Nebulas project: Deep dive. The Google of blockchain!
cryptocurrency·@cryptolite·
0.000 HBDNebulas project: Deep dive. The Google of blockchain!
*There will be a video version of this released soon. I usually post my youtube vids on Steemit. But after a couple of weeks here, I realise the top posts tend to be written article so I thought I'd try do a written article and see if its more warmly received. Let me know what you think pls. After all it is written for you and feedback would really help me improve! :)*  NEBULAS PROJECT Over the last few years, the world has seen a dramatic increase of blockchain projects to over 2,000 cryptocoins/ projects with a global asset value amounting to over $90 billion dollars. With the popularity of blockchain technology, more blockchain-based application scenarios are emerging. For example, Ethereum community introduced the concept of smart contract to blockchain technology; Ripple implemented a global settlement system using blockchain technology. With the mass volume of Dapps (decentralised apps) coming into the market, it can be hard for new projects to find the best templates and smart contracts they can use. Nebulas steps in here with the aim to build a search engine for blockchain applications and smart contracts. I.e. to say, the google of blockchain. There are 4 pillars to the Nebulas project, if you understand these 4 pillars, you understand Nebulas. 1) Nebulas Ranking. Nebulas will give each Dapps a ranking. It does this by considering 3 dimensions: liquidity, interoperability and propagation of the address. The sum score of these 3 dimensions will be known as “unit of repetition”. A higher the unit of reputation represents the DApp or smart contract is used more, and is more valuable to the crypto community. The more valuable it is, the more highlighted it becomes on the search engine and makes it easier for a newcomer to pick the good technology over the not-so good ones. The longterm upside value of the ranking system then is a filter effect that filters the great from the not-so good, meaning we will see more and more applications built using great templates resulting in Nebulas platform being known for outstanding projects. 2) The second pillar is the Nebulas Force. Currently many blockchain projects have forks. The forks occur because the current system is unable to keep with the demands, and there is a difference in opinion about how to go about the upgrade. But Nebulas is trying to have foresight here, but building from the start, a system that can “self-evolve” to achieve faster computing, better resilience, and enhanced user experience under minimal intervention, thus nullifying the need for any future fork. In Nebulas’system architecture, base protocols will become part of the data on the blockchain and achieve upgrade through the addition of data. As for smart contracts on Nebulas, upgrade is made possible by enabling cross-contract access to state variables at the bottom layer storage of smart contracts. So it’s a bit technical, but basically they have found a way to make Nebulus self-evolving, and if it happens Nebulas will be have a huge advantage over other public blockchains in terms of developmental and survival potential. It also allows developers to respond faster to loopholes with upgrades and prevents huge losses caused by hacking. 3) The third pillar is Developer Incentive Protocol (DIP) DIP is in essence, as it name suggests, an incentive! In order to create a good community for Nebulas, Nebulas will express appreciation to outstanding smart contract by rewarding them NAS (Nebulas tokens). An excellent smart contract depends on how many users are willing to use it. The more use, the greater the reward. But also high-value accounts with better smart contracts will also get better rewards. And this rewarding will be weekly! Which is huge, it also means they are not about creating competition, but really about rewarding/ incentivising good performance, otherwise they would have it as a yearly big reward for projects to compete stats. But its not a stats game, it’s just an incentive reward to perform better. Back in May 2017, they did an experimental run to test if it was really accurate in picking out the top performers, The page is found in their whitepaper, but as you can see, the top-ranked contracts are more famous and more active in the calculation cycle, which are in line with our original intention of motivating the eco-builders. 4) Proof of Devotion Blockchain projects run off consensus algorithms. Consensus algorithims is done by miners and help to ensure that the next block in a blockchain is the one and only version of the truth, and it prevents derailing of the system or forking. The two most famous concensus algorithms are Bitcoin’s proof of work, and Ethereum’s recent proof of stake (Ethereum used to use proof of work, but earlier this year changed to proof of stake using Casper system). You can take part in this validation step to help the system do the work, and in return be rewarded in tokens. This is called mining or staking depending on the name of the consensus algorithm. Nebulas uses a unique consensus algorithm known as Proof of Devotion (POD). To participate in this, you have to be a developer of a DApp. To be a validator, you will need to stake a deposit of X amount of tokens. Then, multiple validators (per transaction) will have to agree on the result, and, each will be rewarded 1.5x the amount staked. The masternodes of this system are called Book-keepers. They are chosen based on Nebulas ranking score and offered a chance to be book-keepers by offering a deposit. Full details of this process is not released yet, we expect more details in the future and some of the information I provide today may have changed by then. Team: Ok, enough technical stuff. Let’s look at the team. The team is very impressive. The founder of this team, Mr Hitters Xu, was also the founder of Neo who was also the director of Ant financials blockchain platform (alibaba’s financial arm), you go down the list, there is more links with Neo and Alibaba, people from Dolphin browser, IBM, AirBnB US, Google, and so on. It’s very very impressive.  