Facebook is planning to launch its own stablecoin digital currency
The United States-based global social tech giant would be the largest entrant to the consumer blockchain, and cryptocurrency space.
- Facebook is trying to build a cryptocurrency that would power money transfers on WhatsApp, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
- Earlier this month, business news outlet Cheddar reported that the Facebook employees had discussed with blockchain industry insiders "the idea of creating a decentralized digital currency for the social network's 2 billion users,"
Facebook could become the most important company in Crypto.
News broke yesterday that Facebook is building a stablecoin (crypto coin) that will be launched to allow WhatsApp users in India to transfer money. Of course, the immediate reaction of those in the space was to start yelling. Many people were excited, others were upset about the company’s recent privacy issues, and some felt that a Facebook stablecoin didn’t fit the authentic ethos of the crypto industry.
All of these reactions missed the mark though.
Zuckerberg and the Facebook team have never been interested in playing it safe. The highly talented team consistently looks to invent and/or grow products that change the world. If Facebook is building a stablecoin for WhatsApp, this is less about crypto and more about building a globally dominant product that changes the way billions of people live their lives.
David Marcus who leads the blockchain team is the former President of PayPal. Kevin Weil is the VP of Blockchain Product, previously served as the VP of Product at Instagram, and was once the SVP of Product at Twitter. Evan Cheng is the Director of Blockchain Engineering and was a former senior manager at Apple. And finally, Morgan Beller is the unsung hero of the group — the woman who leads blockchain strategy, but worked solo on the project for a period of time before she was able to build internal support and recruit some of the company’s best talent.
Couple these individuals with Facebook’s notorious "Growth Team" and you have a recipe for success. The Growth team is the company’s secret weapon. They are brought in like a SWAT team to solve the hardest problems by leveraging immense amounts of data and the proprietary analytical tools that have been built over the years. This team has helped four separate Facebook product teams scale their offerings to over a billion users each (Facebook main app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp).
So what exactly is the potential for this team?
The holy grail would be to build the world’s dominant payment system. This would be a direct competitor to Visa and Mastercard, but it is more likely to happen than you may think. Facebook has billions of users and tens of millions of merchants. This gives the company a leg up on competitors as they bootstrap the network effects needed to lock in both sides of a marketplace.
If Facebook could successfully build the product and drive adoption, they will have a chance to transition from a social network to one of the largest financial services companies in the world. This move would allow them to take a small percentage on each transaction and reduce the dependency on their advertising-based model.
This won’t happen overnight though. Facebook needs to
(1) create a viable stablecoin (not that easy)
(2) launch the product in India’s large market (significant opposition from government and financial institutions)
(3) drive sustainable adoption,
(4) expand to other jurisdictions and other digital currencies, and then
(5) build out additional financial services to serve their customers.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see Facebook back their way into becoming a new-age bank for digital natives outside the United States.
Facebook could be the most important company in crypto. They have 2+ billion people who use their services daily. Anything they launch will quickly become the most popular product in the industry….maybe even one of the most popular products in the world.
Mark Zuckerberg has dedicated his life to changing the world. Most people in tech don't trust him and would love to see him fall. Many people no longer trust him ... and still, get your popcorn ready — I wouldn’t bet against this team (and in most cases, it boils down to the team)
TechCrunch Covered The Breaking News
Jon Russell For TechCrunch
Facebook looks to be jumping on the blockchain wagon with plans to introduce its own stablecoin, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The social network company — under fire for a seemingly constant stream of privacy snafus of late — created an internal blockchain divisionin May and, while there has been plenty of speculation, the exact nature of its work is unclear.
The Bloomberg report is a first solid suggestion at what will come from the new division and, according to the publication, it’ll be a stablecoin that “let[s] users transfer money on its WhatsApp messaging app, focusing first on the remittances market in India.”
Facebook offered a non-committal response.
“Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology. This new small team is exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share,” it told Bloomberg in a statement.
If the U.S. giant does carry out the plan that Bloomberg is reporting it would (easily) be the largest company to embrace consumer blockchain service. That’s both in terms of the size of the business — a $376 billion market cap and annual revenue of more than $40 billion — and the user base it touches. Facebook reaches more than 2.2 billion people for its core social network, 1.5 billion for WhatsApp, 1.3 billion for Messenger and a further one billion via Instagram.
That makes this a thread worth pulling, so let us get into it.
