Kozminski Techblog

According to the WTO, in 2018 the total value of all merchandise traded was over 19 trillion dollars. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a blockchain-based project that could improve this gargantuan ecosystem?

Actually, there is one project which is trying to do it with the help of blockchain technologies.

Vechain is a platform developed to the improve management of supply chains and business processes. Its aim is to optimize these processes and information flow for complex supply chains by the use of blockchain. Moreover, the team of developers acclaims that VeChain can be used in agriculture, document management, digital content distribution and even carbon reduction.

According to the documents on Vechain official website, the target audience for the company is huge enterprises. Important to say, that they already have partnerships with such giants as BMW, Walmart Chine and Microsoft. However, at the moment the partnership only at the startup level. It means that now they support the development of the project, but do not implement its technologies in their supply chains.

A notable thing for ordinary investors is that for maintaining the network they can earn money in one of the Vechain tokens. (the project has 2 decentralized tokens and each of them plays a significant role in the network) In order to do it an investor has to run a full node on its computer or virtual machine. There will be no deep technical analysis because it will take a long time.

Important to say, the project has one problem which investors cannot neglect. The annual % of yearnings promised by the development team for maintaining the network has nothing to do with reality. Many investors lost a lot of money and became disillusioned with the project. Theu think that the project is scam. If the developers do not make the maintenance of the network more profitable, then the Vechain network risks completely stopping.

In conclusion, even though VeChain has some serious issues, it has a chance for success because it has a good idea and influential investors.

Resources:

What is VeChain?

https://vechain.com/

The internet we have today is extremely centralized. All the web content we interact which is stored on centralized servers which can suffer outages or be shot down at any moment if they are hosting content which people with big wallets do not want others to see. Decentralized alternatives were not feasible enough because they are either too slow, too expensive, or both.

The company called Protocol labs developed 2 products to address these issues and lay the groundwork for functional, fast, affordable and user-friendly web 3.0.

One of these products is called Filecoin. The company collected the necessary amount of money for the development of this project in half an hour by the use of ICO (Initial coin offering). At the moment Filecoin mainnet has been launched.

Filecoin is a decentralized data storage network that allows anyone in the world to rent out free hard disk space or to purchase the necessary online storage. All payments within the network are made using decentralized token FIL based on blockchain.

How does it work?

There are 3 groups of usеrs in Filecoin: retriеval minеrs, storage miners and clients.

Cliеnts pay to store and rеceive data. They can choose from the list of available service providеrs. If thеy want to store the privatе data, they nееd to еncrypt it bеfore submitting it to thе providеrs.

Storagе minеrs storе cliеnt’s data for the reward. They may choose how much frее spacе they want to rent out. After the cliеnt and storage miner agreе on the dеal, the miner is obligеd to constantly provide proofs that he stores the data.

Rеtriеval minеrs providе client’s data at their rеquеst. Thеy can gеt the data еithеr from cliеnts or storagе minеrs. Rеtriеval minеrs and cliеnts еxchange data and coins using micropaymеnts: the data is split into piecеs and cliеnts pay a small numbеr of coins for еach piеcе.

Finally, the nеtwork rеpresеnts all full nodes that validatе the actions of cliеnts and minеrs. Thеsе nodеs count the availablе storagе, check the storage proofs, and rеpair data faults.

In gеnеral, Filecoin is no doubt one of thе most interеsting and usеful tеchnologiеs basеd on blockchain. The projеct has influеntial sponsors invеsted in it, and it has a strong tеam of devеlopers. All this incrеases the chance of succеss of the project.

Sources:

https://filecoin.io/

https://ru.crypto-news.io/

https://cointelegraph.com

The idea of virtual world in which you can do whatever you want has long kept dreamers awake at night. A plenty of films, books and games about this topic has already been made. The project called Decentreland is no doubt a breakthrough in this area because it has done something that no one has ever done before: created a decentralized virtual reality world completely owned by its users.

So, what is Decentreland?

Decentrеlаnd is а virtuаl rеality platform bаsеd on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can crеаte, tеst, аnd monetize content and аpps. The platform is fully governed by users through special system called DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). All apps created on the Decentraland network belong exclusively to their creators.

To start creating content user has to buy land on the land market using blockchain based token called MANA. The number of land plots is limited which creates an artificial deficit that affects the price of land plots. At the moment, the price of land varies from 500 dollars to several thousand dollars. About 80% of all land belongs to users. Part of the territory is rented out by the Decentraland team. Public objects such as squares and roads are not for sale.

