HASH NOTES

Ripple

• goal: banks to send/ transfer money internationally cheaply and quickly

• high transfer cost/fees. slow transfer taking up to 4 days to complete

• swift protocol is used among half of international transfers which numbers around six trillion each day.

• Ripplenet is a network behind the product X Current:

• X current: decentralized system with the consensus model called the unique node list. - set list of trusted individuals then the group decides whether or not the additional block is added to the chain. Centralization.

• Plan to act accordingly with compliance with anti-money laundering/ fraud detection system.

• American Express expressed interest in their application and has partnered with them.

Tokenomics: XRP is used as what it takes to spend XRP so the natural demand will rise as the coin is used more and more. Secondly XRP has a fixed supply of 100 billion coins and supposedly there can't be any more created.

Binance

• Goal: To create an environment and platform for Web3 services.

• Started off as a online cryptocurrency exchange on a simple blockchain which can create wallets, allow sales and purchases of digital assets, and control token issuance.

• Own blockchain-based token, Binance Coin (BNB)

• Crypto mining is also allows international miners to receives incentives of either Bitcoin (SHA256) or Ether (Ethash). These two mining pools are called the Binance Pool and are favored by many miners outside of USA.

• For growth and their eventual goal to support the Web3 services, Binance created an in-house developer team and the Binance Smart Chain.

• Due to the simplicity and limitations of the Binance blockchain features, BSC was created to build and support P2E games, metaverses, and NFTs. BSC is a smart contract platform mimicking the functionality of Ethereum and other dApp platforms, such as Tron and EOS. The Binance lab is also working on Binance Bridge which will allow inter-operability among side-chains.

• It uses a PoSA, Proof of Stake Authority, censensus model, which is a form of staking model which validators are chosen or picked by a central party.

• Binance has gone under a "coin burn" where they are destroying their own tokens and limiting the cap. Growing the demand for their token by shrinking the supply could lead to a supply squeeze, leading to runaway prices and consequently leading to higher transaction costs.

Advantages: Transaction speed, low gas fees, cross-chain compatibility, EVM-compatibility.

Drawbacks: Centralization due to the census model, Overdependence on ETH, Deflationary tokens.

Nano

Billed as "digital money for the modern world," Nano is a lightweight cryptocurrency that is designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments, without fees, and addresses some of the major limitations of both legacy financial infrastructure, and many modern cryptocurrencies.

• It is a peer-to-peer platform that uses a unique block-lattice data structure to allow users to easily transfer value to one another without relying on centralized intermediaries.

• In the Block Lattice setup, the only the individual who holds the account can add additional blocks to their own chain.

• Unlike other platforms which typically use the combined proof-of-work of a massive mining network to achieve consensus, Nano instead uses a system known as Open Representative Voting (ORV) — which sees account holders vote for their chosen representative, who then work to confirm blocks of transactions securely.

• ORV makes Nano extremely energy efficient, positioning it as a more environmentally friendly alternative to proof-of-work (POW)-based cryptocurrencies.

Advantages: No transaction fees, top-class in eco-friendly chain, near instant transactions

Drawbacks: lack of incentives for people to run nodes on the network, lack of security due to low number of validators, potential to fail.

Stablecoins

Tether

• USDT is a stablecoin (stable-value cryptocurrency) that mirrors the price of the U.S. dollar, issued by a Hong Kong-based company Tether. The token’s peg to the USD is achieved via maintaining a sum of commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills in reserves that is equal in USD value to the number of USDT in circulation.

• There is no hard-coded limit on the total supply of USDT — given the fact that it belongs to a private company, theoretically, its issuance is limited only by Tether’s own policies. However, because Tether claims that every single USDT is supposed to be backed by one U.S. dollar, the amount of tokens is limited by the company’s actual cash reserves.

• Moreover, Tether does not disclose its issuance schedules ahead of time. Instead, they provide daily transparency reports, listing the total amount of their asset reserves and liabilities, the latter corresponding to the amount of USDT in circulation.

USDC

• USDC is a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar on a 1:1 basis. Every unit of this cryptocurrency in circulation is backed up by $1 that is held in reserve, in a mix of cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds.

• Unlike some crypto ventures, Circle and Coinbase have also achieved regulatory compliance — and this has helped pave the way for international expansion. Both projects are also well-funded, giving the stablecoin certainty.

Terra

• Unlike centralized stablecoins (Tether, USDC), UST isn’t backed by US dollars in a bank account. Instead, in order to mint 1 TerraUSD, US$1.00 worth of TerraUSD’s reserve asset (LUNA) must be burned. LUNA is the token based on Terra's own blockchain.

• TerraUSD is a tokenized version of the US Dollar backed by real assets in the form of real estate, stocks or other hard assets. The purpose of TerraUSD is to provide stability in an investment environment that is currently volatile.