Former PayPal CEO David Marcus heads up Facebook’s blockchain division — Marcus is also a former board member at crypto exchange Coinbase
Yet another stablecoin
Stablecoins have become all the rage in the blockchain space during the second half of this year, with scores of projects popping up to provide solutions — but let’s start with why.
The concept is simple: a cryptocurrency that is pegged to a fiat currency and therefore immune to the often wild valuation swings.
Blockchain as programmable and border-less money has potential, but stability is a huge concern. Bitcoin, for example, hit a record high of nearly $20,000 one year ago; today its price is just over $4,000 but, symbolically, it fell below that figure in recent months. The ride for “altcoins” has been even bumpier.
Stablecoins offer a way to deposit money ahead of buying into Bitcoin, Ethereum or other tokens more quickly than a bank account. They also allow profits to be moved from volatile tokens and, among other things, are a more stable way of sending crypto to another person (or business) without being subject to moving prices.
Yet, despite a simple premise, there are no current examples of a proven and successful stablecoin, despite the many who have thrown their hats into the ring.
Tether, the highest-profile project, is dogged by concerns around its financial backing. The organization behind it has never shown that it has the required fiat currency to back the tokens in the market, while its value has previously slipped below $1.....
Bitcoin Is a Declaration of Monetary Independence - Nick Spanos
OPINION
Nick Spanos is an early adopter and innovator in the blockchain space. He is best known for launching Bitcoin Center NYC, the world’s first live cryptocurrency exchange, in 2013, right next to the New York Stock Exchange — as immortalized in the Netflix documentary “Banking on Bitcoin.” As part of Bitcoin Magazine’s series of interviews and op eds leading up to the 10th Anniversary of Bitcoin, Nick shares his thoughts an early Bitcoin adopter.
Nick Spanos - Founder - Bitcoin Center NYC Twitter | @nickspanos | LinkedIn
Before Bitcoin, I worked tirelessly for liberty-minded political candidates for many years. These candidates, the most prominent of whom was Dr. Ron Paul, spoke out against the Federal Reserve Bank because of its role in inflating the money supply which devalued the life savings of hard-working people. In almost every case, the mass media would sharply (and often unfairly) attack the image of the candidate with half-truths and misinformation, decimating our poll numbers, until they were sure that we would be defeated on Election Day. No matter how hard we worked or how much money we raised, we were no match for what I call the political bosses of today, the mainstream media.
After two decades of struggle, I thought I had wasted my life fighting unwinnable battles. Then one day, I read the Bitcoin white paper. I read it half a dozen times and I thought, “Finally, I have a weapon that cannot be destroyed on Election Day.”
Bitcoin for me is not an instrument for financial investment. Bitcoin for me is a declaration of our monetary independence.
When I started the Bitcoin Center in 2013, I had a flourishing real estate business in downtown New York. I had an established career in developing technologies for political campaigns. Because of bitcoin’s reputation in the mainstream media back then, I knew that many of my relationships would be destroyed if I emerged as a public figure in the cryptocurrency space.
When I launched the center, a press release was sent out revealing me as the founder even though I never wanted that information to go public. Immediately, concerned friends and family started calling me, asking me what I was getting myself into and wondering if I had lost my mind. Bitcoin was for illicit activities on the internet, they told me. This is nothing but video game money, said others.
My life mission of personal freedom was more powerful than anything anyone could ever say to me.
I knew I had to bring Bitcoin out of the back alleys and onto Wall Street for...
SWIFT pilots a payment tech system to take on fintechs and blockchain tech
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) has announced its decision to launch a pilot Global Payment Initiative (GPI) service which aims to compete with the growing threat of competing blockchain and fintech solutions provided by institutions like Ripple, JP Morgan and Transferwise.
Still in its initial stages, the ambitious pilot aims to “build the foundation of a new integrated and interactive service that will significantly improve efficiencies in the payments process and which will ultimately be made available to all 10,000 banks across the SWIFT network.”
A recent GPI test, was successfully conducted in October, carrying out instant cross-border payments with banks in China, Singapore, Thailand and Australia. Equipped to enable speedy identification and elimination of errors and omissions in payment data such as missing or incorrect beneficiary information or incomplete regulatory information, SWIFT hopes the GPI payments service will enable speedy and seamless transactions, thereby reducing delays and costs, as well as improving customer experience.
Taking on Blockchain’s Threat
With the move, SWIFT has turned its attention to containing the threat of blockchain-based fintech startups offering...
