group. An integrated course on crypto and digital finance for school and college students—irrespective of their field of education—can be a massive catalyst for crypto regulation and adoption in India.

Talking about the global standings, while most of the major regions in the world including the US and EU do not have any firm regulations for cryptocurrencies, but they're looking for ways to set up regulation and compliance at the earliest possible. Singapore and Canada have a very positive outlook on cryptocurrencies and have been working on its rapid adoption, while the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele announced made Bitcoin a legal tender on September 7, 2021, also making El Salvador the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender. All that while Arizona, Miami and a few other states in the US have been looking into doing the same lately.

How can you contribute?

Here’s all you need to do in order to ensure a healthy crypto regulation in the nation:

Educate yourself and people around you about the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem. Check out ConsenSys Academy and Blockchain Knowledge Base, for everything blockchain and crypto—from technical topics, to tutorials on how you can get started with building in web3.
Join ConsenSys and MetaMask community and follow ConsenSys Blog to stay updated with everything happening in this space.
Keep yourself updated with all the laws and regulations that the government rolls out, by being active and vocal on social media.
Learn about finance and digital asset management.
Follow and adhere to all the laws and regulations being a responsible citizen.

Conclusion

Regulation and compliance remain as two of the most important, yet less talked-about topics in the crypto ecosystem. They’re necessary to make sure everyone has a fair exposure to the market and to maintain equity over equality. While the government continues to explore the best ways to regulate crypto, we, as responsible citizens should work towards educating ourselves and those around us on topics such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, finance management and decentralized finance, so as to be prepared for the future of digital economy.

Introduction to Binance Smart Chain

Manbir Singh Marwah — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 08:44:27 +0000

You might known Binance as the world's latgest blockchain and digital assets exchange, but what's Binance Smart Chain? And what makes it so... smart? 👀

Binance Smart Chain (or BSC) is a blockchain network by Binance, launched in September 2020 for the developers to build decentralized applications, focusing on scalability.

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Interestingly, BSC is based on Ethereum and features smart contracts along with a support for a wide range of DeFi protocols. By incorporating a consensus mechanism called Proof of Staked Authority (PoSA), a combination of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of Authority (PoA), BSC makes the best of both worlds boosting the network performance.

Some of the key-features of Binance Smart Chain are:

Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Compatibility, which means DApps running on Ethereum can be ported for BSC
Cross-chain compatibility with Binance Chain
Proof of Staked Authority
Lightening-fast Block Time of ~3 seconds

What's in it for BNB holders?

BSC provides a staking functionality for BNB holders, which is the native token for Binance ecosystem. By participating in staking, the BNB holders receive rewards from BSC validators, along with staking interests.

Some Interesting Facts About Binance Smart Chain

Binance Chain is completely different from BSC. The former was the original network by Binance, built to support Binance DEX, but it didn't offer smart contracts
BSC was then introduced to offer scalability through smart contracts
Binance Chain and BSC are interoperable
BSC is independent, and can run even if Binance Chain goes down
The liquidity on Binance exchange serves as a huge plus for BSC
BSC widely contributes to bridging the gap between centralized and decentralized finance
There's BSC support on various leading wallets including Trust Wallet and MetaMask

Use Cases

Using Binance Smart Chain, you can:

Trade using DEX platforms such as PancakeSwap
Create pegged tokens from other blockchains to make them compatible with BSC
Perform yield farming using platforms such as Autofarm
Create NFT marketplaces or trade on the existing ones

To learn more about Binance Smart Chain, head over to Binance Academy. If you want to build on BSC, check out Binance Docs.

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

But why do we need Blockchain, anyway? And why does it need us just as much?

Manbir Singh Marwah — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 12:49:27 +0000

Out of all the cult surrounding Bitcoin, many people think of blockchain as the technology that powers it. While it's true and that was its original purpose, blockchain is capable of a lot more, thanks to all the innovation happening. Also, we don't hear the term 'blockchains' quite often, but that's a term, because there are a whole bunch of them.

