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.
NEM is a highly versatile crypto solution which seeks to adhere to a host of mainstream industry requirements. It is written in Java and JavaScript with 100% original source code. NEM has a stated goal of a wide distribution model and has introduced new features in blockchain technology in its proof-of-importance (POI) algorithm. NEM also features an integrated P2P secure and encrypted messaging system, multisignature accounts and an Eigentrust++ reputation system. Essentially, NEM is designed as a financial blockchain solution and can be used for payment, clearing and settlement in a private environment which is highly controlled. This means that NEM meets several of the regulatory requirements and guidelines in the financial industry. This allows it to be used to settle (change of ownership) any asset via the blockchain. Mijin which is a private chain of NEM has gained popularity and companies such as Hitachi have already embraced it. Why NEM? Many banks around the world have come to accept the importance of blockchain technology. In fact, a good number of banks in the U.S, India and Japan have already started using the technology. Because banks generally employ the smart contract concept, NEM’s platform which is asset-friendly can be used to settle any asset. In settling assets, speed, security, and reliability are very important to a mainstream institution which is what this crypto offers. NEM addresses these issues by repackaging its blockchain into a private chain and presenting it as Mijin. NEM crypto is also applicable in the technology world. Unlike Bitcoin and Dogecoin which use mining to increase the number of coins, XEM uses something called ‘harvesting’. In this process, blocks are generated and a person is rewarded for work contributed using transaction fees. Every block has a certain number of transactions which attract an unknown amount of fees. This keeps the participants incentivized to continue harvesting. For a blockchain user to be allowed to harvest, one must go through a forging mechanism process called Proof-of-Importance (POI). POI is the algorithm used in NEM to time stamp transactions. A NEM user's importance is determined by how many coins they have and the number of transactions made to and from their wallet. POI uses the NCDawareRank network centrality measure, the topology of the transaction graph, as well as a number of other relevant signals to achieve consensus. POI is different from other initiatives which use a fee-sharing model that does not take into consideration one's overall support of the network. In proof-of-stake systems a person needs to have large numbers of coins to form a block, but in NEM transactions volume and trust become factors. This was designed to encourage users of NEM to not simply hold XEM but instead actively carry out transactions. To be eligible for entering the importance calculation, an account must have at least 10,000 vested XEM. All accounts owning more than 10,000 vested XEM have a non-zero importance score. With a supply of 8,999,999,999 XEM, the theoretical maximum number of accounts with non-zero importance is 899,999. In practice, the number of actual accounts with non-zero importance is not expected to approach the theoretical max due to inequalities in held XEM and also the temporal costs associated with vesting. If NEM becomes very popular, a threshold of 10,000 vested XEM could be undesirable. If necessary, this number could be updated in the future via a hard fork, which is the same procedure for adjusting transaction fees and other parameters related to harvesting.