Harbor launches security token compliance platform with digitized real estate shares
Blockchain startup Harbor has officially launched its security token compliance platform and is moving to offer digitized shares in a high-rise building located in in South Carolina.
Announced Tuesday at CoinDesk’s Consensus: Invest event, Harbor is now allowing investors to register to buy shares in apartment block called The Hub at Columbia, owned by the real-estate wing of DRW Holdings, Convexity Properties. There are 955 shares – represented by 955 tokens – available at a cost of $21,000 apiece.
The company, which raised $28 million earlier this year, develops ERC-20 tokens, an ethereum standard, for companies that want to put up equity or other forms of interest by way of a tokenized offering.
Harbor CEO Josh Stein told CoinDesk that the company’s platform allows it to track security token trading and investors’ real-world identity in real-time, ensuring that token sales are “compliant every time, everywhere.”
Offerings on Harbor’s security token platform operate similarly to a normal private placement sale, he explained. The key difference comes from the platform’s use of a blockchain protocol and structure, which allow companies to tap into a wider pool of investors.
Typically, an offering like Convexity’s might be sold to 10 or 20 investors, each of whom would have to contribute a significantly larger chunk of the total funding. Harbor’s platform makes it easier for anywhere from 100 to 2,000 accredited investors to participate, allowing each a $21,000 minimum stake, which is smaller...
OATH Protocol ICO Analysis
OATH Protocol wants to build an analog of a decentralized dispute resolution system modeling the common-juror system. In their view, this will solve the solution to the blockchain governance problem.
OATH Protocol wants to provide a solution to the Blockchain Governance system.
In order to do this the company plans to:
- increase the usability of smart contracts by providing an easy to use user-friendly smart contract creation tool
- creating a decentralized jury community, comprised of members with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise
- invites users from all communities to not only provide governance for the dApp they support but also for other ecosystems.
The protocol’s main advantages include:
- Trust – all data is hashed on a blockchain.
- Confidentiality – all jury members data of confidential.
- Dynamicity – protocol will ensure that different jurors will be resolving multiple cases to avoid a collision and ensure the integrity.
- Fairness – protocol will ensure random jurors selection based on a variety of factors as gender, background, age, etc. to have full objectivity.
- Incentive – a mechanism to motivate jurors for participating and assign them credit.
- Autonomy – parties mutually set rules that they would be bound by.
- Transparency – jury votes are disclosed to the community after resolution.
- Archive – protocol allows keeping all data in a structured irrecoverable way.
Use cases include, but are not limited to, the following:
- E-commerce, which involves a variety of disputes, such as quality problems, missing pieces, broken product, etc. OATH jury will resolve each dispute based on user-provided testimony.
- OTC trade of digital assets.
- Disputes involving decentralized property rent.
- Decentralized moderation.
- Oracle for betting.
- public chain governance.
So basically OATH is a decentralized agnostic protocol that offers a solution to of decentralized governance to all blockchains and Dapps.
Blockchain architecture is highlighted below:
OATH Protocol is an agnostic blockchain which may be integrated into other Daps and public chains.
The chain contains two main files:
- Case ledger, which includes all information such as contracts, verdicts, voting reasons, selected jurors.
- IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), which is a network designed to create a content-addressable, peer-to-peer method of storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system. It replaces traditional domain names with content addresses so that users don’t have to consider names and paths of file storage.
Token
The total token supply is: 10,000,000,000 ERC-20 tokens (OATH).
Token use is summarized below:
- Engagement...
Membrana (MBN) Token Sale & Blockchain Platform: Verified ICO Review
- Brings investors & traders together to form contracts for crypto asset trust management
- Offers transparent, decentralized, secure system that controls process up to revenue gains
- Has developed a beta version of the platform & detailed, comprehensive roadmap for future versions
- Large exec team with abundant, diverse & relevant experience bolsters investor confidence
Membrana (MBN) is a blockchain platform for concluding contracts between investors and traders for trust management of cryptocurrency assets. The Membrana platform allows investors to entrust their assets to seasoned crypto traders to minimize their risks and take advantage of experienced traders’ knowledge base.
In addition to a clear value proposition and team experience, we’re also impressed by Membrana’s in-depth whitepaper, roadmap and financial planning, all of which boosts the product’s feasibility score.