Blockchain is, in-fact, a shorthand for a whole suite of distributed digital ledger technologies that can be programmed to record and track any type of value; for example, from financial transactions and medical records, to property/land titles. You might be thinking that we already have processes to track and store data, then what's so special about blockchain?

Let's dive into the reasons why blockchain technology is here to revolutionize the way we store and interact with data, along with why blockchain needs us just as much we need it.

1. Storing and Tracking Data

While many people relate blockchain with cryptocurrencies, it has more to do with how we store and manage data. Blockchain stores information in batches, called 'blocks'. There are multiple of them, that are linked together in a chronological order that can not be modified, forming a continuous line having multiple chunks of data entities: metaphorically, a chain of blocks.

If we want to make a change in the information in a particular block in-between the chain, we can not do that simply by rewriting the data in that block. Instead, the change is stored in a new block after the most recently created block, depicting that 'x' changed 'y' at a particular date and time. To software engineers, this might sound familiar (reference: git revert).

Leaving even git aside, it might still feel familiar to you because blockchain is based on the centuries-old method of the general financial ledger, making it a non-destructive way to track data over time.

As an example, say there are two siblings, Anne and Harry, in a dispute over who owns a piece of land that has been there in the family for centuries. Now, since blockchain technology uses the ledger method, it would hold an entry in the ledger showing that Josh, one of Anne and Harry's ancestor owned the property first, say from 1990 to 1925, then transferred it to Bill - another ancestor (forming a new entry in the ledger), and so on, until it got transferred to Anne in 2015 by her father, making Anne the current owner. We'll be able to see that history of transfer of ownership for the piece of land in the ledger along with date and time. Unlike the old-age ledger method being on a notebook or a computer, all that data can never be tampered or deleted over blockchain because of its decentralized nature, which brings us to its second unique property...

2. Distributed and Decentralized

Blockchain is designed to be decentralized, meaning that it can not be controlled by any individual, organization or government institution. The data is distributed over a large network of computers. So if any entity wants to change the data, they'll need to change it on all the computers that hold that data—which is nowhere near feasible; thus making blockchain tamper-proof. All this creates trust in the network of blockchain users.

Before a block gets added to the chain, an algorithmic problem must be solved to validate an action over the network, for example, confirmation of a financial transaction. The computer (aka node) that solves the problem, shares the solution with all the other computers over the network. This is called Proof-of-Work (PoW). The network then works on verifying this PoW thereby reaching a consensus, and if it's correct, the block gets added to the chain. One of the major benefits of having a decentralized and distributed network is that, in case one of the nodes go down, there would still be multiple up and running, to validate the transactions and share data with rest of the nodes (represented in the GIF above).

The combination of these complex computational problems, along with verification by a large number of computers collectively ensures that we can trust every single block on the chain. Because the network does the trust building for us, it brings us the opportunity to interact with the data in real-time, also bringing us to the third major property of blockchain...

3. No Requirement for Intermediaries

Currently, when dealing in business, we don't show the other party our financial or business records. We instead, rely on a trusted intermediary such as a broker, bank or lawyer. We also trust them to keep our information confidential. For example, Uber connects a passenger with a driver and ensures that the ride is carried out efficiently. In the process, additional time and money is involved, and we also give out our personal information like contact, address, etc. to Uber—which has nothing to do with the data after a ride. They may or may not hold your sensitive data after the ride. Now, what if a passenger could get in touch with one of the nearby drivers directly?

Taking an example of voting in elections; how do we make sure that the count of votes going to a particular political party is genuine? How do we make sure that every citizen in a country gets an equal opportunity to vote just by being a part of it without requiring any additional document? How do we make sure that there's no human error in the counting of votes (in case of ballot casting)? By relying on algorithms that can be audited anytime, by anyone in the world. Blockchain works to solve such type of problems.

Now, going back to the example of Anne and Harry; in real world, a lawyer would have to sort out the dispute to verify that Anne is the rightful owner of the land by looking at the records, thus data getting exposed to the middleman. If Anne's ownership information was stored in the blockchain, she could independently retrieve the information about her property from there. Now since the data on blockchain is verified to be true (by multiple computers instead of a single human intermediary), Anne could simply show that data to Harry, thus saving a considerable amount of time and money that would've been invested while dealing with a lawyer.

