I am by no means an expert in cryptocurrencies (and neither are 90% of those who claim to be), or even technology in general. I am however of the opinion that the crypto space requires a bit more reasonable skepticism to counteract the sheer number of people who think their favourite coin is going to "moon" and anything which says otherwise is "FUD" (this is a lot like "fake news" in contemporary American politics). This hinders balanced and rational discussi0ns on any currency.
I'll also preface this with a disclaimer that I'm only going to make posts about Cryoptocurrencies I currently own, but I will attempt to not turn this into a positive post about PRL.
It makes sense to begin with a very brief overview of the Oyster Protocol for those who may not be aware of it:
Its ambition
- PRL claims there are two demands it will fill, the demand for an alternative method of monetising web content and the demand for fully anonymous, decentralised and encrypted storage of files.
- PRL claims it can entirely replace ads as a method for monetising web content
How it proposes to achieve its ambitions
- Website owners add one line of code to their javascript. This script utilises a small amount of CPU resources from website visitors.
- This computing power is used to validate transactions on the tangle involved with uploading data for storage.
- Those who want to store something using the Oyster Protocol pay with PRL, some of which is "buried" and released slowly via smart contracts. Some of this PRL pays the broker nodes and funds the PoW required to store data on the tangle
- Broker nodes provide "treasure maps" in exchange for PoW performed by web visitors, which allows the web node to "dive" for this slow releasing PRL. This funds the PoW required to keep the data on the tangle (the tangle prunes old transactions, detaching them from the tangle).
- The PRL discovered by the web node is passed on to the website owner for income.
- The website owner then sells their PRL to those who wish to use it for storage on the Tangle.
- 1 PRL will be pegged to specific amount of data storage for 1 year (supposedly a minimum of 64gb but potentially more)
The whitepaper is here for anyone who wishes to analyse the Oyster Protocol more thoroughly, as its likely I've somehow misunderstood or misrepresented aspects of it.
Now moving on to why I'm skeptical.
The entire economy of the Oyster Protocol relies on there being an unmet demand for decentralised, anonymous cloud storage.
There are obviously potential customers who will be interested in this kind of service (businesses who handle sensitive/valuable data, criminals who wish to store illegal data and general users who desire privacy), decentralisation can provide security by not relying on a single point of favour.
However, PRL is not the only decentralised blockchain based cloud storage service. Others include SiaCoin (SC), MaidSafeCoin (MAID) and Storj (STORJ). This means there is already a decent amount of competition in this sector, and I'm sure more is yet to come.
If there isn't enough demand for PRL's storage, the token will not be worth enough for website owners to be adequately compensated, and if no website users implement the PRL script there will not be enough computing resources to power the storage platform itself, which will in turn lower demand even further until the token fades into obscurity.
The Oyster Protocol is entirely dependent on the IOTA tangle becoming a fully functioning product.
This post isn't titled "Why I'm skeptical about IOTA", so I won't go into too much detail here. But it's well known that the IOTA tangle is in its infancy and that means there are plenty of opportunities for it to fail somewhere down the line. No IOTA tangle, no Oyster Protocol (although they've stated that in this case they'd create their own tangle, which would be a huge task in and of itself).
How secure is it? How can they guarantee your data will not be pruned early?
Even if the tech behind this protocol is solid, how will potential customers be sure they can trust their data on the tangle which is known to prune older transactions? People may not have enough faith in the Oyster ecosystem to trust it with their incredibly valuable or sensitive data, and may stick to more tried and tested methods of storage. The fact that data cannot be edited once uploaded to the tangle may put some people off.
The upcoming 1:1 PRL:SHL airdrop could inflate price in the short term.
People love free shit, and that's what airdrops are. There could be a temporary increase in demand for the PRL token leading up to the 6th of April, and whether the price remains steady afterwards or drops instantly is impossible to predict.
Also, I'd be willing to bet there will be a surge of SHL shilling (which it has the perfect name for being shilled) after the airdrop so people can dump their free tokens for a nice profit.
The lead dev is anonymous.
This is always a concern in my opinion.
In conclusion
I don't have a conclusion, because I'm just outlining reasons I'm skeptical of the project, this is not meant to be a balanced assessment of the protocol. My personal opinion after taking all these issues into account shouldn't mean shit to you, you should make your own choice. Maybe you'll buy some PRL, or maybe you'll take your significant other on a nice fancy date instead? Or perhaps you'll purchase an ounce of the dankest dank and forget about this crazy crypto bubble.
Good luck.