+Provides a platform for investors looking to entrust successful traders with their crypto assets
As crypto investing becomes increasingly popular, new investors are moving into the space, but without the benefit of years of experience and complete and reliable information. These investors are looking to secure mutually beneficial contracts to avoid risks and fraudulent activity, with traders whose trading histories they can verify.
The Membrana platform permits traders to offer their services while setting parameters for future contracts and fixing the terms of concluded contracts. Membrana additionally allows investors to have their funds managed by traders without...
EOS blockchain deep dive
EOS is a blockchain-based development platform designed for building decentralized applications (dApps). Developers can write and deploy smart contracts that power dApps and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
The platform has a native token with the ticker EOS. EOS tokens were first released as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, but a main-net token swap occurred after EOS Version 1.0 was deployed in June 2018.
EOS is often referred to as a decentralized operating system, where holding tokens represents a proportional share in the network bandwidth, storage, and computational resources. DApp developers must stake a certain number of tokens (called RAM) to cover the resources used by their DApp, but they receive those tokens back if the DApp is taken down.
Because of this staking model, users can interact with and use dApps for free. There are also no transaction fees on the EOS network, and block producers earn rewards from newly minted tokens.
EOS was developed and launched by the software company Block.one, who released the software as free and open source. Block.one built the EOS platform to incorporate 3 major features: scalability, flexibility, and usability.
It aims to be scalable by supporting thousands of commercial scale dApps, facilitating inter-blockchain communication, and separating authentication from execution.
It aims to be flexible through the ability to freeze and fix faulty or bug-laced dApps and incorporating generalized role-based permissions.
It also aims to incorporate usability through a web toolkit for interface development, self-describing interfaces, and a declarative permission scheme.
The EOS blockchain uses a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism with 21 block validators and integrated Byzantine fault tolerance. Delegated Proof of Stake is a consensus mechanism where blocks are validated by a pre-selected group of nodes and it allows for high transaction throughput.
Byzantine fault tolerance is the ability of a network to handle situations where nodes go down or malicious nodes broadcast faulty information. EOS is theoretically Byzantine fault tolerant because 15 out of the 21 block producers are required to confirm a transaction (a 2/3 majority).
For a more detailed discussion on Byzantine fault tolerance and the reason a 2/3 majority is important, refer to our Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance article.
EOS transactions are typically confirmed within 1 second with a 99.9% certainty, as a new block is created every 0.5 seconds. Dan Larimer stated in an April 2018 blog post that EOS can theoretically support over 1,000 transactions per second and aims to scale to 6-8,000 transactions per second in the future.
EOS also implements a mechanism called Transaction as Proof of Stake (TaPoS), where every transaction must include part of the hash of a recent block header. TaPoS makes it difficult to forge counterfeit chains considering the counterfeit chain would not be able to migrate transactions from the legitimate chain.
- DPoS consensus mechanism: See above section.
- Parallel processing: The ability to do things in parallel on the EOS network allows for faster transaction speeds and more scalability. This is planned for implementation in future versions of EOS.
- Network flexibility: If a DApp is faulty and contains a critical bug, the elected block producers can freeze it until the issue is resolved.
- High transaction throughput: EOS can theoretically support over 1,000 transactions per second with hopes that the platform can scale even higher.
- Ownership model: Owning EOS tokens represents a proportional share of the network resources like bandwidth, storage, and processing power. Developers must prove they hold a sufficient number of tokens to create DApps on the EOS blockchain.
- No transaction fees: Sending EOS tokens to another user or using them for a DApp requires no fee.
- EOS Constitution: The Constitution is a multi-party contract entered into by members of the EOS ecosystem by virtue of their use of the platform. The Constitution has 18 articles that outline the rules and user rights governing the EOS blockchain.
- June 5, 2017: EOS Technical White Paper released.
- June 9, 2017: Draft of the EOS token sale smart contact released.
- September 14, 2017: EOS.IO Dawn 1.0 released – the first release of the EOS.IO software development kit (SDK).
- December 5, 2017: Dawn 2.0 released.
- January 13, 2018: Former Bithumb CEO Richard Jung joined Block.one as Head of Korea.
- January 16, 2018: EOS.IO Blockchain Focused Fund formed.
- January 23, 2018: Block.one and Galaxy Digital announced joint venture for $325 million EOS.IO fund.
- April 5, 2018: Dawn 3.0 released.
- April 6, 2018: Block.one signed a $200 million joint venture partnership to accelerate Asia-focused EOS ecosystem development.
- May 11, 2018: Dawn 4.0 released.
