## What Is StrongBlock (STRONG)?

[StrongBlock (STRONG)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/strong/) is a blockchain protocol focused on rewarding [nodes](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/node) for supporting the infrastructure of their blockchain. The protocol notes that its mission is to create a world "where the StrongBlock Node Army supports dozens of protocols and millions of nodes." In other words, StrongBlock offers a node-as-a-service tool to allow people to participate in securing blockchains without requiring the technical knowledge needed to do so. Thanks to StrongBlock's automated processes, users do not have to know how to code or run their own server to keep the node online.

This fixes current node problems like out-of-date software, incomplete blockchain histories, and downtimes. With over 1,700 Ethereum 1.0 nodes, StrongBlock represents more than 15% of all active nodes on [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) 1.0. In the future, StrongBlock plans to offer its nodes-as-a-service tool also for Ethereum 2.0, Bitcoin, and other protocols. 


## Who Are the Founders of StrongBlock?

StrongBlock was founded in July 2018 by CEO David Moss, an LA-based blockchain entrepreneur with three decades of experience as CTO, CEO, and founder of various tech-related companies. 

He is supported by CTO Brian Abramson, a systems administrator, and developer with almost two decades of experience. Abramson previously was the VP of Infrastructure for Block.one, a blockchain company related to [EOS](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/eos/).

The third member of the executive team is CPO Corey Lederer, an expert for enterprise blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Lederer was the former Senior Director at Block.one and has two decades of experience in leadership positions at companies like Nike.


## What Makes StrongBlock Unique?

StrongBlock offers nodes that support the Ethereum network and can be either purchased as a service or brought by users themselves. Although over 350 nodes have been registered for rewards by the community, **nodes-as-a-service** is the protocol's key value proposition deemed interesting to most users.

Anyone can "rent" a node that StrongBlock hosts and maintains. Users that want to bring their own node have to contribute 10 STRONG to the community, which are used as follows:



* 10% are reserved for future use.
* 10% are allocated to rewards in STRONG-ETH and LINK-STRONG [liquidity pools](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/liquidity-pool).
* 20% go to the StrongPool for rewards
* 60% are allocated to node rewards.

Whether owned or rented by STRONG holders, all nodes are rewarded daily. Furthermore, nodes can receive rewards by signaling for a node, with both the node and the signaler receiving the reward. Each mined STRONG entitles the miner to signal one node. Mining rewards for STRONG tokens were reduced after the tokenomics changed and are based on elapsed Ethereum blocks, resulting in much lower gas fees. 

This system enables the protocol's **Node Universal Basic Income (NUBI)**. The STRONG earned through NUBI is used to govern the protocol and regulate the community's contributions per node, the level of monthly maintenance fees (currently $14.95), burning STRONG for NFTs, and more. In the future, the protocol plans to issue NFTs in addition to its native token as a reward. 


## Related Pages:

Check out [Chainlink (LINK)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/) — an oracle solution used by many protocols.

Check out [Band Protocol (BAND)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/band-protocol/) — another oracle solution.

Learn about what [Nodes are and how they work](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-node).

Get the latest crypto news and latest trading insights with the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog).


## How Many StrongBlock (STRONG) Coins Are There in Circulation?

STRONG is the protocol's [governance token](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/governance-token). In November 2020, StrongBlock decided to update its tokenomics and burn 94% of the original 10 million STRONG. The new [total supply](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/total-supply) of STRONG is 535,000, with a current [circulating supply ](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/circulating-supply)of 138,000. This decision led to a massive surge in the token price from under $50 to an all-time high of almost $1,200. The token serves as a reward for the node operators running on Ethereum and as a means to vote in the protocol's governance.

The token distribution is as follows:



* 330,365.57 STRONG are for **Community** rewards for nodes and miners directly supporting the protocol
* 96,784.62 STRONG are for **Shareholders** of StrongBlock, creators of the StrongBlock DeFi protocol
* 101,735.81 STRONG are for the **Team** (developers of the protocol)
* 0 STRONG is allocated to StrongBlock

With this tokenomics change, the team switches to a low-inflation model that emphasizes node participation and pushes the number of nodes from the hundreds to the thousands.


## How Is the StrongBlock Network Secured?

StrongBlock runs on [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/), which is secured by a [proof-of-work consensus mechanism](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/proof-of-work-pow) that requires miners to mine new Ether. A set of decentralized nodes validates transactions and secures the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol has been successfully audited by Hacken and has integrated oracle services by Chainlink to determine mining reward distributions in STRONG. The team chose Chainlink over rivaling oracle solutions because of its "timely and accurate" price calculations, which are crucial for the protocol's success. 


