Dragonchain Public Proposal TL;DR:

Dragonchain has demonstrated twice Reddit’s entire total daily volume (votes, comments, and posts per Reddit 2019 Year in Review) in a 24-hour demo on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. At the time, in January 2020, the entire cost of the demo was approximately $25K on a single system (transaction fees locked at $0.0001/txn). With current fees (lowest fee $0.0000025/txn), this would cost as little as $625.
Watch Joe walk through the entire proposal and answer questions on YouTube.
This proposal is also available on the Dragonchain blog.

Hello Reddit and Ethereum community!

I’m Joe Roets, Founder & CEO of Dragonchain. When the team and I first heard about The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off we were intrigued. We believe we have the solutions Reddit seeks for its community points system and we have them at scale.
For your consideration, we have submitted our proposal below. The team at Dragonchain and I welcome and look forward to your technical questions, philosophical feedback, and fair criticism, to build a scaling solution for Reddit that will empower its users. Because our architecture is unlike other blockchain platforms out there today, we expect to receive many questions while people try to grasp our project. I will answer all questions here in this thread on Reddit, and I've answered some questions in the stream on YouTube.
We have seen good discussions so far in the competition. We hope that Reddit’s scaling solution will emerge from The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off and that Reddit will have great success with the implementation.

Executive summary

Dragonchain is a robust open source hybrid blockchain platform that has proven to withstand the passing of time since our inception in 2014. We have continued to evolve to harness the scalability of private nodes, yet take full advantage of the security of public decentralized networks, like Ethereum. We have a live, operational, and fully functional Interchain network integrating Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and ~700 independent Dragonchain nodes. Every transaction is secured to Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Ethereum Classic. Transactions are immediately usable on chain, and the first decentralization is seen within 20 seconds on Dragon Net. Security increases further to public networks ETH, BTC, and ETC within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Smart contracts can be written in any executable language, offering full freedom to existing developers. We invite any developer to watch the demo, play with our SDK’s, review open source code, and to help us move forward. Dragonchain specializes in scalable loyalty & rewards solutions and has built a decentralized social network on chain, with very affordable transaction costs. This experience can be combined with the insights Reddit and the Ethereum community have gained in the past couple of months to roll out the solution at a rapid pace.

Response and PoC

In The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off post, Reddit has asked for a series of demonstrations, requirements, and other considerations. In this section, we will attempt to answer all of these requests.

Live Demo

A live proof of concept showing hundreds of thousands of transactions

On Jan 7, 2020, Dragonchain hosted a 24-hour live demonstration during which a quarter of a billion (250 million+) transactions executed fully on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. This means that every single transaction is secured by, and traceable to these networks. An attack on this system would require a simultaneous attack on all of the Interchained networks.
24 hours in 4 minutes (YouTube):
24 hours in 4 minutes
The demonstration was of a single business system, and any user is able to scale this further, by running multiple systems simultaneously. Our goals for the event were to demonstrate a consistent capacity greater than that of Visa over an extended time period.
Tooling to reproduce our demo is available here:
https://github.com/dragonchain/spirit-bomb

Source Code

Source code (for on & off-chain components as well tooling used for the PoC). The source code does not have to be shared publicly, but if Reddit decides to use a particular solution it will need to be shared with Reddit at some point.

• Dragonchain Core
• Tooling for demonstration
• Dragonchain Github

Scaling

How it works & scales

Architectural Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture attacks the scalability issue from multiple angles. Dragonchain is a hybrid blockchain platform, wherein every transaction is protected on a business node to the requirements of that business or purpose. A business node may be held completely private or may be exposed or replicated to any level of exposure desired.
Every node has its own blockchain and is independently scalable. Dragonchain established Context Based Verification as its consensus model. Every transaction is immediately usable on a trust basis, and in time is provable to an increasing level of decentralized consensus. A transaction will have a level of decentralization to independently owned and deployed Dragonchain nodes (~700 nodes) within seconds, and full decentralization to BTC and ETH within minutes or hours. Level 5 nodes (Interchain nodes) function to secure all transactions to public or otherwise external chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These nodes scale the system by aggregating multiple blocks into a single Interchain transaction on a cadence. This timing is configurable based upon average fees for each respective chain. For detailed information about Dragonchain’s architecture, and Context Based Verification, please refer to the Dragonchain Architecture Document.

Economic Scaling

An interesting feature of Dragonchain’s network consensus is its economics and scarcity model. Since Dragon Net nodes (L2-L4) are independent staking nodes, deployment to cloud platforms would allow any of these nodes to scale to take on a large percentage of the verification work. This is great for scalability, but not good for the economy, because there is no scarcity, and pricing would develop a downward spiral and result in fewer verification nodes. For this reason, Dragonchain uses TIME as scarcity.
TIME is calculated as the number of Dragons held, multiplied by the number of days held. TIME influences the user’s access to features within the Dragonchain ecosystem. It takes into account both the Dragon balance and length of time each Dragon is held. TIME is staked by users against every verification node and dictates how much of the transaction fees are awarded to each participating node for every block.
TIME also dictates the transaction fee itself for the business node. TIME is staked against a business node to set a deterministic transaction fee level (see transaction fee table below in Cost section). This is very interesting in a discussion about scaling because it guarantees independence for business implementation. No matter how much traffic appears on the entire network, a business is guaranteed to not see an increased transaction fee rate.

Scaled Deployment

Dragonchain uses Docker and Kubernetes to allow the use of best practices traditional system scaling. Dragonchain offers managed nodes with an easy to use web based console interface. The user may also deploy a Dragonchain node within their own datacenter or favorite cloud platform. Users have deployed Dragonchain nodes on-prem on Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, MS Azure, and other hosting platforms around the world. Any executable code, anything you can write, can be written into a smart contract. This flexibility is what allows us to say that developers with no blockchain experience can use any code language to access the benefits of blockchain. Customers have used NodeJS, Python, Java, and even BASH shell script to write smart contracts on Dragonchain.
With Docker containers, we achieve better separation of concerns, faster deployment, higher reliability, and lower response times.
We chose Kubernetes for its self-healing features, ability to run multiple services on one server, and its large and thriving development community. It is resilient, scalable, and automated. OpenFaaS allows us to package smart contracts as Docker images for easy deployment.
Contract deployment time is now bounded only by the size of the Docker image being deployed but remains fast even for reasonably large images. We also take advantage of Docker’s flexibility and its ability to support any language that can run on x86 architecture. Any image, public or private, can be run as a smart contract using Dragonchain.

Flexibility in Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture considers interoperability and integration as key features. From inception, we had a goal to increase adoption via integration with real business use cases and traditional systems.
We envision the ability for Reddit, in the future, to be able to integrate alternate content storage platforms or other financial services along with the token.

• LBRY - To allow users to deploy content natively to LBRY
• MakerDAO to allow users to lend small amounts backed by their Reddit community points.
• STORJ/SIA to allow decentralized on chain storage of portions of content. These integrations or any other are relatively easy to integrate on Dragonchain with an Interchain implementation.

Cost

Cost estimates (on-chain and off-chain) For the purpose of this proposal, we assume that all transactions are on chain (posts, replies, and votes).

On the Dragonchain network, transaction costs are deterministic/predictable. By staking TIME on the business node (as described above) Reddit can reduce transaction costs to as low as $0.0000025 per transaction.
Dragonchain Fees Table

Getting Started

How to run it

Building on Dragonchain is simple and requires no blockchain experience. Spin up a business node (L1) in our managed environment (AWS), run it in your own cloud environment, or on-prem in your own datacenter. Clear documentation will walk you through the steps of spinning up your first Dragonchain Level 1 Business node.
Getting started is easy...

1. Download Dragonchain’s dctl
2. Input three commands into a terminal
3. Build an image
4. Run it

More information can be found in our Get started documents.

• Quickstart
• Full Documentation

​

Architecture

Dragonchain is an open source hybrid platform. Through Dragon Net, each chain combines the power of a public blockchain (like Ethereum) with the privacy of a private blockchain.
Dragonchain organizes its network into five separate levels. A Level 1, or business node, is a totally private blockchain only accessible through the use of public/private keypairs. All business logic, including smart contracts, can be executed on this node directly and added to the chain.
After creating a block, the Level 1 business node broadcasts a version stripped of sensitive private data to Dragon Net. Three Level 2 Validating nodes validate the transaction based on guidelines determined from the business. A Level 3 Diversity node checks that the level 2 nodes are from a diverse array of locations. A Level 4 Notary node, hosted by a KYC partner, then signs the validation record received from the Level 3 node. The transaction hash is ledgered to the Level 5 public chain to take advantage of the hash power of massive public networks.
Dragon Net can be thought of as a “blockchain of blockchains”, where every level is a complete private blockchain. Because an L1 can send to multiple nodes on a single level, proof of existence is distributed among many places in the network. Eventually, proof of existence reaches level 5 and is published on a public network.

• Dragonchain architecture
• Dragon Net easy to consume 2018 Infographic

API Documentation

APIs (on chain & off)

• Python SDK
• NodeJS/Javascript SDK
• Go SDK
• DCTL Package
• API References
• RESTful API

SDK Source

• https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain-sdk-python
• https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain-sdk-javascript
• https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain-sdk-go
• https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain-sdk-dart

Nobody’s Perfect

Known issues or tradeoffs

• Dragonchain is open source and even though the platform is easy enough for developers to code in any language they are comfortable with, we do not have so large a developer community as Ethereum. We would like to see the Ethereum developer community (and any other communities) become familiar with our SDK’s, our solutions, and our platform, to unlock the full potential of our Ethereum Interchain. Long ago we decided to prioritize both Bitcoin and Ethereum Interchains. We envision an ecosystem that encompasses different projects to give developers the ability to take full advantage of all the opportunities blockchain offers to create decentralized solutions not only for Reddit but for all of our current platforms and systems. We believe that together we will take the adoption of blockchain further. We currently have additional Interchain with Ethereum Classic. We look forward to Interchain with other blockchains in the future. We invite all blockchains projects who believe in decentralization and security to Interchain with Dragonchain.
• While we only have 700 nodes compared to 8,000 Ethereum and 10,000 Bitcoin nodes. We harness those 18,000 nodes to scale to extremely high levels of security. See Dragonchain metrics.
• Some may consider the centralization of Dragonchain’s business nodes as an issue at first glance, however, the model is by design to protect business data. We do not consider this a drawback as these nodes can make any, none, or all data public. Depending upon the implementation, every subreddit could have control of its own business node, for potential business and enterprise offerings, bringing new alternative revenue streams to Reddit.