This type of trusted, peer-to-peer interaction with data can revolutionize the way we access, verify and transact with each other by leveraging the power of algorithmic computations. Since blockchain is a type of technology and not a single network, it can be implemented in many different ways. While some blockchains can be completely public for anyone to view and access at any time, others can be closed to a select group of authorized users, such as an organization, group, agency or government institution like banks. There can be hybrid public-private blockchains too; where anyone can see the public data, but only authorized parties can see the sensitive data.

All the three properties above collectively contribute to allow groups of people who are anonymous and don't know each other to establish trust between each other. This develops a democratization in the data, which can significantly reduce fraud and mismanagement due to human errors.

Now that we know why we need blockchain, how does the inverse hold?

Blockchain needs us, users and early adopters just as much we need it; in the form of developers, miners, investors, validators, liquidity providers, educators and other form of contributors, because the power of a blockchain is in its community. The bigger the community of a blockchain network becomes, the more trust is established, not just because we'll have more computational power to validate transactions, but also because we're building an ecosystem in which the use cases are linked together between products that can co-exist to form a workflow, each providing a separate solution to a real-world problem that gets solved on-chain.

^{✍🏻 with ❤️ by [Manbir](https://twitter.com/manbirmarwah)}

Hashbon Rocket: The CDEX Connecting Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain

Manbir Singh Marwah — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:31:05 +0000

In the past few days, I've been looking for some of the best platforms to exchange BEP-20 tokens to ERC-20 ones and vice-versa. I came across a few of the promising offerings including Hashbon Rocket. In this blog, we'll take a look at the same.

What is Hashbon?

Hashbon is originally a European-based company that aims to provide a fully-fledged crypto payment gateway and wallet for accepting, transferring and exchanging cryptocurrency payments globally. In 2021, they expanded to the crypto ecosystem via Hashbon FiRe, aiming to FInancially REvolute both Centralized Finance (CeFi) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) crypto markets. Key products by Hashbon are:

Hashbon Rocket CDEX is the cross-chain token exchange and DeFi ecosystem
Hashbon React is a payment gateway that allows merchants to accept payments in 30+ cryptocurrencies with 0% commission (to learn more about how Hashbon's payment gateway compares with rest of the offerings, check out this blog that I published previously)
Hashbon Quant Wallet for secure reception and transmission of crypto

There is their native utility and governance token, HASH, in the heart of the ecosystem. Since its launch in February 2021, token’s price has risen more than x20 and is currently most advantageous at Hashbon’s Pre-Sale. As for use cases, for example, HASH empowers its holders with an arbiter's role inside the newly built DeFi platform Hashbon Rocket.

Hashbon Rocket CDEX

Hashbon has recently launched its CDEX Platform, Hashbon Rocket, that lets users connect Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain and exchange ERC-20 and BEP-20 tokens. Let's take a deeper look into the product.

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The Hashbon Rocket CDEX platform uses Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Arbitrators (or judges) make decisions, and their strength depends on the share of HASH tokens. So the platform uses the HASH token as fuel that empowers the participants, including liquidity providers, arbitrators, and even organizers of crowdsales.

Hashbon Rocket is the first ever cross-chain decentralized exchange to connect Ethereum and BSC blockchains by allowing users to quickly and easily exchange DeFi crypto tokens from one ecosystem to another. This is an important development for the DeFi sector because every other decentralized exchange (or DEX) has been supporting only intra-chain swaps. Which means that, if you go to Uniswap, you can only exchange ERC-20 tokens for other ERC-20 tokens, or Ethereum itself. The same is true with Binance Smart Chain’s most popular exchange, PancakeSwap, which only offers BNB and BEP-20 tokens, but not a single one from Ethereum’s ecosystem.

