BitShares

## What is BitShares Blockchain?

BitShares Blockchain is a decentralized “Blockchain as Organization” (BaO); an industrial-grade decentralized open source platform built to run high-performance financial technology operations. It represents the first decentralized autonomous decentralized community that enables its core utility token (BTS) holders to decide the Blockchain future direction in order to develop and maintain a wide range of decentralized financial technology products, features and functions. BitShares Blockchain is a Blockchain that permanently records financial technology operations between different Blockchain accounts and facilitates a wide range of access controls across BitShares Blockchain user financial means.

BitShares Blockchain is a technology that supports the digital generation entrepreneurs, investors, and developers with a common interest in building and participating in free market solutions by leveraging the power of globally decentralized consensus and decision making. Consensus technology has the power to do for economics what the internet did for information. It can harness the combined power of all humanity to coordinate the discovery and aggregation of real-time knowledge, previously unobtainable. This knowledge can be used to more effectively coordinate the allocation of resources toward their most productive and valuable use.

BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the Blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether its banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others, a digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (or BaO) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts. The advent of (BaO) ushers in a new paradigm in organizational structure in which companies can run without any human management and under the control of an incorruptible set of business rules. These rules are encoded in publicly auditable open source software distributed across the computers of the companies’ shareholders, who effortlessly secure the company from arbitrary control. BitShares does for business what bitcoin did for money by utilizing distributed consensus technology to create companies that are inherently global, transparent, trustworthy, efficient and most importantly profitable.

BitShares has went through many changes and has done its best to stay on top of Blockchain technology. BitShares is using Consensus as the mechanism by which organized people decide upon unitary rational action. While not considered technology in the traditional since, consensus “technology” is the basis of democratic governance and the coordination of free market activity first coined by Adam Smith as the “Invisible Hand.” The process of consensus decision-making allows for all participants to consent upon a resolution of action even if not the favored course of action for each individual participant. Bitcoin was the first system to integrate a fully decentralized consensus method with the modern technology of the internet and peer-to-peer networks in order to more efficiently facilitate the transfer of value through electronic communication. The proof-of-work structure that secures and maintains the Bitcoin network is one manner of organizing individuals who do not necessarily trust one another to act in the best interest of all participants of the network. The BitShares ecosystem employs Delegated Proof of Stake in order to find efficient solutions to distributed consensus decision making.


## What is BitShares Blockchain core token (BTS)?

BitShares Blockchain core token (BTS) is the core operations utility which is used as the fee to submit transactions over BitShares Blockchain; it is also used for BitShares Blockchain development purposes; while (BTS) core token holders are in power to manage and develop BitShares Blockchain to influence its future through several Blockchain integrated built-in decentralized voting functions in order to issue utility to developers for their submitted and approved worker proposals, also to assign committee members for maintaining Blockchain dynamic parameters and vote witness nodes (Blockchain nodes) that will be validating live transactions.


### Who are the founders of BitShares?

BitShares Blockchain was launched on 13th October 2015 with an agile community efforts since 2013 to build an industrial-grade decentralized Blockchain platform that is capable to process high-performance financial technologies that serves the individual financial freedom.

BitShares Blockchain was co-founded by some of the cryptocurrency industry's biggest names, these include:

Daniel Larimer, an accomplished software engineer and the co-founder of several other prominent blockchain ventures including EOS.IO, Block.one and Steemit. Larimer is an esteemed name in the cryptocurrency space and is widely regarded as one of its leading innovators. 

[Charles Hoskinson](https://blog.coinmarketcap.com/2020/05/11/charles-hoskinson-on-the-power-of-crypto-working-from-home-and-mongolian-hunting-falcons-2/), an entrepreneur and mathematician who is one of the original eight co-founders of [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) — the second most successful blockchain platform (behind [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/)). Today, Hoskinson works as the CEO of Input Output HK (IOHK), the research and development company behind [Cardano](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/) (ADA). 

As of January 2021, the BitShares core team consists of 17 permanent workers, supported by more than 60 long-term contributors — covering a range of disciplines including economics and legal, to systems admins and highly skilled developers. 