Costs and resources

Summary of cost & resource information for both on-chain & off-chain components used in the PoC, as well as cost & resource estimates for further scaling. If your PoC is not on mainnet, make note of any mainnet caveats (such as congestion issues).

Every transaction on the PoC system had a transaction fee of $0.0001 (one-hundredth of a cent USD). At 256MM transactions, the demo cost $25,600. With current operational fees, the same demonstration would cost $640 USD.
For the demonstration, to achieve throughput to mimic a worldwide payments network, we modeled several clients in AWS and 4-5 business nodes to handle the traffic. The business nodes were tuned to handle higher throughput by adjusting memory and machine footprint on AWS. This flexibility is valuable to implementing a system such as envisioned by Reddit. Given that Reddit’s daily traffic (posts, replies, and votes) is less than half that of our demo, we would expect that the entire Reddit system could be handled on 2-5 business nodes using right-sized containers on AWS or similar environments.
Verification was accomplished on the operational Dragon Net network with over 700 independently owned verification nodes running around the world at no cost to the business other than paid transaction fees.

Requirements

Scaling

This PoC should scale to the numbers below with minimal costs (both on & off-chain). There should also be a clear path to supporting hundreds of millions of users.
Over a 5 day period, your scaling PoC should be able to handle:
*100,000 point claims (minting & distributing points) *25,000 subscriptions *75,000 one-off points burning *100,000 transfers

During Dragonchain’s 24 hour demo, the above required numbers were reached within the first few minutes.
Reddit’s total activity is 9000% more than Ethereum’s total transaction level. Even if you do not include votes, it is still 700% more than Ethereum’s current volume. Dragonchain has demonstrated that it can handle 250 million transactions a day, and it’s architecture allows for multiple systems to work at that level simultaneously. In our PoC, we demonstrate double the full capacity of Reddit, and every transaction was proven all the way to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Reddit Scaling on Ethereum

Decentralization

Solutions should not depend on any single third-party provider. We prefer solutions that do not depend on specific entities such as Reddit or another provider, and solutions with no single point of control or failure in off-chain components but recognize there are numerous trade-offs to consider

Dragonchain’s architecture calls for a hybrid approach. Private business nodes hold the sensitive data while the validation and verification of transactions for the business are decentralized within seconds and secured to public blockchains within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Nodes could potentially be controlled by owners of individual subreddits for more organic decentralization.

• Billing is currently centralized - there is a path to federation and decentralization of a scaled billing solution.
• Operational multi-cloud
• Operational on-premises capabilities
• Operational deployment to any datacenter
• Over 700 independent Community Verification Nodes with proof of ownership
• Operational Interchain (Interoperable to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic, open to more)

Usability Scaling solutions should have a simple end user experience.

Users shouldn't have to maintain any extra state/proofs, regularly monitor activity, keep track of extra keys, or sign anything other than their normal transactions

Dragonchain and its customers have demonstrated extraordinary usability as a feature in many applications, where users do not need to know that the system is backed by a live blockchain. Lyceum is one of these examples, where the progress of academy courses is being tracked, and successful completion of courses is rewarded with certificates on chain. Our @Save_The_Tweet bot is popular on Twitter. When used with one of the following hashtags - #please, #blockchain, #ThankYou, or #eternalize the tweet is saved through Eternal to multiple blockchains. A proof report is available for future reference. Other examples in use are DEN, our decentralized social media platform, and our console, where users can track their node rewards, view their TIME, and operate a business node.
Examples:

• Den social media
• Eternal & Save The Tweet bot
• Lyceum/Academy

​

Transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time (seconds or minutes, not hours or days)

All transactions are immediately usable on chain by the system. A transaction begins the path to decentralization at the conclusion of a 5-second block when it gets distributed across 5 separate community run nodes. Full decentralization occurs within 10 minutes to 2 hours depending on which interchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ethereum Classic) the transaction hits first. Within approximately 2 hours, the combined hash power of all interchained blockchains secures the transaction.
​

Free to use for end users (no gas fees, or fixed/minimal fees that Reddit can pay on their behalf)

With transaction pricing as low as $0.0000025 per transaction, it may be considered reasonable for Reddit to cover transaction fees for users.
All of Reddit's Transactions on Blockchain (month)
Community points can be earned by users and distributed directly to their Reddit account in batch (as per Reddit minting plan), and allow users to withdraw rewards to their Ethereum wallet whenever they wish. Withdrawal fees can be paid by either user or Reddit. This model has been operating inside the Dragonchain system since 2018, and many security and financial compliance features can be optionally added. We feel that this capability greatly enhances user experience because it is seamless to a regular user without cryptocurrency experience, yet flexible to a tech savvy user. With regard to currency or token transactions, these would occur on the Reddit network, verified to BTC and ETH. These transactions would incur the $0.0000025 transaction fee. To estimate this fee we use the monthly active Reddit users statista with a 60% adoption rate and an estimated 10 transactions per month average resulting in an approximate $720 cost across the system. Reddit could feasibly incur all associated internal network charges (mining/minting, transfer, burn) as these are very low and controllable fees.
Reddit Internal Token Transaction Fees
​
Reddit Ethereum Token Transaction Fees
When we consider further the Ethereum fees that might be incurred, we have a few choices for a solution.

1. Offload all Ethereum transaction fees (user withdrawals) to interested users as they wish to withdraw tokens for external use or sale.
2. Cover Ethereum transaction fees by aggregating them on a timed schedule. Users would request withdrawal (from Reddit or individual subreddits), and they would be transacted on the Ethereum network every hour (or some other schedule).
3. In a combination of the above, customers could cover aggregated fees.
4. Integrate with alternate Ethereum roll up solutions or other proposals to aggregate minting and distribution transactions onto Ethereum.

Bonus Points

Users should be able to view their balances & transactions via a blockchain explorer-style interface

From interfaces for users who have no knowledge of blockchain technology to users who are well versed in blockchain terms such as those present in a typical block explorer, a system powered by Dragonchain has flexibility on how to provide balances and transaction data to users. Transactions can be made viewable in an Eternal Proof Report, which displays raw data along with TIME staking information and traceability all the way to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every other Interchained network. The report shows fields such as transaction ID, timestamp, block ID, multiple verifications, and Interchain proof. See example here.
Node payouts within the Dragonchain console are listed in chronological order and can be further seen in either Dragons or USD. See example here.
In our social media platform, Dragon Den, users can see, in real-time, their NRG and MTR balances. See example here.
A new influencer app powered by Dragonchain, Raiinmaker, breaks down data into a user friendly interface that shows coin portfolio, redeemed rewards, and social scores per campaign. See example here.
​

Exiting is fast & simple

Withdrawing funds on Dragonchain’s console requires three clicks, however, withdrawal scenarios with more enhanced security features per Reddit’s discretion are obtainable.
​

Interoperability Compatibility with third party apps (wallets/contracts/etc) is necessary.

Proven interoperability at scale that surpasses the required specifications. Our entire platform consists of interoperable blockchains connected to each other and traditional systems. APIs are well documented. Third party permissions are possible with a simple smart contract without the end user being aware. No need to learn any specialized proprietary language. Any code base (not subsets) is usable within a Docker container. Interoperable with any blockchain or traditional APIs. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js. Please see our source code and API documentation.
​

Scaling solutions should be extensible and allow third parties to build on top of it Open source and extensible
APIs should be well documented and stable

• Python SDK
• NodeJS/Javascript SDK
• Go SDK
• DCTL Package
• API References
• RESTful API

​

Documentation should be clear and complete

For full documentation, explore our docs, SDK’s, Github repo’s, architecture documents, original Disney documentation, and other links or resources provided in this proposal.

• Github
• Architecture
• Disney Use Cases
• Den social media
• Dragon Den Blue Paper
• Core documentation
• Javascript SDK
• Python SDK
• Go SDK
• Dart SDK
• User friendly console
• TIME
• Academy
• Dragonchain Wikipedia

​

Third-party permissionless integrations should be possible & straightforward Smart contracts are Docker based, can be written in any language, use full language (not subsets), and can therefore be integrated with any system including traditional system APIs. Simple is better. Learning an uncommon or proprietary language should not be necessary.

Advanced knowledge of mathematics, cryptography, or L2 scaling should not be required. Compatibility with common utilities & toolchains is expected.
Dragonchain business nodes and smart contracts leverage Docker to allow the use of literally any language or executable code. No proprietary language is necessary. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js.

Bonus

Bonus Points: Show us how it works. Do you have an idea for a cool new use case for Community Points? Build it!

TIME

Community points could be awarded to Reddit users based upon TIME too, whereas the longer someone is part of a subreddit, the more community points someone naturally gained, even if not actively commenting or sharing new posts. A daily login could be required for these community points to be credited. This grants awards to readers too and incentivizes readers to create an account on Reddit if they browse the website often. This concept could also be leveraged to provide some level of reputation based upon duration and consistency of contribution to a community subreddit.

• TIME
• Learn more about TIME and how to apply this to your nodes

Dragon Den

Dragonchain has already built a social media platform that harnesses community involvement. Dragon Den is a decentralized community built on the Dragonchain blockchain platform. Dragon Den is Dragonchain’s answer to fake news, trolling, and censorship. It incentivizes the creation and evaluation of quality content within communities. It could be described as being a shareholder of a subreddit or Reddit in its entirety. The more your subreddit is thriving, the more rewarding it will be. Den is currently in a public beta and in active development, though the real token economy is not live yet. There are different tokens for various purposes. Two tokens are Lair Ownership Rights (LOR) and Lair Ownership Tokens (LOT). LOT is a non-fungible token for ownership of a specific Lair. LOT will only be created and converted from LOR.
Energy (NRG) and Matter (MTR) work jointly. Your MTR determines how much NRG you receive in a 24-hour period. Providing quality content, or evaluating content will earn MTR.

