CommerceBlock is a public blockchain infrastructure company that is architecting a platform that allows anyone to build and use financial products and services historically reserved for commercial banking customers. The CommerceBlock network will be the first technology platform that provides a combination of trust minimal trade, decentralised contract execution, on-chain derivatives, and asset-backed token issuance to public blockchains. The advent of the Bitcoin protocol has enabled permission-less financial innovation. CommerceBlock’s product offerings provide a suite of tools that enables anyone to build and use services that construct contracts, manage trade flows, engage in multiparty dispute management, issue assets, and hedge currency risk. Developers and end users will be able to manage all stages of a business interaction and fulfil their contractual obligations by utilising the CommerceBlock platform. These services will be integrated into infrastructure we have already implemented. We have released the first open-source implementation of the pay-to-contract and homomorphic address protocol outlined by Timo Hanke and Ilja Gerhardt. The protocol has been designed in such a way that all business logic, customer funds, and trade details are managed on the client side meaning at no point does CommerceBlock have access to customer funds or private information.
Kyber’s on-chain liquidity protocol allows decentralized token swaps to be integrated into any application, enabling value exchange to be performed seamlessly between all parties in the ecosystem. Tapping on the protocol, developers can build payment flows and financial apps, including instant token swap services, erc20 payments, and innovative financial dapps - helping to build a world where any token is usable anywhere. Kyber Network maintains liquidity through the dynamic reserve pool. The pool contains all of the Reserve Entities in the system. Having multiple entities in the pool prevents monopolization and keeps exchange rates competitive. When a user requests an exchange, the Kyber smart contract makes the exchange through the Reserve Entity with the best exchange rate for the user. By allowing external Reserve Entities, Kyber Network prevents centralization and opens the door to low-volume token listings. External reserves may be fine with taking on the risk of storing less popular tokens that the Kyber reserves don’t list. To prevent bad actors in the reserve pool, Kyber Network has few safeguards. The network will flag any exchange rate for special approval that’s greatly outside the norm. To protect funds in a public reserve, Kyber makes all exchanges using them available through a transparent fund management model. The Kyber team is impressive. Loi Luu, Yaron Velner, and Victor Tran are the founders behind the project. Luu previously created Oyente, the first open-source security analyzer for Ethereum contracts, and cofounded SmartPool, a decentralized mining pool project. Velner has been active in the Ethereum bug bounty program, and Tran is also a lead developer at SmartPool. The team has a well-rounded advisory board with the most notable member being Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum wunderkind. In August 2017, Kyber successfully launched their testnet beta. They plan on releasing their live product in Q1 this year in which you’ll be able to trade between Ethereum and ERC20 tokens. The project has an extensive list of partners including Request Network, Wax, and Storm. Because it’s an ERC20 token, you can store KNC in any wallet with ERC20 support. MyEtherWallet is the most popular online option. MetaMask works as well. Many investors choose to use a hardware wallet for additional security. You can’t go wrong with either the Trezor or Ledger wallet as both supports KNC.