There is a video link below for those who prefer an audio version
Nuls describes itself as “a global blockchain open source project which is a highly customizable blockchain infrastructure”. Let me explain what that means in simple terms.
As a blockchain platform, Nuls offers 2 distinct advantages over other platforms.
Full customisation—so Dapps that are built on this platform, can tailor make every aspect of their tech, even having different consensus algorithms.
Ease of use—so Nuls will make it very easy for developers to develop an app. It has modules which allow developers to create a Dapp without needing to learn cryptographic specific technology like concensus algorithm.
Tech Review
In a traditional blockchain design, the Dapp is built on the Blockchain and can take up a significant portion of the blockchain’s computational power. That’s why a single game like cryptokitties managed to cripple the entire Ethereum blockchain.
Nuls uses what is known as side chains. So Dapps are built on the blockchain, but technically speaking each side chain is its own blockchain and responsible for it’s own computational power. This architecture allows great scalability because there is very little burden on the actual blockchain.
You might be thinking at this point that this diagram looks very familiar. We used it to explain EOS and Loom Network and other projects. And you would be right. Nuls is not the only platform project to use side chains, many other projects use it too, its becoming a very popular new architecture in the blockchain space.
Now side chains, in general offer two big advantages, the first is scalability and customisation. Theoretically, any project using side chains should be able to scale up to a million transaction per second. The second is customisation, because each side chain is technically a separate blockchain so it is not bounded to the laws of the original blockchain.
Dapps building on EOS and Loom for example are actually very customisable as well. However, because the buzz word in recent times has been scalability, so that was the feature they chose to promote.
In contrast, Nuls is also actually very scalable, but they have chosen to promote customisation as one of their key features.
Now, what makes each platform that uses side chains different from each other, is the way they interact with the mother blockchain.
If their link with the mother blockchain is very strong, they can tap into the benefits of the mother blockchain e.g. the way Loom Dapps can utilise plasma cash technology of Ethereum, but it also means you are more bounded to the laws of the mother blockchain.
So keeping that in mind, Nuls has created it’s own unique way of interacting with the mother blockchain that allows Dapps to have full customisation and ease of use.
The 3 unique properties of this link then are:
- Modularisation
- Logic
- Cross-chain.
If you understand these 3 properties and their unique concensus algorithm, you understand Nuls. So let’s jump into it.
Any blockchain will contain the essential components e.g. smart contracts, ledger (which is the record of transactions), storage, network, account, concensus etc…
And in a typical blockchain, all of these components are weaved in together into an inseparable mass.
Nuls has something called the module manager, that splits all of these components of a blockchain into separate modules.
So firstly, when you are assembling your project, you can fully customise by selecting your components. E.g. you could pick the ledger from ethereum and combine it with the storage of Neo and use the ICON concensus algorithm etc.. you can pick the best of different projects to tailor make a blockchain that suits your needs.
The other thing that makes this game changing is scalability. E.g. Ethereum now wants to move from Proof of work to proof of stake. But it’s hard to do so because the concensus algorithm is weaved into the entire network/ blockchain. But in Nuls, even changing the concensus algorithm can be done in a day, because the modules are separated and easy to change. This potentially allows any Dapps to upgrade from the current blockchain 3.0 to 4.0, or 5.0 in the future, with no problems, because you can easily upgrade to new technology as they come out. This is game changing guys.
When you first build on Nuls, you won’t have to create your own modules from scratch. The team will already have a library of modules you can choose from. For e.g. concensus algorithm. They will have a proof of work module, a proof of stake module etc.. you just choose whatever you want and assemble it together.
This is why developers don’t need to learn cryptographic specific technology to build a Dapp, they don’t need to code a concensus algorithm from scratch, it’s already there, they just plug and play.