• Dragon Den Blue Paper
• Den social media

​

Security. Users have full ownership & control of their points.

All community points awarded based upon any type of activity or gift, are secured and provable to all Interchain networks (currently BTC, ETH, ETC). Users are free to spend and withdraw their points as they please, depending on the features Reddit wants to bring into production.
​

Balances and transactions cannot be forged, manipulated, or blocked by Reddit or anyone else

Users can withdraw their balance to their ERC20 wallet, directly through Reddit. Reddit can cover the fees on their behalf, or the user covers this with a portion of their balance.
​

Users should own their points and be able to get on-chain ERC20 tokens without permission from anyone else

Through our console users can withdraw their ERC20 rewards. This can be achieved on Reddit too. Here is a walkthrough of our console, though this does not show the quick withdrawal functionality, a user can withdraw at any time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNlTMxnfVHw
​

Points should be recoverable to on-chain ERC20 tokens even if all third-parties involved go offline

If necessary, signed transactions from the Reddit system (e.g. Reddit + Subreddit) can be sent to the Ethereum smart contract for minting.
​

A public, third-party review attesting to the soundness of the design should be available

To our knowledge, at least two large corporations, including a top 3 accounting firm, have conducted positive reviews. These reviews have never been made public, as Dragonchain did not pay or contract for these studies to be released.
​

Bonus points
Public, third-party implementation review available or in progress

See above
​

Compatibility with HSMs & hardware wallets

For the purpose of this proposal, all tokenization would be on the Ethereum network using standard token contracts and as such, would be able to leverage all hardware wallet and Ethereum ecosystem services.

Other Considerations

Minting/distributing tokens is not performed by Reddit directly

This operation can be automated by smart contract on Ethereum. Subreddits can if desired have a role to play.
​

One off point burning, as well as recurring, non-interactive point burning (for subreddit memberships) should be possible and scalable

This is possible and scalable with interaction between Dragonchain Reddit system and Ethereum token contract(s).
​

Fully open-source solutions are strongly preferred

Dragonchain is fully open source (see section on Disney release after conclusion).

Conclusion

Whether it is today, or in the future, we would like to work together to bring secure flexibility to the highest standards. It is our hope to be considered by Ethereum, Reddit, and other integrative solutions so we may further discuss the possibilities of implementation. In our public demonstration, 256 million transactions were handled in our operational network on chain in 24 hours, for the low cost of $25K, which if run today would cost $625. Dragonchain’s interoperable foundation provides the atmosphere necessary to implement a frictionless community points system. Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. We look forward to working with the community to make something great!

Disney Releases Blockchain Platform as Open Source

The team at Disney created the Disney Private Blockchain Platform. The system was a hybrid interoperable blockchain platform for ledgering and smart contract development geared toward solving problems with blockchain adoption and usability. All objective evaluation would consider the team’s output a success. We released a list of use cases that we explored in some capacity at Disney, and our input on blockchain standardization as part of our participation in the W3C Blockchain Community Group.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-blockchain/2016May/0052.html

Open Source

In 2016, Roets proposed to release the platform as open source to spread the technology outside of Disney, as others within the W3C group were interested in the solutions that had been created inside of Disney.
Following a long process, step by step, the team met requirements for release. Among the requirements, the team had to:

• Obtain VP support and approval for the release
• Verify ownership of the software to be released
• Verify that no proprietary content would be released
• Convince the organization that there was a value to the open source community
• Convince the organization that there was a value to Disney
• Offer the plan for ongoing maintenance of the project outside of Disney
• Itemize competing projects
• Verify no conflict of interest
• Preferred license
• Change the project name to not use the name Disney, any Disney character, or any other associated IP - proposed Dragonchain - approved
• Obtain legal approval
• Approval from corporate, parks, and other business units
• Approval from multiple Disney patent groups Copyright holder defined by Disney (Disney Connected and Advanced Technologies)
• Trademark searches conducted for the selected name Dragonchain
• Obtain IT security approval
• Manual review of OSS components conducted
• OWASP Dependency and Vulnerability Check Conducted
• Obtain technical (software) approval
• Offer management, process, and financial plans for the maintenance of the project.
• Meet list of items to be addressed before release
• Remove all Disney project references and scripts
• Create a public distribution list for email communications
• Remove Roets’ direct and internal contact information
• Create public Slack channel and move from Disney slack channels
• Create proper labels for issue tracking
• Rename internal private Github repository
• Add informative description to Github page
• Expand README.md with more specific information
• Add information beyond current “Blockchains are Magic”
• Add getting started sections and info on cloning/forking the project
• Add installation details
• Add uninstall process
• Add unit, functional, and integration test information
• Detail how to contribute and get involved
• Describe the git workflow that the project will use
• Move to public, non-Disney git repository (Github or Bitbucket)
• Obtain Disney Open Source Committee approval for release

On top of meeting the above criteria, as part of the process, the maintainer of the project had to receive the codebase on their own personal email and create accounts for maintenance (e.g. Github) with non-Disney accounts. Given the fact that the project spanned multiple business units, Roets was individually responsible for its ongoing maintenance. Because of this, he proposed in the open source application to create a non-profit organization to hold the IP and maintain the project. This was approved by Disney.
The Disney Open Source Committee approved the application known as OSSRELEASE-10, and the code was released on October 2, 2016. Disney decided to not issue a press release.
Original OSSRELASE-10 document

Dragonchain Foundation

The Dragonchain Foundation was created on January 17, 2017. https://den.social/l/Dragonchain/24130078352e485d96d2125082151cf0/dragonchain-and-disney/

LIVE NOW!
Download Alpha, an exclusive all in one solution for trading digital assets on binance.
​
​
https://i.redd.it/ds6lq6s3w1y51.gif
https://cryptoladder.app/
#trading #software #crypto #cryptocurrency #platform #bitcoin #ethereum #btc #digital #blockchain #cryptotrading

https://preview.redd.it/f13t8gy0c3w51.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfd61579208acfa14248c3e79908631db6590a6d
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) made another attempt to gain momentum above $ 13,400 against the US Dollar and managed to break above the 13,500 level. At the time of this writing, BTC was trading at $ 13,835.
Bitcoin experienced a pullback the day before, dropping below $ 13,000. The leading cryptocurrency found support at close to $ 12,800. The price is currently above the $ 13,800 zone. BTC had to gain traction above $ 13,200 to hit $ 13,500. In fact, this happened. The upward momentum that the bitcoin (BTC) price has experienced recently has spread, as it usually does, to the rest of the cryptocurrencies in the market. However, while the major altcoins have risen in value against the dollar, the story has been different when compared to BTC now you can have the latest news and blog posts about crypto and blockchain delivered to your mobile phone download the app Mickael Mosse”.
In its most recent weekly report, published on Monday, the firm Glassnode highlights how the bull market has given a greater boost to bitcoin than to other major cryptocurrencies: ether (ETH) from Ethereum, bitcoin cash (BCH), chainlink (LINK ), polkadot (DOT), ripple (XRP) and binance coin (BNB).
The price of BTC can be seriously corrected
According to top cryptocurrency analyst, around the corner is a 'candle from hell' that will crush the recent cryptocurrency rally and potentially spark a change.
According to cryptocurrency analyst and trader, Bitcoin may fall. Garner shared a chart with an indicator warning traders. Garner points to two previous examples, both of which occurred after the first cryptocurrency recovered a significant resistance level as support.
The first candle that Garner mentioned took place just before the cryptocurrency halving event in May 2020. The bullish event is considered the change in supply that caused valuations to skyrocket. The second candle came in early August, a month that sent altcoins into extreme acceleration. Bitcoin continued to cut back, and then fell to $ 10,000 where a new critical test was conducted.
The bullish confirmation was what helped Bitcoin climb to $ 12,000 and to current levels in the middle of $ 13,000. Garner says that if we go one "step" further, the price of bitcoin is likely to fall, at least in the very near term. The third candle may upset crypto investors who, despite many difficulties, are excited after such an incredible rally.
Analysts make different comments
Analysts make different statements about what will be next for the leading cryptocurrency. While many are confident that Bitcoin remains in a long-term uptrend, there are indications that a short-term pullback is possible.
Bitcoin rose to $ 13,800 in a flow of buying volume. This brings the cryptocurrency to its highest level of the year. The highest level in the last 2 years is $ 13,950. The techniques state that withdrawal or at least a consolidation is possible. An analyst recently shared the chart below, noting that Bitcoin's two-day Sequential is currently at the '9 sell' candle. This indicates that the cryptocurrency will peak in the short term.
A startup account with many followers on Twitter, Magic said that if the price of BTC increases to $ 14,000, it will force $ 20,000. If BTC exceeds $ 20,000 in mid-2021, the price could rise to a region between $ 65,000 and $ 80,000.

