Qtum is a decentralized and open-source smart contracts platform and value transfer protocol. Qtum uses proof-of-stake consensus, meaning node operators are rewarded for validating transactions. It is a DGP governed blockchain where community participants can vote to change certain network parameters. Qtum is built on a bitcoin core fork, but the foundation has created its own hybrid blockchain with the help of several key tools. The coin uses bitcoin’s chain because of its simple and stable nature, allowing the foundation to build upon it more easily. As the QTUM project is a hybrid of Bitcoin and Ethereum, its team comprises of members from both Bitcoin and Ethereum community. They also have team members who formerly worked with Tencent, Alibaba, Nasdaq etc. Apart from that, they are backed by some notable VCs and prominent people from the Blockchain community such as Patrick Dai (Project Co-Founder), Neil Mahi (Chief Blockchain Architect/Co-Founder) and Jordan Earls (Lead Developer/Co-Founder). Qtum provides a Turing-complete blockchain stack and is able to execute smart contracts and decentralised applications like the Ethereum blockchain. Qtum builds on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model and uses the Proof-of-Stake algorithm. It is backed by some highly prominent members of the blockchain community such as Anthony Di Iorio, Xu Star, Bo Shen, David Lee, Jehan Chu and Roger Ver. Qtum sold over 10 million dollars’ worth of its tokens after only 90 minutes, eventually raising a total value of $15.7 million before stopping the campaign early after only 5 days. They raised a total amount of 11,156.766 bitcoins (BTC) and 77,081.031 ether (ETH) in exchange for the 51 million Qtum tokens being distributed to the public. In Qtum’s whitepaper, 51% of the coins were distributed to the public via the crowdfunding campaign. Of the remaining 49%, 29% of the coins would be allocated as community incentives, and the remaining 20% would be distributed to the early backers and development team.
Enjin Coin is a cryptocurrency for virtual goods created by Enjin. Enjin is the “largest gaming community platform online” with over 250,000 gaming communities and 18.7 million registered gamers. The Enjin team is designing the coin completely around gaming with the goal of it being the most usable cryptocurrency for the industry. The project includes the Enjin Coin as well as a suite of software development kits (SDKs) that developers can integrate into their games and communities. Bringing blockchain to gaming helps to reduce the high fees and fraud that’s prevalent in the transfer of virtual goods. Enjin Coin is an ERC20 token built on the Ethereum network. With that, the project not only acts as a cryptocurrency but also has smart contract capabilities. It’s also one of the first projects testing the Raiden Network, Ethereum’s version of the Lightning Network. The Enjin Coin platform provides a laundry list of features through its public API and SDKs. To keep things brief, though, we’ll only be discussing a few of the major ones in this article. The largest value Enjin Coin brings to the gaming community is in its creation and management of virtual goods. Developers on each platform can easily create a currency unique to their community that’s backed by Enjin Coin as the parent currency. This gives the coins all the benefits of the blockchain (speed, cost, security, etc…) while still staying customized to their respective platforms. Enjin, the company behind Enjin Coin, is the largest online gaming community creation platform. Started in 2009, the company receives 60 million views per month and transacts millions of U.S. dollars each month in their community stores. The team is deploying Enjin Coin across the entire Enjin CMS platform – over 250,000 gaming websites. Advisors to the project consist of Anthony Diiorio (Ethereum co-founder) and Pat LaBine (previous producer and technical director at Bioware). Enjin has also formed partnerships with Unity, PC Gamer, and NRG eSports. The team held a successful ICO in late 2017 in which they raised ~$35 million between the private and public rounds. Although it’s still a young project, the team spent the last quarter of 2017 building the Platform API, Mobile Smart Wallet, and a Java SDK alongside creating a Minecraft plugin. They’ve got plenty in store for 2018, but the highlights include various platform plugins, the Efinity release, and numerous other SDKs. Enjin also features a tool known as TopLists, which allow users to rank games, servers, teams and any other item. TopLists will be deployed as a decentralized smart contract with functionalities that will allow for market bidding or democratic voting. List creators are incentivized to promote and market their list because these creators will receive tokens when users perform tasks such as voting on their list. Enjin Coin is an ambitious project that aims to integrate online virtual gaming with decentralized technologies. Enjin Coin project promises a lot, and it is only with the passage of time that we will able to see if it can deliver on those promises.