#### What are decentralized products supported by BitShares Blockchain?

- Decentralized Exchange (DEX).
- Decentralized User Issued Asset (UIA).
- Decentralized Market Pegged Asset (MPA) or Smart Assets (Smart Contracts).
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
- Decentralized Liquidity Pools (LP) and Automated Market Maker (AMM).
- Decentralized Prediction Market (PM).
- Decentralized Non-Fungible Token (NFT).


#### How many BitShares (BTS) utility tokens are there in circulation?

In the genesis block of BitShares Blockchain a total of 2,412,042,197.37963 BTS have been distributed to individual keys accordingly. These (BTS) can still be claimed by proving ownership of the corresponding private key. The (BTS) token comes with a limited supply that is different from circulating (liquid) supply.

A max supply of 3,600,570,502.10207 (BTS) has been put in place on the Blockchain. This can never change. The difference of initial roughly 1.1B was set aside for future project funding and rewarding block producers, and is only accessible with approval by the (BTS) holders through the worker system. This so called working budget is also often referred to as reserves. It is worth noting that revenues made from transactions fees are not shared with holders of (BTS) but instead go back into the working budget to further allow future development. There is no reward for holding the core (BTS) token in any way. 

As of January 2021, there were just under 3 billion (BTS) in circulation. This is equivalent to 83% of the maximum (BTS) supply — making it highly diluted. 

BitShares was initially funded by community investments totaling 5,904 BTC, as well as 415,000 ProtoShares (PTS) in 2014. At the time, this was worth around $3.6 million.

The full Core Token (BTS) [tokenomics](https://bitshares.github.io/docs/#/?id=core-token) is publicly available and verifiable over Blockchain blocks.


### How is BitShares Blockchain network secured?

This system reduces the need for multiple transaction confirmations, ensuring BitShares transactions can be finalized extremely quickly. Instead, delegates (known as witnesses) are responsible for producing and broadcasting blocks, with numerous safeguards in place to ensure these witnesses act in the best interests of the network.

The most essential part of Blockchain technologies is here referred to as Blockchain protocol. It defines the behavior of the entire system including consequences and side-effects when processing transactions. Users utilize particular features by crafting a transaction that contains a particular letter-of-interest (also referred to as operation).

Since the Blockchain, as a storage, only stores incremental changes (e.g. transfers), the final balance of each account together with other information needs to be tracked separately in the so called current state. It is important to note that the protocol is deterministic in the sense that the very same state is generated when applying the same sequence of operations (as provided by the Blockchain). This makes Blockchain technologies tamper proof and auditable.

In BitShares, over 50 operations are available (as of early 2018). Each of them hooks into the Blockchain protocol at least three times:

Validation: During validation, the raw instructions (sometimes referred to as payload) are checked for consistency. E.g., in case of a transfer, we ensure that the amount to transfer is positive.
Evaluation: In the evaluation step, the operation-specific instruction is validated against the current state of the Blockchain. In case of a transfer, we here ensure that the amount to be transferred is available in the account of the sender.
Application: This step takes action in the sense that it modifies the current state. In the case of a transfer, we here reduce the account balance of the sender and increase the account balance of the receiver according to the amount of tokens transferred.
Example: Transfer operation

Consider a simple transfer operation that sends funds from one account to another. Here, the protocol defines the validation rules such that negative amounts are prevented. The evaluation ensures that the sender cannot transfer more than what is in his account balance. When applying a transfer from Alice to Bob, Alice is credited the transferred amount while Bob receives the amount. Here, transfer refers to the operation type, while the sender, receiver, and amount refers to the operation-specific instructions. Obviously, different operation types come with different instructions.



Ledger

BitShares Blockchain is a “Blockchain As Organization” (BAO); An industrial-grade decentralized platform built for high-performance financial means

Ardor

Steem is a community-focused blockchain that creates an instant earning opportunity for the network’s users. The protocol is designed to provide an earning opportunity for customers based on their value to the network. It is designed to provide users with a platform where they can post curated content online, and get paid in cryptocurrency.

The protocol is a publicly available, incentivized blockchain database that allows users to interact with each other and earn in return. It leverages technologies from both social media and cryptocurrency to provide users with value. The network ensures the fair treatment of contributors by running a reward structure that reflects each user’s contribution.