​
https://preview.redd.it/n5pkxql0crh51.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=959d7b4051bd1c20b53cfc28ee1c4cbdd355382e
Swipe opened the month of August with the launch of its Swipe Network Staking and its announcement to run a Decentralized Finance Lending/Earn application on Binance Smart Chain. This was also followed by the plan to release product updates, events, listings, or partnerships every week until the end of 2020.
Bringing their promise and commitment true to the public, here are the activities that Swipe has released for the past two weeks:
​
https://preview.redd.it/5ztwd3p3crh51.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5305d9e040318cfe9e3da0a3a721c88cbaf80ae
Swipe Launches Staking/DeFi
Swipe has recently launched its test network for Swipe Network Testnet Staking and, at the same time, announced its plans to launch a Decentralized Finance Lending/Earn application on Binance Smart Chain.
With the launch of the Swipe Network testnet, users can use the Swipe Faucet to grab testnet-SXP to use on the decentralized finance application. Users will be able to bond SXP to the Swipe Network smart contract as collateral to ensure the guarantee of conversions for these exchanges. A reserve system in place to lock SXP and guarantee that the merchant and payment networks receive the exact fiat amount is in place as Swipe facilitates real-time conversions on-demand.
Users will receive up 12% APY on their staked SXP within the Swipe Network off-chain and a variable rate for on-chain. Swipe plans to enable staked SXP to earn the processing fees it charges in the future as well on top of the collateral rewards from staking.
Also, Swipe revealed its plans to launch a DeFi App on Binance Chain called SwipeFi, which will enable Binance Chain tokens to be used to earn interest on their supply of collateral to the protocol and borrow against their collateral directly on the Binance blockchain.
Swipe (SXP) Trading Competition
Last August 5 to 12, Swipe and Binance team have both committed a total of 100,000 SXP and 50,000 USDT in prizes to thank its users worldwide for their continued support and to also celebrate the Swipe acquisition and SXP/USDT listing in Futures, Margin and Spot markets. The contest was divided into three categories: a new user exclusive rewards, a trading competition, and the Lucky 99, which awarded users ranked 99th, 199th, 299th, 399th, and so forth until the 9999th place of the top 10,000 SXP traders based on their trading volume.
Swipe x WBTC
Swipe has partnered with WBTC Network and has officially been approved as a merchant for WBTC minting through the WBTC Network’s DAO Governance process. Swipe Wallet users will be able to benefit from instantly wrapping Bitcoin BTC to Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and vice versa with just a few clicks. Swipe has also listed WBTC on the Swipe Wallet platform and Swipe Visa Card to enable users to buy, sell, exchange, and spend WBTC at over 60 million merchants worldwide.
SXP on CoinDCX
SXP, the native token of Swipe, is now listed and live on its second Indian Exchange CoinDCX. Trading for $SXP token is now live for CoinDCX users who wish to trade SXP/BTC and SXP/USDT.
CoinDCX trading links for SXP:
https://coindcx.com/trade/SXPBTC & https://coindcx.com/trade/SXPUSDT
Wazirx AMA Session
Swipe Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joselito Lizarondo, held an AMA session with the Telegram community of Wazirx, a bitcoin exchange in India, last August 7. In the AMA session, Lizarondo answered questions about Swipe, Swipe Card, its new partnership with Binance, and the recent projects that the company has announced. The community also asked if Swipe is planning to bring its card services to India as it is one of the biggest crypto market countries at present.
To read the whole summary of the AMA visit:
https://blog.wazirx.com/ama-with-joselito-lizarondo-ceo-founder-of-swipe-summary/
New Swipe Product Manual
Swipe has released a new “redefined” white paper under the title: Swipe Product Manual. The Swipe Product Manual was designed with simplicity in mind for easy and coherent descriptions of the Swipe ecosystem of products. This will describe all of Swipe’s current and future products that the team has planned. Technical descriptions and documentation will be made available, as required, per protocol, as some will have API access for developers.
The Swipe Product Manual can be viewed by clicking here or by going to https://sw.pe/ProductManual or downloading https://swipe.io/ProductManual.pdf to your desktop.
Swipe 0% Fees
Starting Monday, August 17, Swipe Wallet and Swipe Card users will no longer have to pay any fees to buy, sell, and pay with crypto. Users can now purchase, sell, and convert cryptocurrencies to and from fiat currencies without the previous 1% fee. Swipe cardholders will also enjoy waived membership fees and free card shipping.
Swipe Staking
As Swipe prepares to launch the Swipe Network Staking mainnet, the Swipe Wallet application will support SXP staking. Users will enjoy staking rewards based on their SXP balances that are held on the Swipe Wallet beginning on August 23, 00:00 UTC.
More details of the staking can be viewed at:
https://medium.com/swipe/swipe-wallet-to-support-sxp-staking-acfab4589813
Swipe Reddit AMA
In his first blog post on Medium, Swipe CEO Joselito Lizarondo answered the questions that the Reddit community asked regarding Swipe’s activities and plans for the future. He talked about the new partnership programs of Swipe, its newly released “Product Manual,” and the new roadmap, which will be kept in stealth “to focus on bringing maximum value to these announcements and products.”
Read the whole transcript of Joselito Lizarondo’s AMA here:
https://medium.com/swipe/swipe-reddit-ama-8-13-80690e2f6589
Swipe and Kava Partnership
Swipe has formed a strategic partnership with Kava Labs to further grow the USDX DeFi Ecosystem as Swipe prepares to bring decentralized finance applications to the Binance Smart Chain. Swipe has also listed KAVA and USDX on the Swipe Wallet platform where users can buy and sell KAVA and USDX with a linked bank account or credit/debit card as well as enabled it to be converted and spent at over 60 million merchants worldwide with the Swipe Visa Card.
$16M+ Ecosystem Rewards Program for BNB Holders on Binance
Swipe is launching a 12-week-period $16,000,000 Ecosystem Rewards Program for BNB holders, starting August 17. This program aims to continue to promote the usage of Swipe products, including the Swipe Network Staking and Governance within a strong community. With Swipe’s partnership with Binance, a weekly distribution of 333,333.33 SXP will run to BNB holders on Binance.com.
Know more about the Rewards Program here:
https://medium.com/swipe/swipe-launches-16m-ecosystem-rewards-program-for-bnb-holders-on-binance-e79ffc9dc252
Swipe’s Chainlink Based Price Oracles Now Live
Swipe has collaborated with Chainlink, the market-leading decentralized oracle network, to launch a live SXP-USD price oracle on the Ethereum mainnet. By switching to Chainlink, users receive stronger guarantees around trust and transparency in the payments process, as critical price feeds for the network are now completely decentralized and available to monitor on the blockchain.
This decentralized infrastructure ensures that reward issuances and token burns only take place based on accurate, highly available, and tamper-proof on-chain prices that have no single point of failure or absolute truth. Users can independently verify the current price, how price updates occur, which nodes are providing data to the network, and more. This means users no longer need to rely on Swipe to produce fair conversion rates.
---
Stay up-to-date with all the latest news from Swipe
Website: https://swipe.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SwipeWallet
Facebook: https://facebook.com/Swipe
Instagram: https://instagram.com/Swipe
Medium: https://medium.com/Swipe
Telegram: https://t.me/SwipeWallet & https://t.me/Swipe
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/swipewallet
YouTube: https://youtube.com/SwipeWallet

These crypto lending & borrowing services found early traction. Are they capable of bundling more financial services and winning the broader consumer finance market?
https://reddit.com/link/icps9l/video/98kl1y596zh51/player
This is the third part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this very powerful technology to reach the masses. As we laid out in our previous series, Crypto-Powered, we believe a crypto-native company will ultimately become the bank of the future. We’re confident Genesis Block will have a seat at that table, but we aren’t the only game in town.
In the first post of this series, we did an analysis of big crypto exchanges like Coinbase & Binance. In our second episode, we looked at the world of non-custodial wallets.
Today we’re analyzing crypto lending & borrowing services. The Earn and Borrow use-case covers a lot of what traditional banks deliver today. This category of companies is a threat worth analyzing. As we look at this market, we’ll mostly be focused on custodial, centralized products like BlockFi, Nexo, and Celsius.
Many of these companies found early traction among crypto users. Are they capable of bundling more financial services and winning the broader consumer finance market? Let’s find out.

Institutional Borrowers

Because speculation and trading remains one of the most popular use-cases of crypto, a new crypto sub-industry around credit has emerged. Much of the borrowing demand has been driven by institutional needs.
For example, a Bitcoin mining company might need to borrow fiat to pay for operational costs (salaries, electricity). Or a crypto company might need to borrow USD to pay for engineering salaries. Or a crypto hedge fund needs to borrow for leverage or to take a specific market position. While all of these companies have sufficient crypto to cover the costs, they might not want to sell it — either for tax or speculative reasons (they may believe these crypto assets will appreciate, as with most in the industry).
Instead of selling their crypto, these companies can use their crypto as collateral for loans. For example, they can provide $1.5M in Bitcoin as collateral, and borrow $1M. Given the collateralization happening, the underwriting process becomes straightforward. Companies all around the world can participate — language and cultural barriers are removed.
​
https://preview.redd.it/z9pby83d6zh51.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=54bf425215c3ed6d5ff0ca7dbe571e735b994613
The leader (and one of our partners) in this space is Genesis Capital. While they are always the counterparty for both lenders and borrowers, they are effectively a broker. They are at the center of the institutional crypto lending & borrowing markets. Their total active loans as of March 2020 was $649M. That number shot up to $1.42B in active loans as of June 2020. The growth of this entire market segment is impressive and it’s what is driving this opportunity for consumers downstream.

