With the Hive price continuing to flounder, I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing something in terms of other cryptos that are maybe worth more, so I thought I'd take a look at some of the other alt coins which are sitting alongside Hive in terms of market cap to see what they've got to offer in comparison.
I'm mainly interested in utility value - what you can currently, mainly currently, but also potentially DO with the token/ on the chain.
At time of writing Hive was sitting 178th in terms of market cap, and the coin right above it was ARK, ranked 177th with a value of $53M ($0.41 and a supply of 130M).
(Of course by the time this publishes these rankings may well have changed!).
What is 'ARK'? (ark.io)
It's a unique delegated proof of stake blockchain, and (ironically/ fatedly?) it's not that dissimilar to Hive.
Ark's main focus is 'blockchain interoperability', and apparently one of the project's strap-lines is that 'Ark has no competitors, only potential partners.
More specifically, the project seems have three main aims:
- Acting as a bridge between blockchains
- Issuing smart contracts and
- Enabling new users to deploy their own, new blockchains at the push of a button.
Planned developments
Besides a desktop and mobile wallet you can download, it doesn't appear that you can do anything with ARK ATM - there are only two maybe soon to be functional applications linked on its main .io site - Marketsquare, which seems to be a website where you can access various different applications from blockchain partners, most of which are Hive based, and 'deployer.io' which allows you to 'deploy a blockchain', but both are mooted for Q1 2021.
However, so far there is zero functionality.....
Partnerships, Partnerships and more Partnerships and Arks' Partnership with Hive
A lot of recent news is about 'Partnerships' - many of which seem to be with Hive - they had a stint at the recent virtual Hive Fest that many of us couldn't access.
.
TBH I'm not sure what being in partnership with ARK really means, I'm not exactly sure, other than seeing Hive projects being publicised on Ark websites, which I guess can't be a bad thing!
However, there doesn't seem to be much else going for the blockchain at this point!
The Ark Community
Supposedly it's quite strong - they do have 60K odd followers on Twitter, which isn't bad for a project which isn't even functional yet!
Ark - Worth more than Hive?
The Ark project seems to be more ambitious than Hive - linking blockchains, Smart Contracts and allowing people to deploy their own blockchains - I mean if they get it right it could be a competitor for ETH.
The problem is that nothing besides the wallet is working yet, and a lot of recent promotion is just about partnerships with other working projects such as Hive.
Personally ATM I don't understand why this is valued anywhere close to Hive which already has many functional dapps working it.
However if Ark does see successful development this could potentially benefit Hive as it would give it more publicity and make its dapps more accessible, there is overlap between the two chains.
**Find out more... **
Hackernoon: Why Ark Deserves Your Attention