To sum it all up, here's how Hashbon Rocket works, in a nutshell:

Supports EVM-compatible blockchains; currently, Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (with support for Ethereum Classic, Cardano, Tron, Fantom, etc. coming in the future)
Uses HASH Token as the cornerstone of Hashbon Rocket, for covering arbitrage fees and staking
Swap fairness is insured by single-step decentralised arbitrage
Empowers HASH token holders to take part as an arbitrator

Walkdown

Now, let me quickly walk you down on how I got the whole ecosystem set-up.

Firstly, make sure you have HASH tokens in your MetaMask wallet. To setup a wallet with HASH tokens, check out this link. Once you've done that, simply visit this informative handbook that Hashbon has put up, here. Once I followed the steps over there, I got the following results having exchanged my BEP-20 to ERC-20 tokens:

And that's how easy it is to get started with Hashbon's ecosystem! If you want to learn how to create a pool over Hashbon Rocket platform, check out this part in the handbook.

Here are some other useful links you might want to explore:

Media Coverage:

The Hashbon Rocket project has also been covered by some of the leading media websites in the crypto industry, including:

Conclusion

Hashbon Rocket is a top-of-the-line offering by Hashbon which lets the users exchange ERC-20 and BEP-20 tokens, seamlessly. What makes it unique is the whole ecosystem support: starting from EVM compatibility, cross-chain and power to HASH token holders to name a few. While I feel there's still a long way to go for the ecosystem to have proper support and members, it's really good to see the effort Hashbon team is putting into the product.

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only. No content from this blog should be considered as a financial advice. Please do your own research before investing.

DApp Review – OpenSea: An Ethereum Based NFT Marketplace

Manbir Singh Marwah — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 11:55:02 +0000

Non-fungible Tokens, or NFTs have been creating a huge buzz in the blockchain space from the past few months, having played a major role in bringing Ethereum to the mainstream. As a result, people have been minting their own NFTs on blockchain and purchasing some appealing ones from various marketplaces. In this blog, we'll explore one of the world's leading NFT marketplaces, OpenSea.

For those who've been living under a rock, an NFT is a token for a real world asset that represents ownership on the blockchain, and doesn't have a fixed value. For example, if Leonardo da Vinci comes and clicks a picture of Mona Lisa's original painting and simply sells it at a marketplace, it could (probably would) sell for millions, since:

The original creator is selling it.
There's some story associated with the artpiece.
There's no copy of that art available for sale by the creator, making it...
An original digital artpiece that can not be shared, only transferred.
Who doesn't love rare art? 👀

Now back to the guide! This will require you to have an Ethereum based wallet of your choice, such as MetaMask set-up, before you can start buying and selling some NFTs. You can learn more on how to do it through this blog. Once you're done, just dive right in, 'cause...

It's showtime at the metaverse! 🌌

Getting Started

Once you visit OpenSea.io, you'll see an option to explore/create an NFT, a few exclusive OpenSea drops, trending NFTs, resources to get started and an option to browse by categories.

Connecting Your Wallet

You'll need to connect your wallet and set-up your OpenSea account to get started with minting and purchasing the NFTs. We'll go ahead with MetaMask for this blog. Just click on the wallet icon at the top-right corner; a list of supported wallets will show up. Then simply select MetaMask from the list.

Once you've connected, set up your profile by adding a username, profile image, cover etc. You'll need to 'sign' each update through your MetaMask account to apply the changes to your OpenSea account.

Exploring and Purchasing an NFT

You can start exploring the NFTs that are minted by creators from across the world through browsing by category or clicking on Marketplace > All NFTs.

To purchase an NFT, simply select an asset from the list.
You can also apply filters to sort by price, categories, chains and more.

Click on Buy Now, agree to the OpenSea terms, and click on Checkout.

You'll need to sign the transaction from your wallet... and that's pretty much it! The asset will show up in your wallet in a matter of seconds.

Minting an NFT

There's a simple 4-step process for minting your first NFT collection:

As we've already set up a wallet, simply head over to the Create section to add your assets. You'll need to add social links, an appealing description, profile & banner images, and set a secondary sales fee. You can choose between auctions, fixed-price listings, and declining-price listings.

Here's a quick rundown of how it's like to mint your own NFT:

1. Create a collection

You'll have to add some details such as images, name, URL, description, blockchain you're adding the NFT to, payment tokens etc.