## Where Can You Buy StrongBlock (STRONG)?

STRONG is available on [KuCoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kucoin/), [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/), [Bitrue](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitrue/), [Hoo](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/hoo/), and [Uniswap (V2)](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/uniswap-v2/).

If you want to learn more about how to start buying cryptocurrencies, you can read more in [our guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).

Strong

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Don-key

BendDAO

Earn Network

SaTT

Avatly (New)

Kattana

Corite

Meme Alliance

S4FE

Freeway Token

Gold Fever

Launchpool

Dopex

LuckysLeprecoin

Olympus v2

saffron.finance

YFDAI is an entire permission less DeFi ecosystem that combines Staking & Farming services and soon, Lending/Borrowing services, SafePredict, and Insurance together with their own DEX called SafeSwap and their own LaunchPad where legitimate projects in the DeFi space can launch their new vetted projects with contract audits, locked liquidity and locked dev tokens in time release smart contracts.  Whereas other DeFi protocols rely upon minting new tokens to sustain their staking and farming rewards, YFDAI has allocated tokens for these products which will be replenished with fees generated by the ecosystem. YFDAI also has a deflationary burn mechanism built into the platform that will ultimately reduce the total supply to just 13,950 tokens.

YFDAI’s mission is to clean up the DeFi space by de-risking the purchase of new projects by performing due diligence vetting and requiring adherence to the same protocols that YFDAI itself adhered to on their launch.  YFDAI’s motto is ‘no more exit scams or rug pulls.’

YFDAI.FINANCE

Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance (DeFi). (DeFi).

Serum is the only high-performant DEX designed around a fully on-chain central limit order book and matching engine. Ecosystem partners can compose with Serum’s on-chain orderbook to share liquidity and power their trading features for institutional and retail users.

In light of the popularity of DeFi and the growth of DEXes on Ethereum, users and developers are limited by high gas costs and slow transactions. Serum aims to resolve these traditional problems of DeFi, as well as issues of centralization, low capital efficiency, and liquidity segmentation.

The SRM utility and governance token enables users to receive discounts on protocol fees and voting rights; 100% of exchange fees flow back to SRM via buy-and-burn, staking rewards, and ecosystem grants.

Serum

Moonriver is an Ethereum-compatible, smart-contract parachain on Kusama. It is intended to be a companion network to Moonbeam, where it will provide a permanently incentivized canary network. New code will ship to Moonriver first, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions. Once proven, the same code will ship to Moonbeam on Polkadot.

It does this by providing a full EVM implementation, a Web3-compatible API, and bridges that connect Moonriver to existing Ethereum networks.

This allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonriver with minimal changes.

Moonriver

Metal DAO

Everscale (EVER) is a fast and secure layer-one blockchain that aims to become a decentralized platform for high-performance applications with real-world relevance, such as Stablecoins, CBDCs, DEXes, Bridges, Gaming Platforms and more.

Everscale

Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol initially built on POA network, but now living on Solana. Audius was launched to remedy the inefficiencies of the music industry, which is plagued by intransparent music rights ownership and intermediaries standing between artists and their audience.

Audius aims to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators through its platform powered by its native AUDIO token. Artists can upload music, stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, that fans can listen to for free. Currently, Audius rewards content creators through rewards like featuring in the weekly trending lists. In the future, it plans to integrate stablecoins for artists to offer paid content, as well as artist tokens that give fans the ability to access exclusive content, potentially cooperating with platforms like Rally.

Audius

Kadena is a proof-of-work blockchain that combines the PoW consensus mechanism from Bitcoin with directed acyclic graph (DAG) principles to offer a scalable version of Bitcoin. Kadena claims it can provide the security of Bitcoin while being able to offer unparalleled throughput that makes the blockchain usable to enterprises and entrepreneurs alike. Kadena's unique infrastructure is decentralized and built for mass adoption because of its multi-chain approach.

Kadena promises industrial scalability that can support global financial systems and can be scaled as necessary. It also vows to remain energy-efficient at scale and deliver more transactions with the same energy input, another difference to Bitcoin. Moreover, Kadena offers crypto gas stations, which allow businesses to pay for their customers' gas fees and remove a massive pain point in adopting blockchains for business.

Kadena has already scaled its network from 10 to 20 blockchains and can do so again in the future, if necessary. This final addition to Kadena was its private Kuro layer-two blockchain, which supports up to 8,000 transactions per second across 500 nodes.

Kadena

Fantom is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm.

Together with its in-house token FTM, Fantom aims to solve problems associated with smart-contract platforms, specifically transaction speed, which developers say they have reduced to under two seconds.

