Synthetix is based in Australia, Synthetix launched a seed funding round in September, 2017 to develop the concept of a self-contained stablecoin payment network. They then kicked off their public ICO on February 28, 2018 and by the end of the ICO on March 7, 2018, they had met their goal of $30,000,000 USD. Synthetix was rebranded from Havven on November 30, 2018. Synthetix is led by a multidisciplinary team of 13 individuals. The project was founded by Kain Warwick, who previously co-founded blueshyft, one of the largest digital payment networks in Australia. The CTO is Justin Moses, who also serves as the Director of Engineering at MongoDB. Synthetix aims to address the problem that companies running centralized payment networks such as PayPal, credit card networks, or the SWIFT banking network have “absolute control over the value within the network, so any transaction conducted within them may be blocked or reversed at any time.” According to the Synthetix white paper, “Although this is ostensibly designed to protect users, it introduces systemic risk for all participants. If the network is compromised or its owners cease to behave benevolently, no party can trust that the value in their account is secure or accessible.” This is theorized to work because anyone who holds SNX tokens in escrow will be incentivized by Synthetix rewards derived from network transaction fees that will be distributed “in proportion with how well each issuer maintains the correct Synths supply.” When a Synthetix escrow user puts their SNX in escrow, USD-stabilized Synths will be automatically put up for sale on a decentralized exchange at a price of $1 USD. To release escrowed SNX, the user must buy back the Synths issued (also at a price of $1 USD) at which point the Synths will be burned. The Synthetix system uses an algorithm to adjust network fees, and therefore dividends, to SNX holders to incentivize (or disincentivize) the holding of SNX in escrow smart contracts, and thus, the creation of Synths. The theory is that this will cause users to mint and burn Synths in the appropriate amount based solely on supply and demand.
GameCoin (GMC) is a digital currency targeted towards the gaming community. GMC tokens go on sale at the end of September through the GameCoin ICO. GameCoin aims to increase the revenue of the gaming industry by 3 times – or 300 billion dollars per year. It aims to allow players to earn money from their hobby. And, within a year, the developers claim the capitalization of GameCoin will “exceed and billion dollars and will continue to grow rapidly.” GameCoin is being proposed as a way to monetize the world of free gaming. The GameCoin whitepaper explains that the majority of gaming revenue comes from 10% of users. Today, developers are struggling to monetize the remaining 90% of users. GameCoin claims to have found a way to do that using blockchain technology. Basically, GameCoin’s idea is to allow each game developer to create their own cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency is used as in-game money. The developers can create this cryptocurrency at virtually no cost to themselves – it’s just a digital token that has value in the game. However, by the time it circulates through gamers, the token will have value because it can be used to pay for in-game items. In more straightforward terms, GameCoin plans to make it easy for developers to create a secure in-game currency. It appears that these cryptocurrencies will operate as forks on the GameCoin blockchain. Each developer will be able to make their own fork – so gamers can easily apply their GWC tokens to any game of their choice (the GameCoin wallet will support all forks).