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 171st in terms of market cap, and the coin right above it was NRG,ranked 170th with a market cap of $54.7 M (priced at $1.50 a token and a supply of 36.5 M).
(Of course by the time this publishes these rankings may well have changed!).
What is 'NRG'? (Energi.world)
ENERGI ('NRG') bills itself as a 'cryptocurreny for world consciousness' claiming to be the most versatile blockchain in existence and the only one which combines the following four elements:
- Ethereum compatible smart contracts - so they can interact with Eth.
- On-chain governance
- A self-funding treasury
- A layer 2 masternode network which integrates DEFI applications like Oracles.
If you watch their introductory video they also add a fifth element in, which is basically 'visionary leadership'.
They have 41.6K followers on Twitter.
NRG's economics
NRG is a delegated proof of stake blockchain which releases 1 million new ENERGI tokens every month (so 12 million a year).
These are distributed as follows:
- 10% to stakers
- 10% to the 'energi backbone' whatever that is
- 40% to Masternodes (you need 1000 ENERGI to run one)
- 40% to the treasury
If you watch some of their information videos they make quite a lot about the self-funding treasury - all this means is that 40% of the coins are paid out to mainly the 60 strong development and marketing team that are working on the project.
Also funded out of this are exchange listings and I think their charitable giving comes out of it too.
NB at time of writing there is no limit to the production of Energi, it's just going to keep on being printed at the rate of 1 million a month, which will be used to fund the expansion of the project.
Energi Impact
The project makes a big deal out of being a low-impact (in terms of energy) blockchain and about supporting 'positive projects' - I think this is what they mean about 'visionary leadership', but when you drill down what this basically means is that they just used some of their coin to fund a handful of charitable projects such as litter picking and an orphanage in Bali, as well a paid some new age types to knock out a few videos about yoga woga and healing.
While the lion's share of the 1 million Energi goes to the core-team doing the developing.
What can you currently do with NRG?
Not a lot.
- You can buy NRG and store it in a wallet, stake it and earn NRG, not sure what the return is.
- You can buy 1000 NRG and run a node, and be rewarded with NRG in return. Again I'm not sure what the percentage return is?
- You can watch some of the hippy videos produced by people funded by the treasury - there's a yoga dude, some young woman banging on about energy or something for example.
- You can pool and trade it on uniswap, and other decentralised platforms, but then again what can't you pool these days?
Future Developments
Besides the above, the plan to release a new exchange in 2021 which allow people to trade crypto for almost no fees.
NRG - Worth more than Hive?
I don't think so - if I look at the 4 things above they claim to be able to do then I'm sure Hive has more or less got all that - we can integrate with Ethereum (WLEO), and we've certainly got 2 and 3 - on chain governance and a DAO.
The only thing we are lacking is a DEFI layer. 'Only'.
TBH I just don't get NRG - it just seems like 'yet another blockchain' that serves no real purpose - it just integrates stuff which is already being done elsewhere.
It seems to want to distinguish itself as a 'visionary spiritual/ eco' type chain - but the 'impact' stuff isn't really linked to the chain - you could fund that with any coin from any old chain!
Just because a 'visionary leadership team' has decided to pay a few hippies to produce videos on yoga and helped clean up a few beaches doesn't make this the blockchain that's about to usher in the age of aquarius
Personally I'll stick with Hive!