Elastos -- could this project be better than EOS? Could it be the next coin to 10X or even 100X? I have to admit this project is extremely complex and it’s scope is so wide.
Hello everybody. This is Kevin from Bitcoin for Beginners and today I want to welcome you to Season 1, Episode 2 of Reddit Knows Best where we take a look at the coins being shown on Reddit to hopefully find some gems or diamonds in the rough. In this episode, I'm going to research Elastos and share my findings with you.
Elastos is one of Reddit’s gems because it’s flying under the radar right now. I do have to warn you that this is one of the most complex projects I've ever researched. So PLEASE do your own thorough research before investing. This goes for all projects but definitely this one because of how complicated and large its scope is.
PRICE ACTION SO FAR
Before we dive in let's take a look at the price action so far. Elastos hit the exchanges in early February 2018 and went up all the way to $90 and then fell back down during the bear markets during Q1 2018. It has been slowly climbing since early April and is now about $40-45. I believe in terms of BTC value, right now it’s about 5X of what ICO buyers paid. I may be a little bit off about that but I believe generally that's the level that it's grown to.
WHAT IS ELASTOS?
For this section, I’m just going to provide a highlight of this project. I’m not going to dive into all of the nitty-gritty little things about it. First, Elastos is a third-generation blockchain platform similar to EOS, Blockstack, etc. And it consists of three components:
- An operating system for Internet of Things (IoT) devices
- A virtual machine to run decentralized apps on any type of device like mobile phones
- A decentralized internet using blockchain for security purposes. How do they do that? At a high level, they assign everything like DApps, devices -- literally everything that works on the web -- a unique ID. No internet connection is established for that until it's verified. This prevents something called DDoS attacks. You could take a look at that more if you google it.
Elastos also has a scalable architecture which uses main chain and side chains. The main chain is for simple transactions and payment transfers and side chains are for more complicated smart contracts logic. Every DApp can have its own sidechain to make it extremely scalable.
One of Elastos major goals is to enable the digital smart economy. They do this by making digital assets scarce, identifiable and tradeable, which creates new financial opportunities for both creators and consumers. There’s a lot more information about this on their subreddit and on their website.
SOME MORE DETAILS
Elastos is using merged mining with Bitcoin. Why are they doing that? Well, for one thing, they can piggyback off the security of the Bitcoin network which is best-in-class in the whole crypto world. It’s also eco-friendly because it doesn't require additional computation to do the proof of work if it's merged mining.
Elastos had an ICO in January 2018. One ELA coin was worth .00125BTC. The total supply of ELA is 33 million but not all of it is out in circulation right now. They have a 4% yearly inflation rate to the circulating supply.
While Elastos is based in China, the broader venture of this project started 18 years ago by its founder Rong Chen but they were doing other auxiliary stuff unrelated to the blockchain. They have big advisers and supporters from China like Da Hongfei of NEO and Jihan Wu of Bitmain, which kind of makes sense because of the merged mining with Bitcoin. Elastos is also funded by Foxconn and Tsinghua University both big names in China in the tech and university spaces.
Finally, there are already DApps being built on this platform such as Viewchain, Reactor, etc., just to name a couple. But it's already promising that they're getting things built in their ecosystem, which is a very big point for all of these third-gen blockchain platforms that need to compete with each other.
REDDIT’S TAKE
So what about Reddit's take on Elastos. Once again, let’s take a look at what people are saying. One person said that Elasto’s tech is genius, marketing is haphazard so they should do a lot more marketing in the US. I definitely agree with this one. Another thing people are talking about is access on exchanges. Right now it’s really only accessible on Huobi right now and another one I don’t remember. They definitely need to make it more accessible to the mainstream public.
Another Reddit user commented that another company -- Huawei -- was interested in Elasto’s tech. They are another big name in the tech space in China so people are really excited by all these major partnerships and industry collaborations.
Another person mentioned how Elastos is so under the radar and they wondered if it's as under the radar as NEO was back when it was Antshares. I definitely think it is. And another person touched on the fact that Bitmain and Jihan Wu are going to be working with Elastos to set up a foundation to invest in DApps in the Elastos’ ecosystem. So really good support and definitely a promising way to grow the ecosystem.
Finally, someone mentioned something about the token model -- how tokens generated on the Elastos platform like through ICOs, for example, will have to lock a certain percentage of their tokens in ELA. This would be huge for holders, which obviously investors like.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I do agree that there's extremely confusing public material for this project. When I was trying to do research, it took a lot of time and I was still confused about it. I really had to think very deeply to understand what this project is trying to do. So they definitely need to focus on better marketing to attract mainstream interest. Right now they’re very under the radar so people who have heard about Elastos can continue to accumulate before it really takes off potentially. Like I said it could be a diamond in the rough right now.
Things I like: 1) it has an ambitious scope and unique approach and 2) it has a very experienced team and notable partners. On the other hand, I want to see more adoption and usage “in the wild which” -- which is something I desire for all third-generation blockchain platforms.
Another thing I wanted to note is that on the project’s Twitter page, they tweeted that one of their co-founders met with President Donald Trump and took a photo. That seemed really weird; I didn't know if I should believe that or not. And if it’s not true, it’s kind of shady. But you can just google “Elastos President Donald Trump” and you'll see the tweet. I also looked up Trump's schedule that day and he was at luncheon in New York City for so maybe one of their co-founders was there and decided to take the chance to get a photo with him. Who knows.
So would I personally invest in Elastos? THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. Yes, I would because I love under the radar moon shots. I'm interested but I haven't quite yet invested. Maybe with the current consolidation, this would be a good time.
Thank you guys for reading!
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