- May 31, 2018: EOS Bug Bounty Program went live.
- June 1, 2018: Version 1.0 of open source EOS blockchain software released and EOS Developer Portal went live.
- June 9, 2018: EOS main-net launched.
- July 19, 2018: EOS Version 1.1.0 released.
- August 14, 2018: EOS Version 1.2.0 released.
- September 18, 2018: EOS Version 1.3.0 released.
- October 17, 2018: EOS Version 1.4.0 released.
Block.one has committed to investing over $1 billion into projects focused on growing the EOS ecosystem through their venture capital firm EOS VC. They also host EOS hackathons around the world and fund prizes for the winning projects.
Projects can receive more information about EOS VC and find an application link here: https://vc.eos.io/about-eos-vc/
There is no updated roadmap for the future technical development of EOS.
The EOS blockchain has a native token called EOS. As of December 7, 2018, the total supply is 1,006,245,120 EOS and the circulating supply is 906,245,118 EOS.
EOS tokens represent a share in the platform’s resources – this includes bandwidth, storage capacity, and processing power. Developers who wish to build dApps that run on the EOS blockchain must prove they hold a certain number of tokens and then stake those tokens to deploy the DApp.
Application developers must stake tokens to cover the nominal cost of account creation to sign up new users for their DApp. In addition, they must stake tokens for any storage, CPU power, or bandwidth used by the user. If the developer takes the DApp down, they receive their staked tokens back.
Developers can refer to the EOS Resource Center for up-to-date staking cost calculations. Baseline costs as of December 7, 2018 are outlined...
ICO Review: FidelityHouse (FIH) Token Sale & Blockchain Social Content Platform
- Makes lifecycle management of published content more fair & transparent
- Protects ownership of content, empowering creators & securing returns over time
- Expands upon localized Italian model which has experienced great success to date
FidelityHouse is a social content network that aims to become a global, go-to platform for authors and other publishers of original content. The platform will offer services to assist in the attribution, protection and monetization process of user content and intellectual property.
The FidelityHouse team believes leveraging the technological paradigm of blockchain will make the lifecycle management process of publishing fairer and more transparent, and benefit independent authors and third-party publishers.
Strengthens weak points between creators & platforms
User-generated content is absolutely essential to the online platform business, but right now the process of content creation is broken, to the detriment of creators. There is very little trust and transparency throughout the entire lifecycle of digital content and creators are treated as a commodity. Whether it’s photos, articles, guides, tutorials or recipes, the FidelityHouse team believes content is an investment by the author that deserves to be certified and protected with the potential to earn income over time.
The FidelityHouse chain is based on three cornerstones:
- Proof of authorship — cryptographic and time-stamping technologies track the existence and originality of content at any given moment
- Proof of license — the license granted to an author for specific content is tracked on the blockchain
- Proof of revenue — any value generated by contents is stored and distributed in a transparent way
Not only does FidelityHouse streamline the content publication process, the platform also provides a community for registered users that allows them to follow authors and topics and otherwise customize their experience. The platform’s algorithms help better curate the user experience, with the aim of making FidelityHouse a number-one source for aggregated, original content.
Importance of trustworthy user-generated content, monetization opportunities ensure strong market position
The FidelityHouse team has laid out a thorough plan in...
Understanding the blockchain is in 2 mins
A friend of mine asked “Tell me about blockchain in 2 mins”
Let me give it a go!
What is it?
Blockchain technology enables peer-to-peer transactions without an intermediary while keeping all transactions data transparent in a decentralised storage and tamper-proof manner.
- It is a foundational technology.
- It provides Internet of Value (WWW provides Internet of Information).
- It enables distribution of trust in place of traditional trusted functions.
- Data or records stored in blockchain are immutable (cannot be altered).
- Its records are traceable/audit-able from origin to end.
- Smart contract features enable the automatic triggering and execution of events when certain predefined conditions are met.
- When applied and working with other technologies, like Internet of Things, it will enable automatic governance.
Phases of...
Deep Dive Review into Tezos
Tezos is a distributed, peer-to-peer, permissionless network that seeks to improve on older blockchain protocols such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
One of its differentiating features is its on-chain governance that promises a self-amending blockchain – the protocol can evolve by upgrading its own code after coin holders have approved the changes.