Consumer Products

While most of the borrowing demand comes from institutional players, there is a growing desire from consumers to participate on the lend/supply side of the market. Crypto consumers would love to be able to deposit their assets with a service and watch it grow. Why let crypto assets sit on an exchange or in cold storage when it can be earning interest?
A number of consumer-facing products have emerged in the last few years to make this happen. While they also allow users to borrow (always with collateral), most of the consumer attraction is around growing their crypto, even while they sleep. Earning interest. These products usually partner with institutional players like Genesis Capital to match the deposits with borrowing demand. And it’s exactly part of our strategy as well, beyond leveraging DeFi (decentralized finance protocols).
A few of the most popular consumer services in this category include BlockFi, Nexo, and Celsius.
​
https://preview.redd.it/vptig5mg6zh51.png?width=1051&format=png&auto=webp&s=b5fdc241cb9b6f5b495173667619f8d2c93371ca

BlockFi

BlockFi (Crunchbase) is the leader in this category (at least in the West). They are well-capitalized. In August 2019, they raised $18.3M in their Series A. In Feb 2020, they raised $30M in their Series B. In that same time period, they went from $250M in assets under management to $650M. In a recent blog post, they announced that they saw a 100% revenue increase in Q2 and that they were on track to do $50M in revenue this year. Their growth is impressive.
BlockFi did not do an ICO, unlike Celsius, Nexo, Salt, and Cred. BlockFi has a lot of institutional backing so it is perceived as the most reputable in the space. BlockFi started with borrowing — allowing users to leverage their crypto as collateral and taking out a loan against it. They later got into Earning — allowing users to deposit assets and earn interest on it. They recently expanded their service to “exchange” functionality and say they are coming out with a credit card later this year.
​
https://preview.redd.it/byv2tbui6zh51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=bac080dcfc85e89574c30dfb396db0b537d46706
Security Woes
It’s incredible that BlockFi has been able to see such strong growth despite their numerous product and security woes. A few months ago, their systems were compromised. A hacker was able to access confidential data, such as names, dates of birth, postal addresses, and activity histories. While no funds were lost, this was a massive embarrassment and caused reputational damage.
​
https://preview.redd.it/lwmxbz5l6zh51.png?width=606&format=png&auto=webp&s=ebd8e6e5c31c56da055824254b35b218b49f80e0
Unrelated to that massive security breach and earlier in the year, a user discovered a major bug that allowed him to send the same funds to himself over and over again, ultimately accumulating more than a million dollars in his BlockFi account. BlockFi fortunately caught him just before withdrawal.
Poor Product Execution
Beyond their poor security — which they are now trying to get serious about — their products are notoriously buggy and hard-to-use. I borrowed from them a year ago and used their interest account product until very recently. I have first-hand experience of how painful it is. But don’t take my word for it… here are just a few tweets from customers just recently.
​
https://preview.redd.it/wcqu3icn6zh51.png?width=1055&format=png&auto=webp&s=870e2f06a6ec377a87e5d6d1f24579a901de66b5
For a while, their interest-earning product had a completely different authentication system than their loan product (users had two sets of usernames/passwords). Many people have had issues with withdrawals. The app is constantly logging people out, blank screens, ugly error messages. Emails with verification codes are sometimes delayed by hours (or days). I do wonder if their entire app has been outsourced. The sloppiness shines through.
Not only is their product buggy and UX confusing, but their branding & design is quite weak. To the left is a t-shirt they once sent me. It looks like they just found a bunch of quirky fonts, added their name, and slapped it on a t-shirt.
​
https://preview.redd.it/mi6yeppp6zh51.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd4cd8201ad0d5bc667498096388377895b72953
Culture
To the innocent bystander, many of these issues seem totally fixable. They could hire an amazing design agency to completely revamp their product or brand. They could hire a mercenary group of engineers to fix their bugs, etc. While it could stop the bleeding for a time, it may not solve the underlying issues. Years of sloppy product execution represents something much more destructive. It represents a top-down mentality that shipping anything other than excellence is okay: product experience doesn’t matter; design doesn’t matter; craftsmanship doesn’t matter; strong execution doesn’t matter; precision doesn’t matter. That’s very different from our culture at Genesis Block.
This cancerous mentality rarely stays contained within product & engineering — this leaks to all parts of the organization. No design agency or consulting firm will fix some of the pernicious values of a company’s soul. These are deeper issues that only leadership can course-correct.
If BlockFi’s sloppiness were due to constant experimentation, iteration, shipping, or some “move fast and break things” hacker culture… like Binance… I would probably cut them more slack. But there is zero evidence of that. “Move fast and break things” is always scary when dealing with financial products. But in BlockFi’s case, when it’s more like “move slow and break things,” they are really playing with fire. Next time a massive security breach occurs, like what happened earlier this year, they may not be so lucky.
Institutional Focus
Based on who is on their team, their poor product execution shouldn’t be a surprise. Their team comes mostly from Wall Street, not the blockchain community (where our roots are). Most of BlockFi’s blockchain/crypto integration is very superficial. They take crypto assets as deposits, but they aren’t leveraging any of the exciting, low-level DeFi protocols like we are.
While their Wall Street heritage isn’t doing them any favors on the product/tech side, it’s served them very well on winning institutional clients. This is perhaps their greatest strength. BlockFi has a strong institutional business. They recently brought on Three Arrows Capital as a strategic investor — a crypto hedge fund who does a lot of borrowing. In that announcement, BlockFi’s founder said that bringing them on “aligns well with our focus on international expansion of our institutional services offering.” They also recently brought someone on who will lead business development in Asia among institutional clients.
BlockFi Wrap Up
There are certainly BlockFi features that overlap with Genesis Block’s offering. It’s possible that they are angling to become the bank of the future. However, they simply have not proven they are capable of designing, building, and launching world-class consumer products. They’ve constantly had issues around security and poor product execution. Their company account and their founder’s account seem to only tweet about Bitcoin. I don’t think they understand, appreciate, or value the power of DeFi. It’s unlikely they’ll be leveraging it any time soon. All of these reasons are why I don’t see them as a serious threat to Genesis Block.
However, because of their strong institutional offering, I hope that Genesis Block will ultimately have a very collaborative and productive partnership with them. Assuming they figure out their security woes, we could park some of our funds with BlockFi (just as we will with Genesis Capital and others). I think what’s likely to happen is that we’ll corner the consumer market and we’ll work closely with BlockFi on the institutional side.
I’ve been hard on BlockFi because I care. I think they have a great opportunity at helping elevate the entire industry in a positive way. But they have a lot of issues they need to work through. I really don’t want to see users lose millions of dollars in a security breach. It could set back the entire industry. But if they do things well… a rising tide lifts all boats.

Honorable Mentions

Celsius (ICO Drops) raised $50M in an ICO, and is led by serial entrepreneur Alex Mashinsky. I’ve met him, he’s a nice guy. Similar to Binance, their biggest Achilles heel could be their own token. There are also a lot of unanswered questions about where their deposits go. They don’t have a record of great transparency. They recently did a public crowdraise which is a little odd given their large ICO as well as their supposed $1B in deposits. Are they running out of money, as some suggest? Unclear. One of their biggest blindspots right now is that Mashinsky does not understand the power of DeFi. He is frequently openly criticizing it.
Nexo (ICO Drops) is another similar service. They are European-based, trying to launch their own card (though they’ve been saying this forever and they still haven’t shipped it), and have a history in the payments/fintech space. Because they haven’t penetrated the US — which is a much harder regulatory nut to crack — they are unlikely to be as competitive as BlockFi. There were also allegations that Nexo was spreading FUD about Chainlink while simultaneously partnering with them. Did Nexo take out a short position and start spreading rumors? Never a dull moment in crypto.
Other players in the lending & borrowing space include Unchained Capital, Cred (ICO Drops), and Salt (ICO Drops).
​
https://preview.redd.it/9ts6m0qw6zh51.png?width=1056&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd8d368c1aa39994c6bc5e4baec10678d3bbba2d

Wrap Up

While many companies in this category seem to be slowly adding more financial services, I don’t believe any of them are focused on the broader consumer market like we are. To use services like BlockFi, Nexo, or Celsius, users need to be onboarded and educated on how crypto works. At Genesis Block, we don’t believe that’s the winning approach. We think blockchain complexity should be abstracted away from the end-user. We did an entire series about this, Spreading Crypto.
For many of these services, there is additional friction due to ICO tokens that are forcefully integrated into the product (see NEXO token or CEL Token). None of these services have true banking functionality or integration with traditional finance —for example, easy offramp or spending methods like debit cards. None of them are taking DeFi seriously — they are leveraging crypto for only the asset class, not the underlying technology around financial protocols.
So are these companies potential competitors to Genesis Block? For the crypto crowd, yes. For the mass market, no. None of these companies are capable of reaching the billions of people around the world that we hope to reach at Genesis Block.
------
Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-can-blockfi-celsius-disrupt-banking-cf33d452ae53
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zf9zA-doHhw
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/15-crypto-banking-wars-can-blockfi-celsius-disrupt-banking
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/15-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Can-BlockFi--Celsius-Disrupt-Banking-eibj9j

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download

Can they overcome the product limitations of blockchain and deliver the world-class experience that consumers expect?
https://reddit.com/link/i8ewbx/video/ojkc6c9a1lg51/player
This is the second part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
---
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this very powerful technology to reach the masses. As we laid out in our previous series, Crypto-Powered, we believe companies that build with blockchain at their core will have the best shot at winning the broader consumer finance market. We hope it will be us at Genesis Block, but we aren’t the only game in town.
So this series explores the entire crypto landscape and tries to answer the question, which crypto company is most likely to become the bank of the future?
In our last episode, we offered an in-depth analysis of big crypto exchanges like Coinbase & Binance. Today we’re analyzing non-custodial crypto wallets. These are products where only the user can touch or move funds. Not even the company or developer who built the application can access, control, or stop funds from being moved. These apps allow users to truly become their own bank.
We’ve talked a little about this before. This group of companies is nowhere near the same level of threat as the biggest crypto exchanges. However, this group really understands DeFi and the magic it can bring. This class of products is heavily engineer-driven and at the bleeding-edge of DeFi innovation. These products are certainly worth discussing. Okay, let’s dive in.

Users & Audience

These non-custodial crypto wallets are especially popular among the most hardcore blockchain nerds and crypto cypherpunks.

“Not your keys, not your coins.”

This meme is endlessly repeated among longtime crypto hodlers. If you’re not in complete control of your crypto (i.e. using non-custodial wallets), then it’s not really your crypto. There has always been a close connection between libertarianism & cryptocurrency. This type of user wants to be in absolute control of their money and become their own bank.
In addition to the experienced crypto geeks, for some people, these products will mean the difference between life and death. Imagine a refugee family that wants to safely protect their years of hard work — their life savings — as they travel across borders. Carrying cash could put their safety or money at risk. A few years ago I spent time in Greece at refugee camps — I know first-hand this is a real use-case.
​
https://preview.redd.it/vigqlmgg1lg51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a5d48a63ce7a637749bbbc03d62c51cc3f75613
Or imagine a family living under an authoritarian regime — afraid that their corrupt or oppressive government will seize their assets (or devalue their savings via hyperinflation). Citizens in these countries cannot risk putting their money in centralized banks or under their mattresses. They must become their own bank.
These are the common use-cases and users for non-custodial wallets.

