DEPYCap Insight is a weekly column that covers various topics in the cryptocurrency world. The column is an informative piece that allows the reader to understand various types of coins, investment analysis on these coins and offer their opinion on the coin. This particular column explains in simple detail the history, functioning, mining and owning of the Nexus token—“The cryptocurrency in space.”
Hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges has been on a rise in the past few years. Mt. Gox lost $460 million leading to the closure of the exchange. Coincheck recently has lost $400million worth of NEM tokens in one of the largest hacks experienced ever. Apart from exchanges, the ‘original’ Ethereum/ DAO hack over 2 years ago caused Ethereum worth millions of dollars to be frozen and some disappeared. These security concerns causes fear and uncertainty in the blockchain space leading to slow acceptance by the masses. Imagine an instance whereby the ‘all-safe’ Bitcoin security encryption is breached and coins stolen. Many would agree it would lead to total abandoning of the technology. Is it possible? Yes. But it would take you some billions of years with the current computing technology. In this age though, with the rapid growth rate of technology, it may only be a matter of time before a way to breach Bitcoin’s security is discovered. Nexus uses futuristic technology, Quantum Computing Resistance (QRM) to secure blockchains from future hacking challenges.
Blockchain technology uses cryptograpghy systems that link the encryption by using the public key and decryption using the private key that is only known to the individual. This number is obtained using factors of two very large prime numbers making it secure and very hard to hack into the system. The hacker needs to determine the factor of the product of these primes. This can take billions of years to crack. However, Quantum computing allows for very large and simultaneous calculations in binary that can take a very short time to determine this factor if the processing power is increased. This is where Nexus finds its use by preventing these quantum computers from cracking the factor hence making the blockchain more secure.
What is Nexus?
Nexus is a global decentralized network that allows its users to access distribution through three channels of security to allow for fast, secure, and decentralized transactions. The security channels enable a consensus that is robust and allows voting across the channels. The network has layers that prevent any of the layers becoming more powerful or affecting the other layers.
History
The first block was mined in September 2014 through the prime channel (CPU) and a hashing channel (GPU). The blocks mined were then transferred to the exchanges and developers at a ratio of 1:1with Bittrex being the first exchange to receive Nexus. In April 2015, Nexus was re-branded to Nexus from CDS with Nexus version 2.0 being introduced later on in June 2015.
How it works
Nexus aims at decentralizing the decentralized systems to make the Bitcoin economy more decentralized from governments, central banks or corporations. Colin Cartell, the son to James Cartell, CEO of Vector Space Technologies and founder of Space-X, is looking to have satellites up in space that connect with nodes across the world. This enables people all over the world to transact without any central organization given that their satellites are in international territory-space. The team is also working on a new data structure that enables the blockchain to be very much scalable and increases the number of transactions per second to 100,000.
" To hack Nexus you'll need to make a 51% attack on three mining channels as this is a hybrid coin, this means uses proof of work like Bitcoin on 2 channels and proof of stake on 1 to secure the network. Which makes it almost immune to those attacks. "
Quantum Resistant Encryption As explained before Quantum computing may make the security of Bitcoin blockchain obsolete. Bitcoin uses the 256-bit private key encryption that may be decrypted using QC with the length of time required to obtain the factors reducing as more calculations are solved. To improve the security of this network, NexusEarth will double up on the private key encryption using the Quantum Computer Resistant Private keys with 571-bit encryption. In the world of cryptocurrencies today, NexusEarth claims to be the most secure cryptocoin.
Founders
The Nexus team has three key players; Colin Cantrell, the founder & lead core developer, Preston Smith in charge of public relations & a crypto currency enthusiast since 2014 & Keith Smith, web developer. Colin studied Satoshi’s deep codes and learned some of the challenges it faces and coded Nexus.
Colin is a software engineer with degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and Economics. Preston Smith, the community manager, has skills in management, writing and editing. He doubles up as the public relations manager. Keith Smith, the lead developer at Nexus Earth, is a GUI developer and a student in Austrian Economics.
Mining & Purchase
Users interested in mining nexus coins can do so using a proof-of-work protocol. The platform goes further to enhance the security on transfer of nexus coins by adding a proof-of-holding protocol. The Nexus reserve system controls the mining activity by limiting availability of NXS at a given time. The coin is written in pure SHA-3 algorithm and a total of 78 million tokens will be distributed over a period of 10 years. For miners to obtain rewards from reserves, the amount of NXS deposited in each reserve is mathematically determined by decay equations. Rewards to miners are calculated based on the reserve values to prevent surplus emission beyond the target level. The system adjusts the difficulty of finding a new block each time and for miners to obtain rewards, the weighted average of blocks mined is computed. Miners who contribute more to the network receive larger rewards. The Nexus coin can be bought from online exchanges such as Bittrex, Cryptopia and Coinspot.
Price Volatility
The Nexus coin has been performing relatively well since April 2017 when the price jumped significantly. During its ICO in January 2017 the coin had a price of $0.0044 which stayed relatively the same until 2017. As of January 2018, Coinmarketcap.com Nexus was trading averagely at $9.20 with a market cap of $505,333,570. The coin has potential of increasing value following a partnership with a space company, Vector Space Technologies. The aim of Nexus in this project is to build a foundation to broadcast blockchain and Nexus from space to prevent government and corporation interference.
The increasing desire of humans to find new worlds in space opens a great opportunity for us to trade out there with no governmental regulation. Hopefully Nexus Earth will be the first cryptocurrency in Mars when man finally lives on it. I surely will be here to witness its magic. That's all from Earth today folks!