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.
Dropil offers a full investing suite including financial planning, retirement savings, and of course trading. Their primary target market is inexperienced investors who are looking for an easy way to enter into the cryptocurrency markets, but they also have something to offer the more experienced investor, cryptocurrency and otherwise. And they claim to be able to set-up investment planning for anyone, regardless of their risk tolerance or background. Of course the main selling point of Dropil is the automation of the cryptocurrency trading process. The platform requires little input from investors and claims it will deliver high profit margins and minimal risk of losses. A second part of the Dropil platform is the Arthur bot. This bot is the risk management bot, which manages investor portfolios and also provides arbitrage analysis. While it is less complex than Dex, it is still important as it will monitor up to 13 different exchanges and 10 different coins to find arbitrage opportunities for you. What is most important to note is that this can all be done without the use of an API as well as no user accounts needed. Future plans include expanding this functionality. The final aspect of the Dropil ecosystem is the DROP token, which is an ERC-20 token that was created to help ensure privacy, while also powering the internal economy of Dropil. The team chose to use the ERC20 protocol to help foster compatibility and quick exchange executions to benefit the entire community. The DROP token has a total supply of 30 billion coins, which was determined to be an optimal amount for asset management by the developers. It was also chosen with the optimal user base in mind, as well as the need for coins to be traded and achieve widespread adoption. The need to use the DROP token to access the feature of Dropil should ensure a good implementation and demand for the token. Dropil looks like an interesting project that is tackling the complexity of investing in cryptocurrencies. The idea of automated trading, investing and arbitrage is a compelling one, but it does sound familiar. Stocks, commodities and forex all have these types of automated systems, or robots, that promise guaranteed returns. I have yet to come across one that is reliable in the long term. Perhaps the artificial intelligence algorithm is advanced enough to change that. Perhaps cryptocurrency market movements are easier to analyze and predict.