2. Add a new item to your collection

Here you'll need to add description and other details related to the specific item such as supply limit.

3. Set prices and post your listing

You can set a fixed price, highest bid or bundle for the NFT listing.

4. Confirm from your wallet

Finally, sign the transaction from your wallet, which will require some gas fees.

Once you're done, your item will be listed for sale on the marketplace.

Congratulations on minting your first NFT! 🎉

Some resources to learn more about this space:

NFTs, explained, by The Verge
Why NFTs brought Ethereum to the Mainstream, by ConsenSys
OpenSea Docs

And finally, if you liked this blog, feel free to check out rest of my content and connect with me on Twitter. See you on the other side of the metaverse! ;) 🥂

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

Swapping Tokens on MetaMask

Manbir Singh Marwah — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 14:44:29 +0000

MetaMask, one of the most popular Ethereum based crypto wallets, offers the ability to swap one crypto token with another—seamlessly. We can do that either by using the built-in Swaps feature within the wallet app/extension, or manually by using any Decentralized Exchange (DEX), such as Uniswap.

If you don't have MetaMask installed on your device, you can do so by following this guide.

• Using the built-in Swaps feature

To swap a token using the Swaps feature on MetaMask, we'll need to follow these simple steps:

Open the MetaMask extension or Mobile app
Click or tap the ‘Swap’ button
Select the tokens you want to swap and click ‘Get quotes’
Let MetaMask do its magic ;)
Compare all available quotes and select the best one
Click on ‘Swap’ and wait until the transaction completes

With an availability of tons of DEX platforms in the market, this is the easiest and fastest way to swap tokens on MetaMask, as it
✅ Finds the best prices everytime
✅ Reduces number of token approvals
✅ Protects slippage
✅ Reduces gas costs and shortens the path to executing each swap

• Manually using a DEX

To manually swap tokens using MetaMask, we can use a DEX such as Uniswap, SushiSwap, 1inch, ParaSwap or any other leading platform. Let's walk down the steps on how to do it with Uniswap. These steps would be pretty much the same on other DEX platforms as well.

1. Fire up your browser and visit uniswap.org

Then click on the ‘Launch App’ button in the top left corner. The swapping interface will be launched and you’ll see an option to select the tokens you want to swap.

2. Click on 'Connect to a wallet' at the top right corner

Ensure that you're signed into your MetaMask wallet. Then select MetaMask from the list of supported wallets.

3. Select the account you want to connect and click 'Connect'

4. Select the tokens you want to swap in the 'From' and 'To' section, and click 'Swap'.

You might need to approve the selected token first to let Uniswap access your existing tokens.

5. Sign the transaction from your wallet

Your MetaMask wallet will show the estimated gas fees to be paid. To proceed, simply sign the transaction by clicking 'Confirm'. And voila! 🎉 Your transaction is submitted. You can view the status of your transaction on EtherScan.

Make sure that you've added the token's contract in your MetaMask wallet so that it shows up after the swap. Cheers! 🥂

You can learn more and join the MetaMask Community here. If you liked the blog and would like to connect, here's my Twitter.

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

A Guide to Ethereum Ecosystem Using MetaMask

Manbir Singh Marwah — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:48:03 +0000

MetaMask is an open-source crypto wallet and a gateway to blockchain apps, by ConsenSys. It makes accessing and building on Ethereum's dApp Ecosystem easier, right from the browser without running a full Ethereum node. MetaMask can be installed as a browser extension (on Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge) or as an app on Android and iOS devices.

Being one of the most secure hot wallets, MetaMask works with JavaScript by injecting a Web3 object into the webpage you're on. It is important to note that this does not alter the website in any manner. Instead, it only adds a functionality that makes it possible to access the Ethereum platform.

Let's walk down the steps on how to install and use MetaMask right from your browser, real quick!

1. Visit https://metamask.io/ and click on 'Download Now'

2. Click on 'Install MetaMask for Chrome'

3. Click on the 'Add to Chrome' button

And confirm the addition of extension by selecting 'Add Extension'.