Products in Market

Let’s do a quick round-up of some of the more popular products already in the market.
Web/Desktop The most popular web wallet is MetaMask. Though it doesn’t have any specific integration with DeFi protocols yet, it has more than a million users (which is a lot in crypto land!). Web wallets that are more deeply integrated with DeFi include InstaDapp, Zerion, DeFi Saver, Zapper, and MyCrypto (disclosure: I’m an investor and a big fan of Taylor). For the mass market, mobile will be a much more important form-factor. I don’t view these web products as much of a threat to Genesis Block.
https://preview.redd.it/gbpi2ijj1lg51.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=c039887484bf8a3d3438fb02a384d0b9ef894e1f
Mobile The more serious threats to Genesis Block are the mobile products that (A) are leveraging some of the powerful DeFi protocols and (B) abstracting away a lot of the blockchain/DeFi UX complexity. While none get close to us on (B), the products attempting this are Argent and Dharma. To the extent they can, both are trying to make interacting with blockchain technology as simple as possible.
A few of the bigger exchanges have also entered this mobile non-custodial market. Coinbase has Wallet (via Cipher Browser acquisition). Binance has Trust Wallet (also via acquisition). And speaking of acquisitions, MyCrypto acquired Ambo, which is a solid product and has brought MyCrypto into the mobile space. Others worth mentioning include Rainbow — well-designed and built by a small indy-team with strong DeFi experience (former Balance team). And ZenGo which has a cool feature around keyless security (their CEO is a friend).
There are dozens of other mobile crypto wallets that do very little beyond showing your balances. They are not serious threats.
https://preview.redd.it/6x4lxsdk1lg51.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=fab3280491b75fe394aebc8dd69926b6962dcf5d
Hardware Wallets Holding crypto on your own hardware wallet is widely considered to be “best practice” from a security standpoint. The most popular hardware wallets are Ledger, Trezor, and KeepKey (by our friends at ShapeShift). Ledger Nano X is the only product that has Bluetooth — thus, the only one that can connect to a mobile app. While exciting and innovative, these hardware wallets are not yet integrated with any DeFi protocols.
https://preview.redd.it/yotmvtsl1lg51.png?width=1025&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8567b42839d9cec8dbc6c78d2f953b688886026

Strengths

Let’s take a look at some of the strengths with non-custodial products.

1. Regulatory arbitrage Because these products are “non-custodial”, they are able to avoid the regulatory burdens that centralized, custodial products must deal with (KYC/AML/MTL/etc). This is a strong practical benefit for a bootstrapped startup/buildedeveloper. Though it’s unclear how long this advantage lasts as products reach wider audiences and increased scrutiny.
2. User Privacy Because of the regulatory arbitrage mentioned above, users do not need to complete onerous KYC requirements. For example, there’s no friction around selfies, government-issued IDs, SSNs, etc. Users can preserve much of their privacy and they don’t need to worry about their sensitive information being hacked, compromised, or leaked.
3. Absolute control & custody This is really one of the great promises of crypto — users can become their own bank. Users can be in full control of their money. And they don’t need to bury it underground or hide it under a mattress. No dependence, reliance or trust in any third parties. Only the user herself can access and unlock the money.

Weaknesses

Now let’s examine some of the weaknesses.

1. Knowledge & Education Most non-custodial products do not abstract away any of the blockchain complexity. In fact, they often expose more of it because the most loyal users are crypto geeks. Imagine how an average, non-crypto user feels when she starts seeing words like seed phrases, public & private keys, gas limits, transaction fees, blockchain explorers, hex addresses, and confirmation times. There is a lot for a user to learn and become educated on. That’s friction. The learning curve is very high and will always be a major blocker for adoption. We’ve talked about this in our Spreading Crypto series — to reach the masses, the crypto stuff needs to be in the background.
2. User Experience It is currently impossible to create a smooth and performant user experience in non-custodial wallets or decentralized applications. Any interaction that requires a blockchain transaction will feel sluggish and slow. We built a messaging app on Ethereum and presented it at DevCon3 in Cancun. The technical constraints of blockchain technology were crushing to the user experience. We simply couldn’t create the real-time, modern messaging experience that users have come to expect from similar apps like Slack or WhatsApp. Until blockchains are closer in speed to web servers (which will be difficult given their decentralized nature), dApps will never be able to create the smooth user experience that the masses expect.
3. Product Limitations Most non-custodial wallets today are based on Ethereum smart contracts. That means they are severely limited with the assets that they can support (only erc-20 tokens). Unless through synthetic assets (similar to Abra), these wallets cannot support massively popular assets like Bitcoin, XRP, Cardano, Litecoin, EOS, Tezos, Stellar, Cosmos, or countless others. There are exciting projects like tBTC trying to bring Bitcoin to Ethereum — but these experiments are still very, very early. Ethereum-based smart contract wallets are missing a huge part of the crypto-asset universe.
4. Technical Complexity While developers are able to avoid a lot of regulatory complexity (see Strengths above), they are replacing it with increased technical complexity. Most non-custodial wallets are entirely dependent on smart contract technology which is still very experimental and early in development (see Insurance section of this DeFi use-cases post). Major bugs and major hacks do happen. Even recently, it was discovered that Argent had a “high severity vulnerability.” Fortunately, Argent fixed it and their users didn’t lose funds. The tools, frameworks, and best practices around smart contract technology are all still being established. Things can still easily go wrong, and they do.
5. Loss of Funds Risk Beyond the technical risks mentioned above, with non-custodial wallets, it’s very easy for users to make mistakes. There is no “Forgot Password.” There is no customer support agent you can ping. There is no company behind it that can make you whole if you make a mistake and lose your money. You are on your own, just as CZ suggests. One wrong move and your money is all gone. If you lose your private key, there is no way to recover your funds. There are some new developments around social recovery, but that’s all still very experimental. This just isn’t the type of customer support experience people are used to. And it’s not a risk that most are willing to take.
6. Integration with Fiat & Traditional Finance In today’s world, it’s still very hard to use crypto for daily spending (see Payments in our DeFi use-cases post). Hopefully, that will all change someday. In the meantime, if any of these non-custodial products hope to win in the broader consumer finance market, they will undoubtedly need to integrate with the legacy financial world — they need onramps (fiat-to-crypto deposit methods) and offramps (crypto-to-fiat withdraw/spend methods). As much as crypto-fanatics hate hearing it, you can’t expect people to jump headfirst into the new world unless there is a smooth transition, unless there are bridge technologies that help them arrive. This is why these fiat integrations are so important. Examples might be allowing ACH/Wire deposits (eg. via Plaid) or launching a debit card program for spend/withdraw. These fiat integrations are essential if the aim is to become the bank of the future. Doing any of this compliantly will require strong KYC/AML. So to achieve this use-case — integrating with traditional finance —all of the Strengths we mentioned above are nullified. There are no longer regulatory benefits. There are no longer privacy benefits (users need to upload KYC documents, etc). And users are no longer in complete control of their money.

Wrap Up

One of the great powers of crypto is that we no longer depend on banks. Anyone can store their wealth and have absolute control of their money. That’s made possible with these non-custodial wallets. It’s a wonderful thing.
I believe that the most knowledgeable and experienced crypto people (including myself) will always be active users of these applications. And as mentioned in this post, there will certainly be circumstances where these apps will be essential & even life-saving.

However, I do not believe this category of product is a major threat to Genesis Block to becoming the bank of the future.

They won’t win in the broader consumer finance market — mostly because I don’t believe that’s their target audience. These applications simply cannot produce the type of product experience that the masses require, want, or expect. The Weaknesses I’ve outlined above are just too overwhelming. The friction for mass-market consumers is just too much.
​
https://preview.redd.it/lp8dzxeh1lg51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=03acdce545cd032f7e82b6665b001d7a06839557
The winning bank will be focused on solving real user problems and meeting user needs. Not slowed down by rigid idealism like censorship-resistance and absolute decentralization, as it is with most non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be a world-class product that’s smooth, performant, and accessible. Not sluggish and slow, as it is with most non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be one where blockchain & crypto is mostly invisible to end-users. Not front-and-center as it is with non-custodial wallets. The winning bank will be one managed and run by professionals who know exactly what they’re doing. Not DIY (Do It Yourself), as it is with non-custodial wallets.
So are these non-custodial wallets a threat to Genesis Block in winning the broader consumer finance market, and becoming the bank of the future?
No. They are designed for a very different audience.
------
Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-can-non-custodial-crypto-wallets-ever-replace-banks-c381d7e863f4
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wm5hT0fQvVY
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/14-crypto-banking-wars-can-non-custodial-crypto-wallets-ever-replace-banks
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/14-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Can-Non-Custodial-Crypto-Wallets-Ever-Replace-Banks-ei1e49