This avoids some of the political and technological issues that have affected other blockchains, such as the Ethereum hard fork following the DAO hack, and the hard fork drama that happened in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
The project had a two-week uncapped ICO in July 2017. It collected approximately $232 million worth of cryptocurrencies and set a record for the largest ICO at the time. It currently has a market cap of over $782 million (as of October 31, 2018) and ranks among the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of market cap.
There are 3 key layers in Tezos – network layer, transaction layer, and consensus layer. The components are modular, which makes it easy to upgrade by swapping modules in and out seamlessly. Other networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, can be represented within Tezos by implementing the proper interface to the network layer.
- Self-amending: Tezos can be upgraded without the need for forks in the blockchain because of its self-amending feature. On-chain governance also means XTZ owners vote on the direction of the blockchain – the election cycle provides a formal process for any proposed protocol changes.
- Liquid Proof-of-Stake: Tezos uses a proof-of-stake consensus model where every stakeholder can participate in validating transactions on the network and be rewarded accordingly.
This table summarizes the differences between Tezo’s proof-of-stake consensus model and delegated proof-of-stake:
- Formal verification: The Tezos blockchain facilitates formal verification, a technique which mathematically proves the correctness of the code governing transactions. This helps secure smart contracts and avoid bugs in the code.
- Turing complete smart contracts: Tezos supports Turing complete smart contracts and provides a platform for building smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).
Tezos is an open source project and its source code can be viewed here: https://gitlab.com/tezos/tezos
- August 2014: The position paper for Tezos was released.
- September 2014: The whitepaper for Tezos was released.
- August 2015: Arthur and Kathleen Breitman co-founded Dynamic Ledger Solutions, Inc., a US-based company to develop the Tezos blockchain.
- September 2016: The source code for Tezos was published on GitHub.
- July 2017: Tezos raised more than 65,000 bitcoin and 360,000 ether during a public ICO (approximately $232 million). Tezos Foundation was created.
- October 2017: The Breitmans sent a letter to two other members of the Swiss Foundation controlling Tezo’s funds and called for the removal of Johann Gevers, the President of the foundation.
- June 30, 2018: Betanet was launched with a genesis block that became the seed of the network.
- September 17, 2018: Mainnet was launched.
It should be noted that in the original white paper, it was stated that the Tezos network would launch in “summer 2017”. However, the network was not launched until June 30, 2018, almost a year after the initial promise.
The delay was partly due to the infighting between the foundation board members which led to the ICO funding being unutilized for a while.
For more details and for future updates, please check out Tezos Foundation’s news page at https://tezos.foundation/news and Tezos’ official blog at https://medium.com/tezos.
Tezos does not have a specific development roadmap. However, it is an open source project and its development progress can be tracked on GitLab.
Arthur Breitman, the co-founder of Tezos, recently published a blog post on October 20, 2018 discussing his high level views on the direction of Tezos going forward: https://medium.com/tezos/a-few-directions-to-improve-tezos-15359c79ec0f.
XTZ is the native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain. With Tezos, any coin holders can participate in the validation process by making a security deposit. This is a process calling “baking”. They are rewarded for contributing to the network and ensuring its security and stability and can lose their deposit if they exhibit dishonest behavior.
Initially, the inflation of the circulating supply is set at a maximum of 5.5% per annum. Each block is “baked” by a stakeholder and endorsed by 32 other random stakeholders. Coin holders can delegate their stake to a baker who can bake the coins for the holders for a fee. Click here for a list of bakers.
For more information about baking rewards and endorsements, please read the official documentation here.
Transaction fees on the Tezos network are optional and users can send transactions with zero transaction fee. However, we believe that if the network is congested, bakers will prioritize transactions with higher transaction fees.
Part of the newly minted XTZ coins will be rewarded to the contributors that won the proposals voted on-chain. The contributors will use the funding to execute the proposals.
Tezos was created by Arthur Breitman and his wife, Kathleen Breitman. They released the position paper and whitepaper in 2014 and the project had been in development ever since. The biographies of the two co-founders are summarized below:
Arthur Breitman – Arthur was born in France and studied at École Polytechnique in math, physics, and computer science. He went on to a career in quantitative finance, working in various positions at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He also worked as a portfolio manager for White Bay Group, a family office.
Kathleen Breitman – Kathleen co-founded Tezos in October 2016. Prior to that, she worked in strategy and consulting at R3 CEV (a distributed ledger startup), Accenture, and De Dicto and in various positions at Bridgewater Associates, The Wall Street Journal, etc. She obtained her BA from Cornell University in...