The Fantom Foundation, which oversees the Fantom product offering, was originally created in 2018, with the launch of OPERA, Fantom’s mainnet, coming in December 2019.

Fantom is an open-source decentralized smart contract platform for DApps and digital assets that was created as an alternative to Ethereum. Fantom has the goal of overcoming the limitations of previous generation blockchains and balancing three components: scalability, security and decentralization. The project offers a set of tools to simplify the process of integrating existing DApps, as well as a detailed staking reward system and built-in DeFi instruments.

Fantom is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses a scratch-built consensus mechanism and independent consensus layer, Lachesis, to facilitate DeFi and related services on the basis of smart contracts. Lachesis provides security for other layers as well, including Opera, Fantom's EVM-compatible smart contract chain. The long-playing mission of the project is to “grant compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world.”

One of Fantom's key strengths is its performance and efficient transaction processing, namely thousands of transactions per second, where transactions are settled in 1-2 seconds, and the cost is fractions of a cent per transaction. As a result, Fantom provides higher scalability but at a lower cost.

The ecosystem is based on two main technologies: Lachesis protocol and Opera.

The Lachesis protocol is the core consensus layer that secures the Fantom network by providing both transaction speed and security.

Lachesis is an aBFT consensus engine that uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) algorithm. How it works: network data can be processed at different times, and the network filters the participants, allowing only one third, which are allocated due to erroneous or malicious behavior, without compromising network processes.

Fantom's Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism maintains the efficiency of the entire network, its design provides security at maximum speed. Fantom developers emphasize that the PoS mechanism is a leaderless phenomenon — there are no leaders of blocks and participants, and anyone can join (or leave) the network of nodes at a convenient moment.

The key qualities of Lachesis are: asynchronous, leaderless, Byzantine fault-tolerant, and near-instant finality.

As for Opera, it's an application development layer or Fantom's mainnet deployment platform, permissionless and open-source hosting DApps. Thanks to EVM integration and support for the Solidity programming language, Fantom has a full set of smart contract capabilities, which allows users to seamlessly interact with Ethereum platforms while maintaining the advantage of Fantom's transaction efficiency.

The Fantom Foundation concluded that removing block leaders improves network security, so Opera uses a PoS model and leaderless validators (validators do not determine which blocks are valid).

In addition to being a fast, secure and cheap payment platform that enables to make fast and secure payments at minimal cost, Fantom also features on-chain governance where users vote with FTM tokens (one token equals one vote). Of the features: users have the right to express the degree of agreement / disagreement on a scale from 0 to 4.

FTM is the native utility in-house PoS token of Fantom that powers the ecosystem and is applied for payments, network fees, staking, and governance. FTM forms the backbone of transactions, and allows fee collection and staking activities, along with the user rewards the latter represents.

Fantom

JOE (JOE) is the native token of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain that offers DeFi services, including swapping, staking and yield farming. The exchange has been growing rapidly, attracting over $4 billion in total value locked (TVL) since it was launched in June 2021. Trader Joe claims to take a community-first approach, and to prioritize innovation, speed and safety. It aims to provide a one-stop-shop DeFi experience and to integrate new products without compromising on security. To achieve this, Trader Joe has outlined an ambitious roadmap that focuses on token-holder growth. It plans to have improved staking, non-fungible-token (NFT) exchange listings, the collateralization of the JOE token, and leveraged trading –– all during 2021.

FTT is the native cryptocurrency token of the crypto derivatives trading platform FTX that launched on May 8, 2019. On Nov. 11, 2022, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., and is currently undergoing proceedings. Some of the information below may not reflect the current standings of the FTX exchange, please proceed with caution when interacting with the FTT token.

The team behind FTX comprises some of the largest crypto traders over the past few years who, having found issues with most mainstream crypto futures exchanges, decided to launch their own platform. FTX claims that it stands out due to such features as clawback prevention, a centralized collateral pool and universal stablecoin settlement. FTX is a centralized crypto exchange launched by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019, backed by significant trading companies in the industry, including Almeda Research, OTPP, Temasek, BlackRock, Coinbase Ventures and Sequoia Capital. As of 2022, the platform has over a million registered members, and the daily trading volume has reached billions of dollars.

In regards to clawback prevention, a significant amount of customer funds on other derivative exchanges have been claimed by socialized losses. FTX reduces this by using a three-tiered liquidation model.

On existing crypto futures exchanges, the collateral is fragmented across separate token wallets; this can be difficult for traders as it prevents positions from getting liquidated. On the other hand, FTX derivatives are stablecoin-settled and only require one universal margin wallet.

