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.
Bluzelle is a decentralized, scalable database service that aims to provide an effective data storage solution for the newly emerging blockchain ecosystem. It provides a solution to the scaling problems that developers of decentralized applications (dApps) face while using centralized infrastructure and traditional cloud-based databases. Bluzelle uses reliable ”swarm” technology, in which it stores tiny bits of data in groups of nodes or “swarms” which are distributed across the globe. Since this makes it independent of single data centres, Bluzelle’s scaling ability is limitless. Bluzelle adjusts the number of nodes and their location dynamically, reducing request time and improving overall performance. Bluzelle's swarm technology makes it extremely reliable as it redundantly stores pieces of data across the globe, eliminating a single point of failure. Since there are no data centres, Bluzelle’s resources are provided by network “producers”, who earn funds and pass on the savings to users. Bluzelle held an ICO from January to February 2018, selling 33% of its total supply of 500 million BLZ tokens and earning $19.5 million USD in the process. As of July 2018, Bluzelle has a circulating supply of about 183.02 million BLZ, with an individual price of $0.328 and consequently a market cap of around $60.25 million USD. The potential of an endlessly scalable storage service which is quick in its scaling, which is capable of storing any amount of data in a decentralized manner, is one that many investors may have an eye for. BLZ is still new and in its beginning stages, but its experienced team and excellent advisors work in its favour and are indicative of a bright future for the BLZ token. Investing in the token may not give high returns in a short period (since the cryptocurrency is so new and difficult to predict). So some more research is advised.