Steemit is the first app that was built on the Steem blockchain, and it launched on July 4, 2016. The protocol aims to provide value for its community of users in the following ways:

To provide thoughtfully chosen news and commentaries.

Creating an opportunity to earn.

As a source that offers answers to users’ inquiries.

Offering a stable cryptocurrency pegged to the USD.

Steem

Hifi (formerly Mainframe) is a Lending Protocol that allows anyone to borrow against their crypto. Hifi uses a bond-like instrument, representing an on-chain obligation that settles on a specific future date. Buying and selling the tokenized debt enables fixed-rate, fixed term lending and borrowing — something much needed in decentralized finance today. It is anticipated that a ticker symbol change will occur alongside future iterations on the Hifi Lending Protocol.

Mainframe Token (MFT) is the native utility token that is used for:

Governance votes

Staking to ensure the safety of the protocol

Rewarding contributors to the ecosystem

What can you do with the Hifi Lending Protocol:

Borrow:  Lock collateral in a vault to mint fixed-rate, fixed-term debt tokens.  These debt tokens can be swapped for instant liquidity allowing users to leverage long, yield farm, or pursue other strategic trades without selling their collateral tokens.

Lend:  Buy fixed-rate, fixed-term debt tokens for a discount.  When the term expires they can be redeemed for face value, earning lenders a predictable return on their investment.

Provide Liquidity:  Earn trading fees by providing liquidity between debt tokens and stablecoins on an Automated Market Maker (AMM).

Mainframe

Komodo

JUST is a popular new decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem built for the TRON blockchain. It is an entire suite of products that are mostly centered around a decentralized stablecoin lending platform known as JustStable.

The platform launched in August 2020 following an initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Poloniex LaunchBase platform earlier that same year, but the native governance token of the platform (JST) has been circulating since May 2020.

It is a two-token ecosystem built around the USDJ and JUST (JST) tokens. USDJ is a multi-collateral stablecoin that has its value pegged to the value of the US dollar (USD), whereas JST has a variety of functions on the platform — paying interest, helping maintain the platform and participating in its governance, helping to set parameters like interest rates (stability fees) and the minimum collateralization ratio.

To obtain USDJ on JUST, traders need to deposit collateral in the form of supported collateral tokens — including TRON (TRX), which are exchanged to PTRX tokens and locked as collateral forming a collateralized debt position (CDP). Depending on the amount of collateral deposited, users can then mint and withdraw USDJ, which must later be repaid to retrieve the initial collateral.

The platform is designed to provide a fair and borderless hub of DeFi products, that any TRON user can access.

JUST

Akropolis is a company that operates an Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol that seeks to provide an autonomous financial ecosystem for saving and growing wealth, including through borrowing and lending. To do so, it offers a series of products including AkropolisOS, a framework for developing for-profit decentralized autonomous organizations, Sparta, a platform for uncollateralized lending, and Delphi, a yield farming aggregator and tool for dollar-cost averaging.

The project uses an ERC-20 token, AKRO, for protocol governance across its suite of products.

Akropoli was first announced in March 2018, launching on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2020.

Akropolis

QuarkChain

Verge is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency and blockchain that seeks to offer a fast, efficient, decentralized payments network that improves upon the original Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. It includes additional privacy features including integrating the anonymity network Tor into its wallet, called vergePay, and providing the option of sending transactions to stealth addresses.

The project describes itself as community-driven, relying on volunteers and priding itself on being open source.

Verge was first launched in October 2014 as DogeCoinDark, a fork of Peercoin (PPC). In February 2016, it was renamed Verge in order to rebrand for easier mass-market adoption and to distinguish itself from Dogecoin (DOGE), with which it has no direct connection. The project is now based on the Bitcoin source code.

Verge

NEM is a blockchain platform that was launched in March of 2015. It was one of the pioneers of the cryptocurrency industry, and sought to improve on the imperfections found on other chains at the time. It was one of the first non-turing complete chains to feature user-defined tokens (called mosaics), namespaces, multisignature accounts, and a P2P reputation system based on EigenTrust++. Its most notable contribution to the space is the proof-of-importance consensus mechanism, which sought to reward on-chain activity and deter the concentration of wealth commonly associated with proof-of-stake. Its client, NIS, is written in Java.