Blockchains run on smart contracts. Nuls is targeting enterprises and they understand that business owners and their clients don’t necessarily know how to create a smart contract. So they use a sophisticated smart contract system, where the use simply inputs their business logic through the app e.g. I want to buy a car when I have $20,000 and the Nuls logic will automatically convert that into a smart contract for them. So they’re making it very easy for enterprises to use them, basically the end user might not even know that they are using blockchain technology. It’s that transparent.
Nuls will also have their own special virtual machine. In blockchain projects, a virtual machine is a machine where you can test run your smart contracts to ensure you have a working product. And because Nuls is offering full customisation, they can’t just use the Ethereum VM which many other projects are using, they have created their own VM which is compatible with many technologies and apparently very secure and easy to use.
Unlike Ethereum VM which only works with the difficult programming language Solidity, Nuls VM will be language agnostic, meaning they will be compatible with any programming language, beginning with the commonly use Java.
Remember how I told you every Dapp on Nuls can have their own different concensus algorithms? Nuls will enable cross chain concensus for different projects to communicate with one another.
The way it does it is as follows. One of the modules is like a cross chain module. What it does is it groups the nodes on a single chain into different groups. E.g. yellow group, blue group, green group.
Each of the yellow nodes can then interact with yellow nodes from other chains, and blue nodes with other blue nodes etc.. In this way, cross chain interaction is possible if that module is included in the Dapp design.
This project is so interesting guys, we’ve reviewed so many platforms, and the technology that Nuls uses is so refreshing and makes so much sense. I love it.
Proof-of-Credit
Their concensus algorithm is called Proof of Credit. It’s a combination of proof of stake + credit. Think of credit as reputation.
So in proof of stake, you stake your tokens. The more tokens you have the more weight you have in the staking process.
Proof of credit is the same, you still use your tokens to stake, but in addition, you have something that is called credit rating. It’s a protective mechanism. So if a node was found to intentionally sabotaging the system, they would get a bad credit rating. If your credit rating drops below a certain amount, then no money how much tokens you have, you cannot take part in the staking process.
So it’s a good safety modification to the proof of stake model.
The only thing I will point out is that Proof of stake is becoming less popular these days because of the flaw that it allows centralisation. So people with more tokens have more staking power and earn more and then they stake even more etc.. so over time, the rich becomes richer and ends up monopolising the system. That’s why many projects are moving to DPOS or other concensus algorithm.
Proof of Credit will still struggle with this flaw of POS in the long term. Because as long as your credit is good, you can keep staking more and earning more.
But hey, they have modularisation, so if they can change their concensus algorithm easily in future if they need to.
The minimum for staking currently is $2000 worth of tokens, and there will also be masternodes, and each masternode costs 10,000 tokens which at the moment is over $35,000. That’s very expensive for a project of this marketcap. If they were to rise in marketcap, then the masternode would be even more expensive. So it’s prob out of budget for the average token investor, but some rich investors will be able to get one, and again, the rich will get richer in this project.
Token use:
The native tokens is the NULS token, and it will be used for all processes on the mother blorckchain.
But this is where you have to be aware of a potential flaw in any platform that uses side chains. Each side chain is allowed to create their own token, and so prcoesing and smart contracts on those side chains don’t need to use NULs. So not just NULS, any platform that uses side chains, you need to pay attention to this, to check that there is token use and demand. Because if there is no token use, you’re not going to earn money as a token investor.
Fortunately, Nuls does address this issue. Any other tokens that the Dapps create will still be considered a NULs asset and the tokens that are used in the side chains, are actually not their real tokens but contract tokens. It’s like going to the casino, you play with chips, which represent a monetary value, but you can’t actually take those chips out of the casino, they have no value.
In this case, the economies of all the Dapps will run on contract tokens, but when they want to cash it out, they have to go back to NULs to get the original asset and that conversion will use NULs tokens.
NULs has also set it up so that every time a subchain issues a smart asset, NULs token will need to be paid. And it’s set from the work go the ratio of NULs token to the asset. This sounds confusing, let me give you an example. So if I am project Z and I create a Z currency. I have to agree that I will always hold NULs tokens equivalent of 1% of my total Z currency. So if I were to mint more Z tokens, I also have to buy more NULs tokens. If my Z currency price was to rise, I will also need to buy more NULs tokens. So you multiply this example by hundreds of Dapps and that’s the demand for the NULs token will have in the future. It’s a great and reassuring model for NULS investors.