4. View MetaMask in the Chrome extensions menu

5. Click on 'Get Started' and 'Create Wallet'

6. Enter a password and click 'Create'

7. Reveal or download and store backup seed phrase

The seed phrase is a randomly-generated string of words cryptographically derived from the wallet’s private key and paired with 12 words from a list of 2,048 English words called the BIP39 Wordlist. This sequence can also be converted to a corresponding series of mapped numbers that provide the user access to his wallet and its public-private key pair.
A crypto wallet’s software is designed to generate these phrases, which users are then tasked to keep. This ensures that even if the hardware malfunctions or gets lost or stolen, they can always download the wallet software again and use the seed phrases to restore access to their assets back.

MetaMask uses BIP39 to generate a seed phrase for your wallet. Your seed phrase will cover every token, address, and transaction generated by your wallet. Think of it as your backup master key. Backing up your seed phrase ensures you will always have access to your funds.

8. View backup phrase

Note it down and store it at a safe place. Then click 'Next'.

9. Confirm backup seed phrase

You'll have to confirm the seed phrase by clicking the words in the order it was shown previously, and click 'Confirm'.

10. Agree to terms and conditions, and Voila!

Congratulations, you have successfully setup MetaMask and created your first wallet!

This is how the wallet should look in expanded view:

Adding a Custom Token

We can add multiple custom tokens to the MetaMask wallet, such as wBTC, USDT, UNI etc. To add one,

Open MetaMask and click on 'Assets' to see the tokens in your wallet.
Scroll down to the bottom and click on 'Add Token'.
Click on 'Custom Token'.
Paste the contract address for the token you want to add, into the Token Contract Address field. For example, if you're adding Tether USD (USDT), the token contract would be: 0x5dbcF33D8c2E976c6b560249878e6F1491Bca25c.

You can look-up for the contract of the token you want to add through Etherscan, the Ethereum Blockchain Explorer. You can also explore an address, transaction hash, block or ENS through the same.

Configuring a Custom Network for Binance Smart Chain

MetaMask supports addition of other networks apart from Ethereum, such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC)—a blockchain network built for running smart contract-based applications and holding BEP2 tokens. To add BSC MainNet to MetaMask, you'd need to visit the 'Settings' menu through the wallet. Under the 'Networks' section, manually add the following entries to add Binance Smart Chain to your wallet:

Network Name: Smart Chain
New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/
ChainID: 56
Symbol: BNB
Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com

You'll now be able to access BSC through the 'Networks' tab at the top of your wallet.

Swapping tokens on MetaMask

MetaMask allows us to swap tokens directly from the desktop or mobile wallet. The Swaps feature combines data from decentralized exchange aggregators, market makers, and DEXs, to ensure we get the best price with the lowest network fees.

Exploring dApps

MetaMask offers a broad ecosystem of Decentralized Applications (or dApps). The following are a few of the dApps that you can explore and use with MetaMask:

Uniswap: Uniswap is a DeFi protocol that is used to exchange cryptocurrencies. It offers Uniswap Interface (a DApp) using which you can connect your MetaMask wallet to swap one token to another.
Blockchain arcades: These are dApps created to allow gamers to use ETH and ERC-20 tokens for video game tournaments. For example, one of the requirements for the Etherplay site is to have MetaMask.
The Digital Art: This is another app that is becoming very popular in crypto communities. The app allows users to hold auctions where they sell collectibles. With MetaMask, for example, you can bid on a WWII collectible from Japan.

Also check out Best of MetaMask—State of the dApps for more.

Good luck exploring the future of web using MetaMask! ;)

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

Best Crypto Payment Gateway Projects to Accept Bitcoin

Manbir Singh Marwah — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 12:20:48 +0000

What are payment gateways and why do businesses need them?

A crypto payment gateway is used to accept payments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple etc. The rapid growth in the e-commerce space is also pushing the businesses to scale up their payment options and look into new alternatives such as accepting payments in cryptocurrencies.