NEM has a global community. It sees the most utility as an alternative form of payment for businesses and vendors, and has a variety of social media apps built on top of it in Japan, such as nemgraph, a community-driven owned and operated alternative to Instagram.

In December 2021, NEM was hard forked by a pseudonymous team of cryptocurrency experts and enthusiasts alike. Titled Harlock, this hard fork signaled the community’s intent to take NEM from a shadow of its former self into the world’s leading payments platform for on-chain and off-chain media content.

Ontology is a project designed to bring trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. It is building the infrastructure to provide trusted access to Web3, allowing individuals and enterprises to rest assured that through regulatory compliant digital identity solutions, users and their privacy come first.

The Ontology blockchain is a high speed, low cost public blockchain. It is designed to bring decentralized identity and data solutions to Web3, with the goal of increasing privacy, transparency, and trust. To achieve this, users and enterprises are provided with the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs, while also ensuring regulatory compliance. Through Ontology’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ontology ensures frictionless compatibility with Ethereum, the first step in the creation of the Ontology Multi-Virtual Machine and further interoperability for the chain.

At its launch, Ontology chose to forego the popular initial coin offering (ICO) model in favor of a series of community distributions and airdrops of its ONT cryptocurrency.

This helped to quickly establish both organic price discovery and a passionate community and helped the project to avoid subsequent regulatory scrutiny.

For example, for a brief period any person who signed up for the Ontology newsletter received an airdrop of free 1,000 ONT, which reached a value of $10 per token soon after the token became listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Ontology launched its own MainNet on June 30, 2018 and has been up and running smoothly since.

Ontology

FUNToken stands out in the crowded blockchain space due to its unique combination of innovation, utility, and commitment to the GameFi and DeFi sectors. At its core, FUNToken is designed to revolutionize online gaming and decentralized finance by providing a fast, transparent, and trustless platform for transactions and gaming experiences. Unlike traditional gaming and financial platforms, FUNToken leverages blockchain technology to ensure security, reduce transaction costs, and enhance user autonomy by allowing players and investors to have complete control over their assets without intermediaries. Moreover, its integration into various gaming platforms and DeFi applications offers users unparalleled access to a vast ecosystem of entertainment and financial opportunities. With its focus on user experience, scalability, and continuous innovation, FUNToken is not just another digital asset; it's a gateway to a new era of digital interaction, making it a standout project in the blockchain community.

FUNToken

DigiByte (DGB) is an open source blockchain and asset creation platform. Development began in October 2013 and the genesis block of its DGB token was mined in January 2014 as a fork of Bitcoin (BTC).

A longstanding public blockchain and cryptocurrency, DigiByte uses five different algorithms to improve security, and originally aimed to improve on the Bitcoin blockchain’s security, capacity and transaction speed.

DigiByte consists of three layers: a smart contract “App Store,” a public ledger and the core protocol featuring nodes communicating to relay transactions.

DigiByte

Founded by Peter Kim, MovieBloc is a reverse ICO project driven by the Korean video streaming platform Pandora.tv. MovieBloc is a decentralized movie and content distribution platform.

MovieBloc

Founded in 2015, StormX is one of the first global cryptocurrency-based solutions to reach worldwide markets. As a mobile app and browser extension, StormX aims to bring users cashback in crypto for most of their online purchases. With enterprise partners like Samsung, Nike and Lego. StormX also allows users to stake the native STMX token to boost their rewards.

The company has already attracted investments from Blockfolio, Litecoin Foundation and Kyber Network. StormX has successfully developed its product and has become an industry leader in the crypto cashback community. The company is also catching users’ attention by offering cashback of up to 87.5% for some purchases.

StormX

IOST describes itself as an “ultra-fast,” fully fledged and decentralized blockchain network and ecosystem with its own nodes, wallets and based on the “next-generation” consensus protocol dubbed “proof-of-believability.”