Team
So this is the team behind the project. Not a big team. It’s also a very tech heavy team.
As always, I run through a couple of the team members with you, in this case, Il run through the 2 co-founders of the project.
Reaper Ran their community leader has been involved in blockchain technology since 2013. He has in-depth knowledge of community operations having worked in projects such as BitShares community and on the NEO community board.
Lily Wang is the other co-founder and also the COO. Sh has past experience working for Chongqing TV & Science Educational Channel and also Weijingtong which provides the Chinese community with daily news.
That’s most of the information available on them from the website. Very brief resumes. The team is quite young. The tech team members have at least 8 years of tech experience, that’s not necessarily in blockchain.
No advisors on the website. If you guys have been following us, you may get the same feel as I do that projects without advisors tend to make more mistakes and also have more difficulty penetrating the market than projects with good advisors. I really think a good set of advisors is a bonus to any project, so hopefully they will get some in the near future.
They also don’t have a list of partnership on their website. I asked on Reddit and Telegram and also scrolled through Twitter for the past 6 months, what I found wasn’t much.
- The biggest is the China Blockchain Alliance. That has Chinese government backing for reseach, so that’s a big partnership.
- Devery which is a blockchain project that allows suppliers and consumers to prove the authenticity of their products online before purchase
- AIWTC—A global tourism platform
So if you know of any more partnerships, please mention them in the comments section below so that others can learn as well.
Roadmap
Their roadmap is divided into 3 stages, Ice, Water and Steam. Right now we are in Ice which ends in Dec 2018. Water and Steam roadmap have not been released yet.
They are abit behind schedule. Mainnet was meant to be released back in May, they are still in testnet, but it is progressing nicely, which is great, because it means we got this review in before their mainnet release. Mainnet is going to be huge for this project.
I think their wallet is also due to be released soon, usually that happens before Mainnet to help with the token conversion.
In July, the project is due to see the e-wallet, mobile wallet, smart contract virtual machine compiler and multilingual adapters.
In Dec we are due to see the release of the smart contract module and Inchain joins in NULs. I think this is the Inchain that is a decentralised insurance platform. That’s the only Inchain I know anyways. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
News
One important news to know is that NULS was recently awarded the “2018 most popular” blockchain project reward in the first blockchain leader’s summit in Shenzhen, China. So that’s huge and it’s a testament to the quality of this project.
Price:
Right now, the token price is $3.61, with a marketcap of $143 million. Their ranking has been around 90-95 on the market.
Their all time high was $7.70, so they have quite a bit of room to recover. They are already listed on Binance and Okex, so big exchanges.
The main upcoming news is mainnet. Mainnet is the biggest news for any platform project, and we can hopefully expect it within the next 4-6 weeks. Definitely by end of July.
I like this project, I personally think it’s very undervalued. I think very highly of the technology they are offering and I believe they a lot to offer as a blockchain project. They don’t have any major advisor or partnerships to give them the high profile that they need yet, but with the technology they are offering, it’s only a matter of time.
Furthermore, with staking rewards, great token use/ demand and a low marketcap. I think this is a great project to invest in.
This is just my personal opinion of the project, it is not professional advice or advice or any manner. So please do your own research and make your own decisions.
That’s my thoughts on NULS guys, definitely a project I will be keeping my eye on. Thanks so much for joining us, let us know in the comments below what you think of NULS and this post.
Also if you’re reading this in the future and have more information about partnerships, mainnet launch date, wallet etc.. do let us know in the comments below so that the rest of the community can be aware too.
I hope you found this post helpful, if you liked this post, give us that upvote and follow, thanks so much for reading, have a wonderful weekend, and I will catch you guys again very soon!