Since most of the cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, enterprise businesses need to make sure that the transactions are settled seamlessly between the business and buyers. Payment gateways make this possible enabling the merchant to also keep a track of transaction history and reports. The efficiency also helps businesses increase their growth and turnover.

Why are we seeing a rapid growth in the crypto adoption among businesses?

There are endless reasons for why this is happening, but some of the major ones are:

A direct and secure way of processing transactions
Faster settlement than conventional systems such as bank transfers, credit and debit cards
Each transaction is registered on blockchain making them irreversible and immutable
Free from any third party such as banking institutions and intermediaries
Increased protection from identity thefts while keeping the transaction information accessible

Comparison of various payment gateways

There are multiple payment gateways available in the market. Let's discuss some of them in this blog.

- Hashbon

Hashbon is a Czech Republic based B2B and B2C focused crypto solutions platform for paying in cryptocurrencies seamlessly. Hashbon has provided a multilingual platform and an avenue for new users to test its APIs and features.

Hashbon takes care of the KYC and AML requirements. In under 5 minutes, buyers/consumers can scale the identity verification process and become eligible to buy products or pay for services with cryptocurrencies. The 0% commission applies to all received transactions and all withdrawals processed via cryptocurrencies. Currently, Hashbon supports 30 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin and offers fast and convenient integration within a day.

- NOWPayments

NOWPayments is a non-custodial crypto payment gateway that lets you accept payments in 100+ cryptocurrencies, with auto coin conversion available. Regardless of what crypto customers pay with, merchants can choose to accept the coins they prefer - NOWPayments converts them automatically. The pricing is: 0.5% transaction fee + 0.5% exchange fee if exchange is needed.

The platform also supports fiat conversion, and offers customized Casino solutions, Twitch donation button, a Mass Payouts solution and a Point-of-Sale link. NOWPayments provides merchants with a variety of tools: API, invoices, donation widget, buttons, as well as plugins for WooCommerce, ZenCart, PrestaShop, Opencart, WHMCS, Magento 2 and others.

You can use this link to sign up for NOWPayments.

- Bitpay

BitPay is a bitcoin payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. BitPay provides Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash processing services for merchants

BitPay was founded to provide mobile checkout services to companies that wanted to accept bitcoins. By October 2012, BitPay had grown to having 1,100 active merchants, including being WordPress's bitcoin merchant. In 2017, BitPay launched another round B funding campaign. Later that year, they raised the minimum payment on the platform to $100 USD from its previous $5 USD; the change was reversed only a few days later.

- Coinpayments

CoinPayments is a payment processor that allows merchants to accept Bitcoin and hundreds of altcoins in their store through easy to use plugins, APIs and POS interfaces. With over 2.2 million users across 182 countries around the world, CoinPayments.net is one of the most comprehensive multi-cryptocurrency platform available online.

CoinPayments got its start back in 2013, when it became the first payment processor to support altcoins. At that time no one else in the industry was offering support for cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin, so CoinPayments seized the opportunity to create a multi-currency wallet and crypto processing solution.

	Hashbon	NOWPayments	Bitpay	Coinpayments
Transaction Commission	0%	0.1	1%	0.5%
Conversion Commission	1%	0.1	0%	Coin TX fee + third party’s conversion fees
Direct Bank Settlement	To bank account (SEPA), 0,5%	To bank account (SEPA), 1%	To bank account (SEPA, ACH, FPS), 0%	No
Volatility Risk	No	No (fixed-rate option)	No	Yes
Supported Coins	30+	100+	10	2000+
Auto Conversion	+	+	+	+
Massive Payouts	+	+	+	+

Some important points to note:

BitPay charges a processing fee to its merchants. Merchants may choose to pass this fee on to the buyer.
Hashbon charges a conversion and fiat settlement fees and the merchants may choose to pass this fees on to the buyer.
Coinpayments can provide settlements in fiat only through the third parties for an extra fee.

Additionally, Hashbon offers to its merchants the possibility to set up the fee amount and/or discount amount, which is included in all the invoices.

Here's a research by Entrepreneur sharing their views on crypto payment gateways.

