Bitcore is a cryptocurrency that is a hybrid fork of Bitcoin. Although hard forks are heard of, a lot of people only know of Bitcoin hard forks such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold; instead, a few people know of Bitcore or hybrid forks. Using Bitcoin’s source code and technology, Bitcore created a new blockchain altogether; it made sure that the blockchain size is smaller, the scalability is better. Furthermore, block times are faster than Bitcoin’s while making mining ASIC resistant as well. Bitcore is not that different from Bitcoin as of now. In fact, it is rather inferior to Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies; it has no utility at the time of writing this. It’s only an investment prospect for those who believe the coin will kick on soon and reach great heights. The reason why one would want to invest in Bitcore is that of its unique practices. Bitcore created a new blockchain on November 2, 2017. It took a snapshot of the Bitcoin transaction and created 5 million transactions to fill all the public addresses belonging to people owning 0.01 BTC or more. The funding ratio is 0.5 BTX: 1.0 BTC, but if you had bitcoins at the time of the snapshot, then you can request your share of BTX at a 1:1 conversion until October 30. Bitcore is the first cryptocurrency to be a hybrid fork. But it is more than just a hybrid fork. It has tried to improve on Bitcoin and solve the issues that plague it. For instance, Bitcore uses timetravel10 consensus algorithm which is resistant to ASICs. This means that centralization of mining power is not possible as the playfield is levelled and everyone has an equal opportunity more or less. Moreover, Bitcore has 10 MB Segwit enabled blocks that make the network capable of handling 17.6 billion transactions a year or 48 million transactions per day. Bitcore is a cryptocurrency that has a lot of promise but nothing to show for as of now. Those investing in it believe that it will grow into a major force soon. But even after weekly airdrops, the user base is limited. Handling 46 million transactions per day won’t matter if there aren’t many people to use it. The development team’s efforts will go a long way into ensuring that more people start using BTX. A wallet that is on the way can help change things a little; however, Bitcore’s long-term future might depend on whether it can offer something different or not.
The Cosmos network consists of many independent, parallel blockchains, called zones, each powered by classical Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols like Tendermint (already used by platforms like ErisDB). Some zones act as hubs with respect to other zones, allowing many zones to interoperate through a shared hub. The architecture is a more general application of the Bitcoin sidechains concept, using classic BFT and Proof-of-Stake algorithms, instead of Proof-of-Work.Cosmos can interoperate with multiple other applications and cryptocurrencies, something other blockchains can’t do well. By creating a new zone, you can plug any blockchain system into the Cosmos hub and pass tokens back and forth between those zones, without the need for an intermediary. While the Cosmos Hub is a multi-asset distributed ledger, there is a special native token called the atom. Atoms have three use cases: as a spam-prevention mechanism, as staking tokens, and as a voting mechanism in governance. As a spam prevention mechanism, Atoms are used to pay fees. The fee may be proportional to the amount of computation required by the transaction, similar to Ethereum’s concept of “gas”. Fee distribution is done in-protocol and a protocol specification is described here. As staking tokens, Atoms can be “bonded” in order to earn block rewards. The economic security of the Cosmos Hub is a function of the amount of Atoms staked. The more Atoms that are collateralized, the more “skin” there is at stake and the higher the cost of attacking the network. Thus, the more Atoms there are bonded, the greater the economic security of the network. Atom holders may govern the Cosmos Hub by voting on proposals with their staked Atoms.