IOST

Linear is a decentralized delta-one asset protocol capable of instantly creating synthetic assets with unlimited liquidity. The project opens traditional assets like commodities, forex, market indices and other thematic sectors to cryptocurrency users by supporting the creation of “Liquids” — Linear’s synthetic asset tokens.

The protocol consists of various products like Linear.Buildr, a DApp used to manage Liquids using Linear (LINA) and other tokens as collateral. The exchange is specifically created to enable trading of a variety of Liquids with rapid confirmation times and robust security.

LINA is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum network whose main purpose is as collateral for Liquids (using Buildr) and for community governance of the protocol. All token holders have access to the Linear DAO, enabling them to vote on different initiatives and proposals, helping to shape the development of the Linear ecosystem.

The main goal of Linear is to provide a superior user experience with better scalability and greater speed thanks to the cross-chain capabilities of the protocol. Linear Finance intends to provide a simple solution for users that want exposure to traditional assets while still benefiting from the features enabled only by blockchain technology.

Linear Finance

Vite has built a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based smart-contract platform, with a Snapshot Chain structure to facilitate zero-fee transactions and optimize transaction speed, reliability, and security. The Snapshot Chain of Vite utilizes Hierarchical Delegated Proof of Stake (“HDPoS”) to achieve network consensus, while supernodes take only staking rewards and no transaction fees. Vite virtual machine maintains compatibility with EVM, and utilizes asynchronous smart contract language, Solidity++.

The VITE token is the currency for simple token transactions and smart-contract executions on the Vite network, with users staking VITE for transaction quota instead of consuming gas. VITE can also be used to vote for Snapshot Block Producers (aka supernodes). In addition, a VITE staker with unused transaction quota can lease such quota to dApps in exchange for their tokens. For instance, users can stake VITE in exchange of ViteX’s native decentralized exchange token, VX.

Vite’s current products include a decentralized exchange (ViteX), a multi-purpose wallet application (Vite App), payments (VitePay), and government/enterprise blockchain applications (VitePlus):

ViteX is a decentralized exchange with on-chain orderbook and matching engine, and supports currently 20+ digital assets.

Vite App is a mobile application that allows trading (ViteX), asset management (wallet), dapps (e.g Vite-based games) in one place.

VitePay is a fast and feeless payment solution, currently available to use in Singapore’s Ce La Vi Sky Bar and taxi services under the Midwest Global network - Users can pay for merchants with Vite wallet, who in turn receive payment with zero fees with near-instant settlement. VitePay is also integrated with the e-commerce platform OpenCart, and one can utilize VitePay at the official Vite store.

VitePlus is a Vite-based enterprise blockchain solution for governments and enterprises. Vite has developed a pilot app, SyraCoin, for the Syracuse government, allowing city housing fund donors to receive blockchain-based coupons that are redeemable for goods and services within city bounds.

VITE

Civic is a blockchain-based identity management solution that gives individuals and businesses the tools they need to control and protect personal identity information.

The platform is designed to change the way we think about identity verification by giving users more control over their personal data, while allowing them to access a wide range of services without needing to fork over excessive amounts of personal information.

Civic's identity verification solution uses distributed ledger technology to authorize identity usage in real time, and is used to sparingly share information with Civic partners after authorization by the user.

Unlike some other identity management services, Civic users store all their sensitive data on their mobile device. Users are able to authorize the sharing of specific personal data by providing a biometric signature through the Civic app.

The Civic ecosystem is enabled by a unique utility token known as the Civic token (CVC), which is used for the settlement of identity-related transactions between Civic participants — such as between a customer and service provider.

Users can earn CVC tokens for completing a variety of tasks, such as signing up for a service through the platform or introducing new users, while validators can earn CVCs for validating documents for service providers.

Civic was launched in 2018, following a sell-out initial coin offering (ICO) the year prior.

Civic

Ren (REN) is an open protocol built to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Ren.

Formerly known as Republic Protocol, Ren launched RenVM, its virtual machine mainnet, in May 2020, having completed a $34 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

The protocol’s native token, REN, functions as a bond for those running nodes which power RenVM, known as Darknodes.

Ren aims to expand the interoperability, and hence accessibility, of decentralized finance (DeFi) by removing hurdles involved in liquidity between blockchains.