Conclusion

Hashbon and Bitpay offer more profitable financial conditions for the Merchants. But an easy verification and integration process that has Hashbon can be more suitable/attractive for the representatives of small and medium businesses based in Europe.

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.

New Blockchain Projects 2021

Manbir Singh Marwah — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 10:14:18 +0000

The cryptocurrency space is not just growing, it's thriving! In this blog, we'll take a look at some of the new altcoins that are freshly out of the oven and could perform well in the future.

Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice. If you plan to invest in cryptocurrency, please do it at your own risk.

Hashbon (HASH)

HASH is the utility token issued by Hashbon, a European company that aims to provide fully-fledged crypto payment gateway and wallet for accepting, transferring and exchanging cryptocurrency payments globally. HASH is complied with ERC-20 & BEP-20 standards being a secure, swift, reliable and easy-to-integrate solution in the crypto ecosystem which helps businesses to operate worldwide, decrease costs and reach new markets.

Some of the features include:

Hashbon charges 0% commission for processing and accepting payments in cryptocurrencies. For example, if a client makes a payment in BTC, the merchant gets the same amount.
Hashbon payment gateway has an easy and blazing fast integration with only one line of code that makes it different even from Stripe with its seven lines.
HASH grants lower rates, cashback and premium advantages of Hashbon ecosystem to its holders and supports over 30 currencies (including BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH, etc).

Shopping.io (SPI)

Shopping.io was founded with a vision to change how we make purchases with crypto. SPI enables users to buy online with their favorite cryptocurrencies and enjoy exclusive rewards on shopping.io platform. Future API integrations will allow previously unsupported tokens to be able to participate in crypto E-commerce by allowing them to make purchases online with their cryptocurrencies.

Some of the features include:

Order from major hubs of commerce such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay using your favorite cryptocurrency. No additional accounts necessary.
Become a token holder and save up to 10% off when you shop online.
Enjoy token holder benefits such as free shipping, VIP access and token airdrops.

Chain Games (CHAIN)

Chain Games aims to become the go-to blockchain gaming ecosystem for gaming contests and competitions via decentralized, non-custodial smart contracts. The CHAIN token is an ERC-20 token with many capabilities. At its core, the CHAIN token is an upgradable and pausable ERC-20 contract that also has the ability to burn tokens.

Some of the features include:

As per utility, the CHAIN token is the primary medium of exchange used for all entry fees and contest payouts on the Chain Games network.
The CHAIN staking contract enables users who are staking CHAIN to receive 15% of the entry rake fees for users joining games on the CHAIN network.
The Chain Games token (CHAIN) has utility, staking rewards, and governance built in.

Decentr (DEC)

Decentr returns the control and value of your data to the user, securely and immutably. You retain the payable value assigned to the secure data you generate on Decentr. You use this data value to offset purchases made via their platform, making goods and services cheaper.

Some of the features include:

On Decentr, you own your personal user data. Each visit online remains part of your personal ID, which is stored securely on your DecID.
Secure data has superior “value store” properties to money. This value can be used on Decentr as an exchangeable “currency” to offset payments at POS.
Your “Personal Data Value” (PDV) functions as your personal “exchange rate” between all money-currencies, fiat and digital.

Oraichain (ORAI)

Oraichain is a data oracle platform that aggregates and connects Artificial Intelligence APIs to smart contracts, serving as a foundational base for the creation of new Dapps leveraging AI technologies. Oraichain is the world’s first AI-powered oracle aiming to revolutionize the AI, DeFi, and Blockchain industries.

Oraichain’s AI oracle uniquely uses AI APIs to consume or create data on-the-fly via virtual machines on smart contracts.
Data quality, reliability and security are enhanced by using test cases, which help to avoid intermediaries, increase trust and open up unprecedented application functionalities.
Oraichain network provides the infrastructure and consensus mechanisms for Blockchain and AI training, accelerating the development of Web3, DeFi, enterprise and academia applications.

Data and information outsourced from whitepapers and websites including CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko.

Disclaimer: This blog is meant for educational purposes only and nothing from this blog should be taken as a financial advice. Please DYOR before investing.