Gulden is a second-generation peer-to-peer cryptocurrency which was created to provide a secure, simple and fast method of performing financial transactions between private individuals, customers & service providers and also corporate entities. Like many recent cryptocurrencies, the primary design criteria were to improve the security and usability of the currency and its underlying transaction authorisation technology (when compared to the original cryptocurrency - Bitcoin). The purpose of these changes was to simplify use and increase its adoption as a convenient, cheap and safe form of payment. The original initiative for this currency came from Rijk Plasman with the first working implementation released on the 4th April 2014. Initially called the “Gulden coin”, this was subsequently abbreviated in October 2015 to “Gulden”. The name Gulden comes from the German and Dutch term for “gold coin” and is the Dutch name of the Dutch guilder, the pre-euro currency of the Netherlands. Gulden Coin is the currency that enables the user to pay safely, conveniently and quickly. Moreover, it is a lucrative investment opportunity at the moment, considering that since entering the market in 2016 the developers have increased to a market capital of 39,883,259 USD with about 800,000 USD. The model of making cryptocurrencies accessible to ordinary consumers in the future holds enormous potential in the fintech sector.
Sia is a decentralized cloud storage platform similar in concept to Dropbox and other centralized storage provider where instead of renting storage space from a centralized entity, clients rent storage space from other peers. The only difference is Sia uses blockchain to facilitate transactions Nodes provide storage to clients using the Sia blockchain as contracts. Before storing the data, the data is encrypted into many pieces and uploaded to different hosts. Siacoin is created by David Vorick and Luke Champine of Nebulous Inc. As the traditional storage platforms are higher in cost, more expensive and data is not well protected. Siacoin promises to offer secured storage transactions with smart contracts which is more affordable and reliable. Moreover, it is completely open source which means many individuals have contributed to Siacoin’s software hence there will be an active community building innovative applications on top if the Sia API. In 2018, Siacoin aims to introduce file sharing and be the go-to cloud storage platform for companies. Their goal is divided into 3 time frames which are short-term, medium-term and long-term development. Short-term development focuses on file sharing between Sia users. This allows Sia users to share files in the platform without having to take it off the cloud while increasing network utilization. Medium-term development’s goal is to enhance partnerships. This means reaching out to large companies like Netflix and Dropbox to hopefully be able to be their storage and distribution framework. Lastly, long-term development aims to expand its horizon to share files with non-Sia users and support mobile wallets.