SONM is a global operating system that is also a decentralized worldwide fog supercomputer. With SONM, users have access to general-purpose computing services of a cloud-like nature, including IaaS and PaaS, all of which have fog computing as the backend. Hosts around the world can contribute computing power as part of the SONM marketplace. The leaders of SONM are co-founder Sergey Ponomarev and CTO Igor Lebedev. SONM uses the agile development framework with a self-organizing cross-functional team. The Product Management Board defines the market needs to confirm that products meet business requirements. These include Node (Core), Smart Contracts, Wallet (Client), and Distributed Entity and Integration. Each of these teams has multiple developers, including a lead. Other teams include the Product & Analytics and QA teams.SONM always makes customer satisfaction its top priority. SONM studies the rental resource market to figure out exactly what customers need, delivering the advantages like scalability already mentioned. Additionally, customers will benefit from the Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform that supports all types of hardware resources, making it possible to find the exact resource you need. With SONM, consumers can instantly release and grow resources within the computing fog. In addition, security is always maintained regarding the supplier’s reputation. For added security, SONM is working toward hardware-enforced security, as well. Finally, consumers benefit from high market liquidity in purchasing resources and the ability to scale out their application. SONM’s ICO was held on June 15, 2017 and successfully raised $42,000,000. Paolo Tasca, a digital economist and blockchain expert, joined the SONM Advisory Board. Tasca is the Executive Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies at University College London, as well as a blockchain consultant to the United Nations and EU Parliament, and the co-editor of “Banking Beyond Banks and Money: A Guide to Banking Services in the Twenty-First Century.”'
Zcoin (XZC) is a cryptocurrency focused on privacy and decentralization. It is the first coin to implement the Zerocoin protocol that enables financial privacy through the power of zero knowledge proofs with a focus on making privacy easy to use. It is also set to be the first to release MTP an ASIC resistant, anti-botnet proof of work algorithm that remains lightweight to verify to ensure fair distribution of coins and decentralized security. Zcoin is an open source decentralized cryptocurrency that focuses on achieving privacy and anonymity for its users while transacting. To achieve this privacy and anonymity, Zcoin uses zero-knowledge proofs via Zerocoin protocol which is one of the most cited cryptography papers at this point in time. In other words, when you transact using Bitcoin or Ethereum or something similar, your transaction history is always linked to your coins by default which makes you vulnerable. That, because all it takes is one link to your personal information or IP to find out the origin of the coins.However, if you transact using Zcoin’s Zerocoin feature, none of your transaction histories is linked to the actual coins and only the receiver and sender know that you have actually exchanged funds. Zerocoin is a cryptocurrency proposed by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and graduate students Ian Miers and Christina Garman as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would add true cryptographic anonymity to Bitcoin transactions. Zerocoin was first implemented into a fully functional cryptocurrency released to the public by Poramin Insom, as Zcoin who is also the lead developer, in September 2016. At the initial stage, Zcoin uses the Lyra2z algorithm for proof of work, then they will transition to a Merkle Tree proof of work algorithm, known as MTP. MTP is a unique memory hard algorithm that aims to solve several problems. Memory hard algorithms help prevent the development of ASICs which lead to centralized mining farms. Memory hard algorithms also prevent the use of botnets infecting computers for mining purposes. If a botnet was using up multiple gigs of memory, you’d be likely to notice something is wrong. “The basic concept is that it should establish the same price/cost for a single computation unit on all platforms meaning that there is no single device that should gain a significant advantage over another for the same price hence promoting egalitarian computing.