My only question is “how do they look so young?” They all look very young, and this guy looks like he’s in high school!  But there you go, they are a solid team with the secret to youth. If they were in skin care business, I’d put all my money on them. Partners: • You can see on their website their list of partners, • Recent notable partners include GIFTO- child project of UPLive, with millions of users. • And Dolphin Browser (added in the last week, not updated on the website yet)—mobile browser with over 200million users. (no surprise given their team’s resume) • So some decent partners, with lots of room to grow, but not bad considering they are only at testnet phase.  A few points of potential concerns: • With Nebulas ranking, the first and bigger players may get a high unit of reputation, however, newer technology will start small in ranking and be likely drowned by the already high unit of reputation of existing older DApps. • It is likely that with Proof of Devotion as well, because it relies on ranking system, big prominent companies will also stand higher chance for big returns as opposed to smaller newer i.e. any weakness in the ranking system will be reflected similarly in the proof of devotion system. This may make Nebulas only attractive to bigger players. • Self-evolving feature of the Nebulas project is only due to be released in Q4, so it is still too early definitely say it will succeed. If it doesn’t succeed, it will be abig blow to the team. But given their solid team, this is unlikely to happen. The upside to this, is when it is announced that have a working self-evolving blockchain product, their worth is going to skyrocket, which investors will love to see. • The next concern is that currently,only about 35% of total token supply has been released, this is very low, usually it is above 60-65% so this is almost half of what you would expect. They explained the low supply is to accommodate Developer Incentive Protocol rewards. But what happens when it reaches 100% supply and still have to give DIP. Is the system not sustainable then? Because the whole system is very reward based. Also with almost 2/3 of tokens still to be released, will this hinder the price inflation? Cos releasing tokens theoretically lower the price. • My last not so positive comment is about the logo. It’s super plain. I was like “is this the black and white version?” Not trying to be rude, but it looks like a primary school kid drawing that hasn’t been colored. I personally, don’t think it’s a great enough representation of a $300million dollar company aiming to be a multi-billion dollar company. It just doesn’t look much effort was put into it. And its apparently a new logo a few months old! Oh dear. I’m sure they can do better. I hope they have another logo rebrand soon.  Things to look forward too: • Mainnet launch soon! In march. That will come with the wallet of course. • Next major development in their roadmap is the self-evolving system, but that’s happening only in Dec. As an investor, nothing wrong with this, but as a trader, it’s a bit boring and in the meantime, they would be relying on new partnerships etc.. to provide some excitement to raise the token price.  Finally, lets talk about price: At its lowest, in Q4 of 2017, Nebulas was sitting at a price around $1.60. At its highest, it rose to just over $15. So that’s 9x gains. Currently it is sitting at $8.71 which is still over 5x its high and about 65% of its peak. That’s not bad, consider the bearish past 6 weeks the market has had. There are many coins which have been hit harder than Nebulas. It’s also a good sign that many of its investors believe in the project and are holding. Also it hasn’t hit any major exchanges yet, not even Kucoin, which is surprising considering it is number 65 on the market. So when it does, I’m sure the price will go up. Kucoin next, maybe Binance after. :) That’s what every new coin is holding out for these days.  It’s really hard to price predict for Nebulas because it is a unique project with nothing to compare it too. But given the niche market, the strong leadership and team and the partnerships they are making, I certainly see it as a top 50, maybe top 30 coin by the end of this year. And that would see it as 1.5-4x gains. And that’s play safe and conservative in because again because its just a guesstimate, part guess, part estimate. I certainly don’t see this project dying, I think it’s got a great future. I don’t actually hold any Nebulas at this point, but it is very tempting and I am still considering if I want to take up a position. If I was to personally get into a position what would I do? I’m thinking I would wait a few days to see if the general market drops, as covered in yesterday’s cryptonews in a nutshell, we are facing a potential bearish trend, so If that’s the case, I will try and jump on and buy when the market’s low at a slight further discount. However, keeping in mind that mainnet is just around the corner, I don’t want to wait too long in case I miss out on the FOMO when the news is released. When that will be, I would have to follow the social media announcements very closely. For some reason I’ve noticed that with several other coins e.g. QTUM, leading up to mainnet, after mainnet release, the price actually drops! I’m not sure why, but it happens. Maybe it’s the token swap confusion or something. So I prob won’t hold beyond mainnet. I will prob sell it around that time, go play with some other altcoins in between to make a bit of profit and come back with a better position when everything settles and hodl to the end of the year. That’s what Im thinking now anyways. So that’s my 5cents on Nebulas, I hope your found it helpful. 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