The tech world was ablaze for the past couple of days with the news:
Garrett Camp, The co-founder of Uber, the disruptive behemoth is going after Bitcoin !!
An all star team of advisors including Naval Ravikant, Jonah Peretti and even Tim Ferriss !
While the hype is well deserved, it does not go deeper into the different approach taken by the team at Eco.
So what is Eco anyway ?
Eco is an open source and trustless currency whose USP is to become the “most usable currency” and a more viable alternative to bitcoin and gold.
Eco arrives to address some of the key issues faced by existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The problems that they are looking to solve are as follows:
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum rely on a consensus algorithm called Proof of work which relies on advanced hardware to efficiently validate the large number of transactions relayed in the network (mining). This requires a lot of electricity to fuel this function. The result is the mining of these currencies that serve only a few crypto enthusiasts takes up electricity that can fuel 159 countries and is ecologically unsustainable.
They find the usability of cryptocurrencies complex to understand and use for the ordinary Joe. And the examples of its difficulty has been well documented.
The barriers to cryptocurrencies is also high for the masses because of the ludicrous transaction fees involved. Even though, a person can buy a part of bitcoin and transact with it, the psychological barrier of the high price of bitcoin and ethereum is a factor that prevents mass adoption.
Meet Eco
Eco is a currency that prioritizes usability, simplicity and equitable distribution of coins to all.
For addressing scalability issues, it has the following features:
1) Higher Block Size
2) A limited number of trusted nodes will run on centralized and “fast network of servers”.
3) It plans to use the concept of Transaction Sharding.
“Eco aims to achieve capacity of 100,000+ transactions per second by using Transaction Sharding, where transactions are directed to specific shards for acceptance and validation instead of the whole network validating the same transaction.”
USP
The nodes that will verify transactions will be a network of accredited universities and ‘reputable organizations’ who will be vetted by the Eco Foundation. They believe that this will keep the network safe and reliable for everyone.
By relying on the intellectual capital of these universities, they believe that they will be able to achieve the sort of work and research that was done on the Internet for the Eco Protocol.
Governance
Along with this network of reputable organizations as validators, the Eco Foundation will operate in a bureaucratic manner.
A board of directors will be set by the Eco Foundation comprising of experts from diverse fields
“The directors will set up special committees of expert contributors, with the most knowledgeable foundation director as committee chair. These committee chairs will coordinate collaboration in the Eco Forum, for design planning and policy discussions. Independent audit committees will be elected by the foundation directors, who will have full transparency into the systems of all network nodes, and report all findings to the public.”
In short, the governance structure of a publicly listed company.
Eco will start in a semi centralized manner iterating over time to become more decentralized and more secure as system adoption increases. The more popular Eco gets, governance protocols such as weighted reputation based voting systems will be integrated on chain accordingly.
“Progressive decentralization will allow new ideas to be tested and verified before being widely distributed, and will allow Eco to gradually achieve the topology of a global mesh network.”
Token Allocation
1 trillion tokens will be issued initially by the Eco Foundation over the course of several years
50% — 1 billion verified users done equitably with respect to demographics and geography
20% — verified nodes (partner universities and reputable organizations)
10% — Eco Foundation for funding operations and economic grants
10% — Strategic Partners
10% — Active Contributors
Monetary Policy
The price supply is unlimited where new tokens beyond this initial figure of 1 trillion will be distributed. But the Eco Foundation will ensure (pinky promise !) that 50% of the newly generated coins will be shared in an equitable manner with respect to demographics and geography to the users who have given their KYC details.
Usability Aspects
From the picture of the wallet, I noticed that they have taken some of the best aspects of the Ethereum concepts such as addressing the nodes and users by name instead of public addresses (Ethereum Name Server).
And also the UI for the Android Wallet resembles that of the Consensys Project Metamask, an Ethereum wallet. It’s great that they are looking for ways to bring out the best user experience for the masses.
Voice command wallets seems like a nifty idea !
Token issue:
The fact that they are not taking advantage of all this hype to raise tremendous amounts of money is nice. Although, the euphoria at the time of listing in exchanges like Binance etc. will potentially take care of that.