Burst is an open-source decentralized platform that connects people, companies, and financial institutions. It allows you to move value – according to your own rules – within a scalable, green and customizable ledger. The special proof of capacity method means “you just have to plug in your drive, plot it, and leave your computer mining and earning you coins periodically. The more space you allocate to mining, the higher the reward.” The mining will not hurt your hard drive or cause a noticeable change in your electricity bill. If you ever decide to stop mining, you can delete the information that Burstcoin plots onto the hard drive and use the space for its originally intended purpose. It also offers several other decentralized features such as asset trading and crowdfunding. You can sell digital goods in a peer-to-peer marketplace or even auction off your items. With all of the transactions you engage in on the Burst network, there’s the option of attaching messages as well. An anonymous user introduced Burstcoin on bitcointalk.org in 2014. The coin was developed off of the Nxt platform and thus offers many of the same features. Following in the footsteps of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Burstcoin creator never revealed his identity. After the creator disappeared, the cryptocurrency community organized to continue developing the coin. A team called the Proof of Capacity Consortium is currently developing Burstcoin. Burstcoin is not just famous for its proof of capacity mining. It was the first blockchain to implement “Turing complete” smart contracts. The most famous application of the smart contracts was a completely decentralized lottery. Estimates towards the end of 2017 calculated for each terabyte of hard drive space you commit to the network, you would mine an average of 21 Burstcoins per week. At the time, there were over 150,000 terabytes of storage devoted to the network. Estimates towards the end of 2017 calculated for each terabyte of hard drive space you commit to the network, you would mine an average of 21 Burstcoins per week. At the time, there were over 150,000 terabytes of storage devoted to the network. The online Burstcoin wallet will also walk you through how to start plotting your hard drive so that you can begin mining right away. Burst is designed to be a miner-friendly coin to ensure decentralization of the blockchain. With Bitcoin receiving criticism over wasted energy, Burst offers a more environmentally friendly way to mine and run a decentralized blockchain. If you are looking to mine cryptocurrency but were intimidated by the loud and expensive machines, you might want to check out proof of capacity and consider mining Burstcoin. Or if you simply want a fairly distributed decentralized cryptocurrency with an active development team, then keep your eye on Burstcoin.
BitBay is a free, decentralized marketplace for buying and selling goods and services on the blockchain. You can connect directly with peers and transact without the need for a middleman like Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist. Transactions are secure and anonymous. They’re also guaranteed by escrow. The project aims to be the new standard for eCommerce, allowing individuals to trade one-to-one at scale. As a result, BitBay claims it will revolutionize global trade. It’s seemingly a great solution for other niche applications as well, where groups of people aren’t served by existing marketplaces. In the beginning, BitBay got off to a rocky start. In 2014, the original founders raised capital in bad faith and quickly abandoned the project after fundraising, leaving the lead developer holding the bag. It seemed like BitBay was finished, but the developer continued working on the project out of a sense of duty to the original investors, without access to the capital raised in the fundraising round. The BAY token is the transactional token in the marketplace. You use it to buy and sell, and it can also participate in freezes, escrow, bets, swaps, etc. The token itself operates like Bitcoin and is secured by the network. Although you can use BAY for transactions, you don’t have to. You do, however, have to use BAY if you’d like to take part in token staking. BAY’s price cratered after the original founders left and stayed low until March 2017 when it took off. It has been through several cycles of bull and bear runs, with a max price over 30 cents in January 2018 before retreating to its current value. BitBay supports all kinds of privacy and security measures. It’s easy to create a multisignature wallet for added security. There are integrations for Tor and other proxies that help anonymize your connection to the marketplace. An on-screen keyboard allows for password or key entry without using your keyboard and being susceptible to keylogging. Additionally, you can create images with your private key embedded, so that finding a stored key is more difficult for a hacker. The marketplace also has functionality for time locking contracts and swapping currencies. This enables all kinds of cross-chain transactions and financial implements. The time lock and other smart contract elements make it possible to create bets, escrow, futures and options trades, or any number of other financial transactions. The idea and implementation by BitBay, of a decentralized marketplace and trading platform is brilliant and shows further promise of expansion.The rocky beginning of the cryptocurrency and its subsequent comeback as a promising platform indicate that the developers are in it for the long haul and don’t plan on abandoning the platform after all these years.