According to developers, the main goal for them is to make virtual reality world in which creative people can easily realise their ideas. That is why they created special tool to make the process of creating content easier. As a result, everyone may create whatever he wants without any knowledge in coding.

As regards playing Decentreland, it is possible to play Decentreland through web browser or virtual reality helmet even without downloading app. In addition, Decentreland does not require registration, to join the virtual world user just has to have Ethereum wallet.

Unfortunatelly, even though Decentreland is so easy to join, the number of active players is low because of 2 main reasons. First of all, the game is still poorly optimized and has a plenty of bugs. Secondly, the game has attracted attention of speculators instead of declared target audience (creative people). As a subsequence of land speculations, the entry threshold for owning land is to high for ordinary people and no doubts that it pushes away some potential players.

In conclusion, even though now Decentreland has many serious problems, the potential of it is huge. In case, the team of development would solve main problems, the project is no doubt will be popular in the future.

Resources:

https://decentraland.org/

https://www.publish0x.com/cryptocurrency/what-is-decentraland-mana-a-comprehensive-guide-to-understan-xkxyrn

Nowadays a plenty of small companies and sole traders waste a lot of time because they do not have enough computing power for such things as rendering computer graphic, training artificial intelligence or analyzing business statistic. The project called Golem allow not only to do things above much faster but also to make money renting out computing power.

So, what is Golem?

According to official website: “Golem is a global, open source, decentralized supercomputer that anyone can access. It is made up for combined power of users’ machines, from PC’s to intire data centres.” In simple terms, Golem is a P2P (peer to peer) platform based on Ethereum on which everyone can buy or sell computing power by the use of cryptocurrency called GNT. The main goal of Golem is to unite computing power of it’s community in a single super computer.

There are many different ways to use this super computer. For instance:

1. Computer graphic

2. Machine learning

3. Scince

4. Business analyzing

5. Data mining

6. Running of Dapps (decentralized applications)

In all this spheres Golem works much more faster and cheapper than anything else. As regards making profit on renting out computing power, to start mining of GNT it requires just to download special application on your device. At the moment, mining is available only on computers, however the company which is developing Golem is planning to add this function to smartphones and even smart watches.

Generally, the project at the moment at the first stage of the development and now Golem can only render images and videos, but the project is evolving rapidly and it is expected that by the end of 2020 there are will be much more available ways of the use.

In conclusion, Golem is definitely the future of computing, it is just a matter of time when the use of it will become mainstream. In addition, even though the team of Golem developers needs some time to release such huge project, the growth of GNT price by 2 times in a month shows that investors see this project as a prospect.

Sources:

https://golem.network/

Recently, investors have shown considerable interest in DeFi projects. This can be understood from the chart of total value locked (USD) in DeFi projects on the website called DeFiPulse. At the moment, the total value locked in DeFi projects almost 4 times as high as it was 90 days ago. Furthermore, the costs of some DeFi projects’ tokens on exchanges have sometimes increased even more than 10 times. For the comparison, the price of gold for the same period of time increased only 1.2 times.

As I’ve shown above, DeFi is quite popular at the moment among investors, however what is DeFi? According to the website DeFiPulse, DeFi (decentralized finance) is a complex of services based on smart contracts and decentralized applications (Dapps) that make up a decentralized financial ecosystem and provide users with access to a variety of financial services such as investing, lending, trading on exchanges, etc.

The main aim of DeFi is to change traditional financial system on new trustless blockchain-based one. At the moment, there are accessible such services as borrowing & lending, using decentralized exchanges and wallets, making payments, holding crypto-assets linked to real life assets and last, but not least, insurance.

Like everything in this world, DeFi has its pros and cons.

As regards advantages, firstly, anyone can get one or another financial service avoiding banks and their high fees. Secondly, all transactions in the blockchain are open-source for everyone. Finally, there are a plenty of ways to combine DeFi applications with existing services using unique smart contract-based protocols.

Speaking about drawbacks, firstly, since DeFi applications are still a new domain there is a chance to lose your money due to hacking of some unreliable smart contracts. Secondly, because of the little speed of transactions’ confirmation of Ethereum, on which at the moment based the vast majority of DeFi apps, the fees for confirmation sometimes really high.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that DeFi will replace the traditional financial system in the future, however, it needs some time to overcome those obstacles that hinder the development of the system now.

Sources:

What is DeFi?

https://www.coindesk.com/what-is-defi

https://academy.binance.com/en/glossary/defi