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download

​
https://preview.redd.it/nnobdcikzre51.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=96de266298b85ee64ba151eb7658abb335477349
The month of July has been very busy but productive for the Swipe team. With the recent partnerships, announcements, and launches that were revealed, Swipe has indeed trying its best to achieve its mission of mainstreaming cryptocurrencies worldwide.
Swipe & Binance Seal Partnership
Swipe and Binance users got the exciting news that they have been waiting as the two companies simultaneously announced on July 7, its partnership through an acquisition move of Binance.
Binance, one of the world’s largest digital asset exchange, completed its acquisition of Swipe for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition aims to further mainstream the adoption of cryptocurrencies by bridging the gap between fiat and digital assets.
In line with this partnership, Swipe has also announced the integration of Binance Coin ($BNB) and Binance USD ($BUSD) on the Swipe Wallet application. Swipe users can now buy and sell crypto with their linked debit or credit cards, spend it to fiat via Swipe Visa Card and swap it instantly with other coins available on the app.
Also, Swipe’s native token $SXP is now listed on Binance Korea and Binance, with SXP/USDT perpetual contract with up to 50x leverage for all professional traders on the Binance platform.
Swipe Wallet v 1.5 Update
Swipe’s recent application update now lets users of choose from eight different languages such as English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese to use on their app. This will help users who are native speakers of these languages to transact within the app more effectively.
Download the updated app today: http://sw.pe/App
Swipe Card Rewards
Swipe Visa Card users will now have the choice to get up to 4% cashback in either Bitcoin ($BTC), Swipe Token ($SXP), or Binance Coin ($BNB) on every purchase at over 60 million merchants worldwide that accepts Visa.
European and the United Kingdom users can order their Swipe Visa cards their cards here: https://www.swipe.io/cards/
Swipe Slate Card Update
Swipe users who are interested to upgrade their current Swipe Saffron Cards to Swipe Slate cards can now do so with a lowered $SXP six-month stake requirement of 30,000 SXP!
This lowers the cost of entry for our black card by 10x from the initial 300,000 $SXP staking requirement.
Swipe x FTX
Swipe’s native token $SXP is now listed on FTX exchange. Users can now trade futures, spots, and leverage markets on FTX’s website. As $SXP markets are now live on FTX, both companies launched two events on the FTX platform to encourage users to start trading $SXP.
The first event, Buy/Deposit SXP and Split a 40,000 USD Prize Pool, was held from July 17 to 31. $20,000 prize was divided to users who net buy more than 100 SXP, and also another $20,000 to those who net deposit more than $100 or 100 SXP of accepted collateral into the FTX during the event.
The second event, which is the SXP Tokens Trading Competition, has a total prize of 15,000 USD. Participants who will trade more than $200 worth of SXP products will split the prize pool of a maximum of 10,000 USD. The event is still ongoing and will run until August 17. More details are available on https://ftx.com/competitions/swipe
SXP is now listed on Poloniex
$SXP is now listed on cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. SXP wallets are now open at Poloniex, and users can now begin depositing SXP and trading SXP/BTC, SXP/TRX, and SXP/USDT.
Swipe and Poloniex also both gave away 1,500 worth of $SXP to the first 100 depositors of 200 $SXP at Poloniex.com. Prizes will be deposited within two weeks of the trading competition, which ended last July 24.
Swipe and Elrond Partnership
Swipe recently integrated Elrond Network’s $ERD on its platform. This will make the $ERD token directly available for onboarding to more than 500,000 new users.
$ERD will be spendable via Swipe Wallet and its Visa debit cards, at millions of locations worldwide where Visa is accepted and as well as through services such as Google Pay, Apple Pay & Samsung Pay.
In relation to this newly sealed partnership, it announced a promotional event that lets Swipe users get up to 5% $ERD cashback in ERD on net buys. The event which happened for five days, from July 27 to August 1, gave away up to $100 cashback in ERD per KYC user who help 1 to 1000 $SXP during the event period.
Swipe x Compound
Compound’s governance token $COMP is now integrated on the Swipe Wallet platform. Users can now begin to now buy and sell $COMP with their linked debit or credit cards, spend it to fiat via Swipe Visa Card, and swap it instantly with other coins available on the app.
Swipe Partners with Travala.com
Travala.com, a leading blockchain-based travel booking service, has sealed a notable partnership with Swipe by adding $AVA to the Swipe platform. In addition to its integration on the platform, which will help $AVA users to convert, spend and buy it easily using the mobile application, Swipe Token ($SXP) is now added on Travala.com’s list of preferred payment option at over 2 million hotels and accommodations around the world.
Share your Swipe Visa Card and Win!
Swipe will select 3 lucky participants who will win 500 SXP by simply sharing a photo or video of your actual Swipe Card in action on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, or LinkedIn.
Users must tag their posts with the #GotSwipe hashtag, follow @SwipeWallet on Twitter, or @Swipe on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Three lucky winners in each platform will be selected by the team!
Swipe Launches Staking and DeFi
Swipe is proud to announce that it has launched its test network for Swipe Network Staking with up to 12% APY staking rewards and its plans to launch a Decentralized Finance Lending or Earn application on Binance Smart Chain with Swipe Governance.
With the launch of the Swipe Network testnet, users can use the Swipe Faucet to grab testnet-SXP to use on the decentralized finance application. Users will be able to bond SXP to the Swipe Network smart contract as collateral to ensure the guarantee of conversions for these exchanges.
Meanwhile, Swipe plans to launch a DeFi App on Binance Chain called SwipeFi, which will enable Binance Chain tokens to be used to earn interest on their supply of collateral to the protocol and borrow against their collateral directly on the Binance blockchain. Swipe has been working with the core developers of Binance Smart Chain through the acquisition and partnerships between Swipe and Binance, to launch SwipeFi.
SwipeFi will initially support BTC, BNB, ETH, BUSD, TUSD, and SXP to supply or borrow. The protocol will be governed by a new Binance Chain BEP2 token: Swipe Governance Token (SGV).
Click the LINK to get further information about the Network Staking and DeFi.
40 More Winners on Twitter Giveaway
Forty more winners, who will simply follow Swipe and its Chief Executive Officer Joselito Lizarondo on Twitter, like the contest tweet, and retweet and tag three friends, will get a chance to win $100 BTC each. Ten winners will be announced every week on Swipe’s Twitter page.
---
Stay up-to-date with all the latest news from Swipe
Website: https://swipe.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SwipeWallet
Facebook: https://facebook.com/Swipe
Instagram: https://instagram.com/Swipe
Medium: https://medium.com/Swipe
Telegram: https://t.me/SwipeWallet & https://t.me/Swipe
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/swipewallet
YouTube: https://youtube.com/SwipeWallet

Can the early success of major crypto exchanges propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market?
https://reddit.com/link/i48t4q/video/v4eo10gom7f51/player
This is the first part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this powerful technology to reach the masses. We believe a crypto-native company, like Genesis Block, will become the bank of the future.
In an earlier series, Crypto-Powered, we laid out arguments for why crypto-native companies have a huge edge in the market. When you consider both the broad spectrum of financial use-cases and the enormous value unlocked through these DeFi protocols, you can see just how big of an unfair advantage blockchain tech becomes for companies who truly understand and leverage it. Traditional banks and fintech unicorns simply won’t be able to keep up.

The power players of consumer finance in the 21st century will be crypto-native companies who build with blockchain technology at their core.

The crypto landscape is still nascent. We’re still very much in the fragmented, unbundled phase of the industry lifecycle. Beyond what Genesis Block is doing, there are signs of other companies slowly starting to bundle financial services into what could be an all-in-one bank replacement.
So the key question that this series hopes to answer:

Which crypto-native company will successfully become the bank of the future?

We obviously think Genesis Block is well-positioned to win. But we certainly aren’t the only game in town. In this series, we’ll be doing an analysis of who is most capable of thwarting our efforts. We’ll look at categories like crypto exchanges, crypto wallets, centralized lending & borrowing services, and crypto debit card companies. Each category will have its own dedicated post.
Today we’re analyzing big crypto exchanges. The two companies we’ll focus on today are Coinbase (biggest American exchange) and Binance (biggest global exchange). They are the top two exchanges in terms of Bitcoin trading volume. They are in pole position to winning this market — they have a huge existing userbase and strong financial resources.
Will Coinbase or Binance become the bank of the future? Can their early success propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market? Is their growth too far ahead for anyone else to catch up? Let’s dive in.
https://preview.redd.it/lau4hevpm7f51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c5de1ba497199f36aa194e5809bd86e5ab533d8

Binance

The most formidable exchange on the global stage is Binance (Crunchbase). All signs suggest they have significantly more users and a stronger balance sheet than Coinbase. No other exchange is executing as aggressively and relentlessly as Binance is. The cadence at which they are shipping and launching new products is nothing short of impressive. As Tushar Jain from Multicoin argues, Binance is Blitzscaling.
Here are some of the products that they’ve launched in the last 18 months. Only a few are announced but still pre-launch.

• Lending: earn interest on your deposits
• Debit Card: users can spend their crypto with a card (via Swipe acquisition)
• Fiat onramps: 300+ payment methods and supported in 170+ countries
• Options Trading: starting with mobile-only and Bitcoin
• Futures Trading: became top 2 in volume within 6 months
• Margin Trading: can get up to 5x leverage
• BUSD stablecoin: similar to USDC, PAX, and other USD-backed stablecoins
• Staking: easily earn interest on assets that have Proof of Stake chain
• Mining pool: allowing miners to easily transfer funds between various Binance services
• OTC Portal: over-the-counter trading desk for those who want to make bigger trades
• Peer-to-Peer trading: for onramps/offramps (i.e. user buying crypto with fiat)
• Launchpad: crypto startups can launch their tokens via IEO (Initial Exchange Offering)
• Binance Charity: recently donated a lot to covid19-related efforts
• Binance Chain: a new blockchain that powers their Binance Dex.
• Binance DEX: a decentralized exchange
• Binance Labs: the venture arm of Binance
• Smart Contracts on Binance Chain: could this be an Ethereum killer?

Binance is well-positioned to become the crypto-powered, all-in-one, bundled solution for financial services. They already have so many of the pieces. But the key question is:

Can they create a cohesive & united product experience?

Binance Weaknesses

Binance is strong, but they do have a few major weaknesses that could slow them down.

