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.
HYCON, which stands for Hyper-Connected Coin, is the digital asset built on top of a faster and more scalable blockchain developed by the Infinity Project team in Gangnam, Seoul. Using a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) structure, it has the capability to publish several blocks simultaneously with the ability to resolve conflicting transactions and reject double-spends through the SPECTRE consensus algorithm. This makes HYCON a next-generation cryptocurrency which can be used in the real economy. Honest transactions can be confirmed or rejected definitively in mere seconds, due to the high volume of blocks published within that time interval. Transactional throughput up to 3000Tps on a 2MB/s connection can be achieved as a starting point of the project. The DAG structure coupled with the SPECTRE protocol allows for network latency to be essentially removed as a limiting factor on transactional throughput. Blocks that are received out of order can still be ordered based on their implied position in the DAG rather than the time they were received. HYCON is Phase 1 of the Infinity Project Ecosystem and positioned for wide adoption as an efficient medium of exchanging value for enterprises, small businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals. Together with the Infinity blockchain, HYCON will power the Infinity Platform (Phase 2) and Infinity Decentralized Exchange (Phase 3). The Infinity Platform will feature a simple and intuitive user interface to empower anyone with the ability to create their own customized and private Infinity blockchain. For example, enterprise solutions built upon the Infinity Platform will help increase accountability, enhance transparency, and improve data security, thus bringing value to companies and society.