Tokens

Elrond (eGLD) Smart Contract Platform Explained

Elrond is a sharded smart contract and staking blockchain that is validated through a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism. They have been live since 2018. Their native token is called Elrond Gold (eGLD), which was swapped from the ERD token. Their whitepaper is here if you want to dive deep.

Their Maiar DEX was hacked on June 5, 2022 for over $100 million dollars worth of eGLD. It was a bug exploited through a smart contract that was fixed and the team claimed that the tokens were mostly recovered. The rest of the eGLD were covered by their foundation.

Elrond Architecture

Their “adaptive state sharding” enables 15,000 transactions per second (TPS) and six second block time. Each shard is resonsible for a section of their state. Their nodes are run on regular computers without special servers.

Elrond claims that as more computers join their network, it will become more decentralized and could achieve 100,000 TPS. Their breakthrough is sharding at the three levels of state, transaction, and network, which has not been done before.

Roles in the Elrond Network

There are three roles that help secure the Elrond blockchain and verify transactions. They are:

Validator: earn rewards through participation in the consensus mechanism. They stake eGLD tokens, verify transactions and secure the network.
Observor: does not stake nor earn rewards. They are a relay and can either store the entire Elrond network history or the last two epochs.
Fisherman: a node (can be a validator or observer) that verifies proposed blocks. They challenge blocks and earn rewards.

One third of their nodes are reshuffled every epoch to avoid node collusion.

WASM Virtual Machine for Smart Contracts

Elrond smart contracts can be written in any programming language that compiles to WebAssembly (WASM) such as C, C++, and Rust. This gives developers a wide range of options when creating DApps for Elrond.

Maiar Money App on Elrond

Elrond has their own mobile money app that enables payments and contains a non-custodial digital wallet. It is aavailable on iOS and Android. The app uses a one way hash for your phone number during transactions so it’s never shared. Their fees are usually $0.001 per transaction.

Final Thoughts

I’m encouraged that their hack was only through a smart contract on their DEX. Elrond’s sharding approach is cutting edge, but their market cap has been dropping along with the rest of the crypto market through 2022.

Time will tell if this blockchain becomes more widely adopted for its block finality speed and WASM smart contracts. Elrond is part of a new generation of networks that are innovating towards speed and scalability. I’ll be watching them closely in the next bull run since I believe a few new blockchain networks will outcompete the older ones through the rest of the 2020s.

Do Me a Favor? Share it!

XRPL Coins (xCOIN) – Site and Project Overview

XRPL Coins is a platform / website for tracking and trading coins that live on the XRP Ledger. It allows users to interact with the many native functions of the XRPL. It’s one of my favorite sites for researching this ledger. I like the user interface, look, and feel of their site.

This project also lets us use the decentralized exchange (DEX) that is part of the XRP Ledger. You can trade across your XRP coins directly with your XUMM wallet. XUMM provides the security layer for transactions. They have a solid team and a good track record so far.

The XCOIN Token

This porject has their own XCOIN token with a total supply of 9.9 million and over 27,000 trustlines set for it. I haven’t found much info about this token out there. I also see one with a capital “X” and one with a lower case “x”, so I’m confused on that! Always be careful that you have the right coin, no matter which one you are researching.

XRPL Coins also has a new social posting and commenting area too. It’s an interesting place for announcements from XRP fans and seems to be picking up steam (Oct, ’22). XRPL projects and influencers are starting to interact there.

All in all, I like XRPL Coins for their DEX and research aspect. I’m not sure what their token is all about, though. Maybe it will have more utility and value in the future as they grow.

Do Me a Favor? Share it!

Deri Protocol (DERI) Overview

Deri Protocol is a decentralized (DeFi) derivatives trading platform running on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon Network, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and Huobi Ecological Chains.

Deri Features

Trades are done with smart contracts running automated market makers (AMMs).
Allows users to hedge and arbitrage on chain.
Connects with MetaMask, Wallet Connect, and Coinbase Wallet
Positions become NFTs that are easily tradeable.
Created cross-chain bridges which enables trades between ETH, BSC, Polygon, and Heco.
20% of transaction fees go to the liquidity provider, 80% burn DERI tokens
DERI tokens can be exchanged on PancakeSwap and SushiSwap

Summary and Possible Pain Points

Cross-chain bridges are historically vulnerable to exploits and hacks, which may be a problem for Deri in the future. Their security has been solid in their first year and a half, though.

Deri is a new approach to decentralized derivatives trading that is accurate and efficient. It’s a vital industry for DeFi to attack if there is to be mass adoption.

The derivatives markets are gigantic, murky, and secretive. They include the biggest players in banking and investing. As a result, nobody knows the true value of global derivatives out there. I have heard a few estimates over $2 QUADRILLION, but it could be much more.

This industry will not be disrupted easily, especially since DeFi can bring transparency and those involved in derivatives trading probably won’t like that. Time will tell if Deri or other new DeFi protocols can make an impact.

Do Me a Favor? Share it!