1. Traders & Speculators Binance is currently very geared for speculators, traders, and financial professionals. Their bread-and-butter is trading (spot, margin, options, futures). Their UI is littered with depth charts, order books, candlesticks, and other financial concepts that are beyond the reach of most normal consumers. Their product today is not at all tailored for the broader consumer market. Given Binance’s popularity and strength among the pro audience, it’s unlikely that they will dumb down or simplify their product any time soon. That would jeopardize their core business. Binance will likely need an entirely new product/brand to go beyond the pro user crowd. That will take time (or an acquisition). So the question remains, is Binance even interested in the broader consumer market? Or will they continue to focus on their core product, the one-stop-shop for pro crypto traders?
2. Controversies & Hot Water Binance has had a number of controversies. No one seems to know where they are based — so what regulatory agencies can hold them accountable? Last year, some sensitive, private user data got leaked. When they announced their debit card program, they had to remove mentions of Visa quickly after. And though the “police raid” story proved to be untrue, there are still a lot of questions about what happened with their Shanghai office shut down (where there is smoke, there is fire). If any company has had a “move fast and break things” attitude, it is Binance. That attitude has served them well so far but as they try to do business in more regulated countries like America, this will make their road much more difficult — especially in the consumer market where trust takes a long time to earn, but can be destroyed in an instant. This is perhaps why the Binance US product is an empty shell when compared to their main global product.
3. Disjointed Product Experience Because Binance has so many different teams launching so many different services, their core product is increasingly feeling disjointed and disconnected. Many of the new features are sloppily integrated with each other. There’s no cohesive product experience. This is one of the downsides of executing and shipping at their relentless pace. For example, users don’t have a single wallet that shows their balances. Depending on if the user wants to do spot trading, margin, futures, or savings… the user needs to constantly be transferring their assets from one wallet to another. It’s not a unified, frictionless, simple user experience. This is one major downside of the “move fast and break things” approach.
4. BNB token Binance raised $15M in a 2017 ICO by selling their $BNB token. The current market cap of $BNB is worth more than $2.6B. Financially this token has served them well. However, given how BNB works (for example, their token burn), there are a lot of open questions as to how BNB will be treated with US security laws. Their Binance US product so far is treading very lightly with its use of BNB. Their token could become a liability for Binance as it enters more regulated markets. Whether the crypto community likes it or not, until regulators get caught up and understand the power of decentralized technology, tokens will still be a regulatory burden — especially for anything that touches consumers.
5. Binance Chain & Smart Contract Platform Binance is launching its own smart contract platform soon. Based on compatibility choices, they have their sights aimed at the Ethereum developer community. It’s unclear how easy it’ll be to convince developers to move to Binance chain. Most of the current developer energy and momentum around smart contracts is with Ethereum. Because Binance now has their own horse in the race, it’s unlikely they will ever decide to leverage Ethereum’s DeFi protocols. This could likely be a major strategic mistake — and hubris that goes a step too far. Binance will be pushing and promoting protocols on their own platform. The major risk of being all-in on their own platform is that they miss having a seat on the Ethereum rocket ship — specifically the growth of DeFi use-cases and the enormous value that can be unlocked. Integrating with Ethereum’s protocols would be either admitting defeat of their own platform or competing directly against themselves.

Binance Wrap Up

I don’t believe Binance is likely to succeed with a homegrown product aimed at the consumer finance market. Their current product — which is focused heavily on professional traders and speculators — is unlikely to become the bank of the future. If they wanted to enter the broader consumer market, I believe it’s much more likely that they will acquire a company that is getting early traction. They are not afraid to make acquisitions (Trust, JEX, WazirX, DappReview, BxB, CoinMarketCap, Swipe).
However, never count CZ out. He is a hustler. Binance is executing so aggressively and relentlessly that they will always be on the shortlist of major contenders.
https://preview.redd.it/mxmlg1zqm7f51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d900dd5ff7f3b00df5fe5a48305d57ebeffaa9a

Coinbase

The crypto-native company that I believe is more likely to become the bank of the future is Coinbase (crunchbase). Their dominance in America could serve as a springboard to winning the West (Binance has a stronger foothold in Asia). Coinbase has more than 30M users. Their exchange business is a money-printing machine. They have a solid reputation as it relates to compliance and working with regulators. Their CEO is a longtime member of the crypto community. They are rumored to be going public soon.

Coinbase Strengths

Let’s look at what makes them strong and a likely contender for winning the broader consumer finance market.

1. Different Audience, Different Experience Coinbase has been smart to create a unique product experience for each audience — the pro speculator crowd and the common retail user. Their simple consumer version is at Coinbase.com. That’s the default. Their product for the more sophisticated traders and speculators is at Coinbase Pro (formerly GDAX). Unlike Binance, Coinbase can slowly build out the bank of the future for the broad consumer market while still having a home for their hardcore crypto traders. They aren’t afraid to have different experiences for different audiences.
2. Brand & Design Coinbase has a strong product design team. Their brand is capable of going beyond the male-dominated crypto audience. Their product is clean and simple — much more consumer-friendly than Binance. It’s clear they spend a lot of time thinking about their user experience. Interacting directly with crypto can sometimes be rough and raw (especially for n00bs). When I was at Mainframe we hosted a panel about Crypto UX challenges at the DevCon4 Dapp Awards. Connie Yang (Head of Design at Coinbase) was on the panel. She was impressive. Some of their design philosophies will bode well as they push to reach the broader consumer finance market.
3. USDC Stablecoin Coinbase (along with Circle) launched USDC. We’ve shared some stats about its impressive growth when we discussed DeFi use-cases. USDC is quickly becoming integrated with most DeFi protocols. As a result, Coinbase is getting a front-row seat at some of the most exciting things happening in decentralized finance. As Coinbase builds its knowledge and networks around these protocols, it could put them in a favorable position to unlock incredible value for their users.
4. Early Signs of Bundling Though Coinbase has nowhere near as many products & services as Binance, they are slowly starting to add more financial services that may appeal to the broader market. They are now letting depositors earn interest on USDC (also DAI & Tezos). In the UK they are piloting a debit card. Users can now invest in crypto with dollar-cost-averaging. It’s not much, but it’s a start. You can start to see hints of a more bundled solution around financial services.

Coinbase Weaknesses

Let’s now look at some things that could hold them back.

1. Slow Cadence In the fast-paced world of crypto, and especially when compared to Binance, Coinbase does not ship very many new products very often. This is perhaps their greatest weakness. Smaller, more nimble startups may run circles around them. They were smart to launch Coinbase Ventures where tey invest in early-stage startups. They can now keep an ear to the ground on innovation. Perhaps their cadence is normal for a company of their size — but the Binance pace creates quite the contrast.
2. Lack of Innovation When you consider the previous point (slow cadence), it’s unclear if Coinbase is capable of building and launching new products that are built internally. Most of their new products have come through acquisitions. Their Earn.com acquisition is what led to their Earn educational product. Their acquisition of Xapo helped bolster their institutional custody offering. They acqui-hired a team to help launch their staking infrastructure. Their acquisition of Cipher Browser became an important part of Coinbase Wallet. And recently, they acquired Tagomi — a crypto prime brokerage. Perhaps most of Coinbase’s team is just focused on improving their golden goose, their exchange business. It’s unclear. But the jury is still out on if they can successfully innovate internally and launch any homegrown products.
3. Talent Exodus There have been numerous reports of executive turmoil at Coinbase. It raises a lot of questions about company culture and vision. Some of the executives who departed include COO Asiff Hirji, CTO Balaji Srinivasan, VP & GM Adam White, VP Eng Tim Wagner, VP Product Jeremy Henrickson, Sr Dir of Eng Namrata Ganatra, VP of Intl Biz Dan Romero, Dir of Inst Sales Christine Sandler, Head of Trading Hunter Merghart, Dir Data Science Soups Ranjan, Policy Lead Mike Lempres, Sr Compliance Vaishali Mehta. Many of these folks didn’t stay with Coinbase very long. We don’t know exactly why it’s happening —but when you consider a few of my first points (slow cadence, lack of innovation), you have to wonder if it’s all related.
4. Institutional Focus As a company, we are a Coinbase client. We love their institutional offering. It’s clear they’ve been investing a lot in this area. A recent Coinbase blog post made it clear that this has been a focus: “Over the past 12 months, Coinbase has been laser-focused on building out the types of features and services that our institutional customers need.” Their Tagomi acquisition only re-enforced this focus. Perhaps this is why their consumer product has felt so neglected. They’ve been heavily investing in their institutional services since May 2018. For a company that’s getting very close to an IPO, it makes sense that they’d focus on areas that present strong revenue opportunities — as they do with institutional clients. Even for big companies like Coinbase, it’s hard to have a split focus. If they are “laser-focused” on the institutional audience, it’s unlikely they’ll be launching any major consumer products anytime soon.

Coinbase Wrap Up

At Genesis Block, we‘re proud to be working with Coinbase. They are a fantastic company. However, I don’t believe that they’ll succeed in building their own product for the broader consumer finance market. While they have incredible design, there are no signs that they are focused on or capable of internally building this type of product.
Similar to Binance, I think it’s far more likely that Coinbase acquires a promising young startup with strong growth.

Honorable Mentions

Other US-based exchanges worth mentioning are Kraken, Gemini, and Bittrex. So far we’ve seen very few signs that any of them will aggressively attack broader consumer finance. Most are going in the way of Binance — listing more assets and adding more pro tools like margin and futures trading. And many, like Coinbase, are trying to attract more institutional customers. For example, Gemini with their custody product.

Wrap Up

Coinbase and Binance have huge war chests and massive reach. For that alone, they should always be considered threats to Genesis Block. However, their products are very, very different than the product we’re building. And their approach is very different as well. They are trying to educate and onboard people into crypto. At Genesis Block, we believe the masses shouldn’t need to know or care about it. We did an entire series about this, Spreading Crypto.
Most everyone needs banking — whether it be to borrow, spend, invest, earn interest, etc. Not everyone needs a crypto exchange. For non-crypto consumers (the mass market), the differences between a bank and a crypto exchange are immense. Companies like Binance and Coinbase make a lot of money on their crypto exchange business. It would be really difficult, gutsy, and risky for any of them to completely change their narrative, messaging, and product to focus on the broader consumer market. I don’t believe they would ever risk biting the hand that feeds them.
In summary, as it relates to a digital bank aimed at the mass market, I believe both Coinbase and Binance are much more likely to acquire a startup in this space than they are to build it themselves. And I think they would want to keep the brand/product distinct and separate from their core crypto exchange business.
So back to the original question, is Coinbase and Binance a threat to Genesis Block? Not really. Not today. But they could be, and for that, we want to stay close to them.
------
Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future-eb31bcf02b02
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0csY1j0FuEk
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/13-crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future/
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/13-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Will-Coinbase-or-Binance-Become-the-Bank-of-the-Future-ehmrmo

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download