Hello Steemians
In this series of articles I want to put a spotlight on a specific cryptocurrency and write about the details in all these aspects:
Aim of the currency
Technical details
Market position
Forecast
This is a special feature of my original series where I will only focus on Cryptocurrencies that are centering around the topic of being private in some aspects. This week I will review Nav Coin.
Aim of the Currency
What is this currency about? What does it do differently than the rest?
Where is the unique selling point and at what audience is this coin targeted.
All that questions and more will be answered in the following paragraph.
Nav Coin aims at bringing the possibility to have absolute bulletproof privacy while being based upon the latest Bitcoin Core. With the current NavTech 1.2 Software it is possible to have a anonymous, encrypted an obfuscated transaction. This is just the private "send" within the Nav Coin cryptocurrency, so a public send is also available.
The private send comes at an increased price of 0.5% NAV.
In contrary to Bitcoin, Nav Coin is a using the POS (Proof of Stake) algorithm to secure its network, incentivizing this by giving 5% rewards from staking. POS is seen as being the more energy friendly method of securing a Blockchain, on the other hand, you need to invest into coins to take part in staking and the more coins you have the more likely you are going to stake.
The team around Nav Coin seems to be very motivated, they are releasing a lot of stuff on a weekly basis
The coin is actively traded on exchanges since 2014 and is therefore not a new kid on the block.
Technical Details
Nav Coin is based upon the latest Bitcoin Core and includes also the support of the SegWit functionality.
Like said already in the intro Nav Coin is a POS coin and therefore there is no mining possible. To be part of the Network you have to invest and buy Nav Coin on one of the many exchanges where this coin is listed.
When you have__ Nav Coin within your wallet__ and opened it up for staking, you will eventually get stakes that are adding up to 5% rewards over a year. This is the reduced stake rate, in 2014 the reward was at 20% and in 2015 at 10%.
I don't want to go too much into technical details, but the team around Nav Coin went to great efforts for providing an anonymous, encrypted and obfuscated possibility for a transaction. The solution is described in their whitepaper for the NavTech Software which can be read here. It involves a lot of interesting techniques and also the use of a sub-chain.
Market Position
At the time of writing this article(11/26/2017), Nav Coin is placed 94th in market capitalization, with the total value of 67.431.297 $
Nav Coin had a massive pump in the beginning of September 2017, which led to a 600% price increase during the time of a single week. This all was based on a new marketing campaign and the release of the new NavTech 1.2. Peak was hit at the price of 1.89$ on September 1st. Things have settled down a bit recently and the coin is somewhat stabilizing around the mark of 80 cents. Today was another pump, when Nav Coin released on Twitter that they are going to be listed on Upbit, current price increase for today is 23% percent.
If we are looking back further we see almost a flat line at the start of 2017 getting a bit revived at end of May 2017, in the middle of the surge that all cryptocurrencies had in this period of time. Things settled down during July and August, only followed by the 600% increase in August/September.
Forecast
Nav Coin is driving the privacy idea even further by completely encrypting and obfuscating the transaction. This is for sure an asset if you want to be able to have full privacy.
As soon as NavTech 2.0 is released, I would expect to see almost a identical raise in price than the one in August, simply because this version will make the whole transactions part much easier and more convenient while improving even further in the privacy options.
The team also closed R&D on Anonymous Decentralized Apps (ADapps) which is making this coin even more interesting.
The listing on Upbit will for sure bring a lot of movement into the coin, I expect it to rise in price even further once the listing has been really done.
Conclusion
Nav Coin is privacy centered POS coin, in contrast to other privacy centered coins like ZCash or ZenCash that are relying on the POW algorithm to secure their network.
Nav Coin features quite unique possibilities to bfuscate transactions using a sub-chain and is working on additional features like Anonymous Decentralized Apps (ADapps).
Just like with most coins, is the team is able to deliver, we will see a raising price soon.
Last but not least there are also some drawbacks and they should not be unmentioned:
POS is sometimes referred to as "the rich are getting richer" because the more coins you got, the more often you are going to stake
Complete privacy of transactions can also be criticized.
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