Another feature of the FTT are leveraged tokens, which allow traders to put leveraged positions without the need to trade on margin. If a trader wants to short Bitcoin with 3x leverage, they can simply buy a 3x short Bitcoin leveraged token on FTX. These tokens are ERC20-compatible and can be listed on any spot exchange. FTX currently offers XRP, BNB, TRX, BTC, ETH, EOS, USDT and LEO leveraged tokens.

A year after its founding, FTX Exchange introduced the exchange token called FTX Token or FTT. The FTT coin is an ERC-20 standard token that is actively used by ecosystem participants.

Initially, FTT was established as a reward for exchange transactions; however, over the years the list of functions has grown:

FTT is applicable in the creation of leveraged tokens on the FTX Exchange; users can receive VIP discounts in the form of FTT depending on the number of coins they own, and it’s possible to earn rewards for providing liquidity through futures positions.

In order to maintain its value, the exchange regularly buys back and burns its tokens, spending on the purchase of FTX: 33% of trading fees, 10% of the reserve fund, and 5% of other commissions.

FTT Token use cases:

1/3 of the commissions received from transactions on FTX are utilized to buy back FTT. Tokens redeemed in this way are burned;

FTT tokens are used to reduce trading fees and to secure futures positions;

Profits from massive market movements are distributed among the holders;

By purchasing a white label version of FTX’s OTC portal and futures market, institutions and investors pay expenses in FTT tokens;

By creating leveraged tokens, projects can pay listing fees with FTT;

Users can stake FTT to benefit from discounts, bonus votes, and blockchain fee waivers.

One benefit of FTX Token (FTT) is commission discounts. Members pay a low fee and obtain tighter spreads. Traders use FTT as collateral, and those who are active on FTX Exchange see percentage differences of up to 60%. Traders get insurance protection, which ensures a net profit in moments of market volatility, then makes it possible to continue trading even without a margin call.

In addition to the fact that FTT is useful for opening positions with leverage, FTT staking also offers perks: discounts, the opportunity to win NFTs, participation in airdrops, bonus votes and IEO tickets.

FTX Token

Verasity is an open-ledger ecosystem designed to fight advertising fraud, provide open access to infrastructure for publishers and advertisers, and reward users for watching video content. Verasity also provides payment solutions and a rewarding staking ecosystem with 15% yields guaranteed through to April 2024.

Powered by a mix of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cutting-edge blockchain technologies, Verasity is building the most powerful advertising ecosystem in the world through VeraViews; developing an open-access payments platform through VeraWallet, the VeraCard, and VeraPay; and enhancing the attention economy through its patented Rewarded Video module.

Verasity

Flux is the cryptocurrency that powers the Flux ecosystem. It has a number of uses including purchasing resources, collateralizing nodes and fuelling transactions on FluxOS, as well as rewarding both miners and FluxNode operators for providing computational resources.

The Flux ecosystem is devoted to empowering everyone to develop, deploy and use the decentralized Internet of the future: Web3

At this moment the Flux ecosystem consists of: a native, minable POW cryptocurrency ($FLUX), a powerful decentralized computational Flux Network (FluxNodes), a Linux based operating system (FluxOS), the premier digital asset platform (Zelcore) and, finally, the Flux blockchain for on-chain governance, economics and parallel assets to provide interoperability with other blockchains and DeFi access.

Currently (2023/1) Flux has a computational network consisting of around 15,000 decentralized nodes, distributed globally with more than 108,000 CPU cores, 288 terabytes of RAM and 6.7 petabytes of storage. That makes Flux the largest decentralized network in the world!

Flux

Anchor Protocol is a lending and borrowing protocol offering up to 19.5% yield on stablecoin deposits. Lenders can deposit their UST and earn attractive rates on their investments while simultaneously benefiting from low volatility. Borrowers can turn their LUNA collateral into productive assets without giving up control of it.

Anchor Protocol can thus attract risk-averse investors looking for high-yield, low-volatility investments and increase demand for UST. This advances the adoption of UST as a stablecoin and subsequently the adoption of the Terra project in DeFi. With the increasing adoption of Terra, whose founders are behind the launch of Anchor Protocol, the price of LUNA will increase.

Anchor Protocol

Deeper Network is backed by Parity, AU21, Digital Renaissance, Master Ventures, Brilliance Ventures, Loopring, SevenX Ventures, UVA, YOUBI Capital, GOBI Partners, CANDAQ, Blocksync Ventures, Republic, ChinaPolka, Titan Ventures, Consensus Lab, Spark Digital Capital and BMW Capital.

Deeper Network also has partnerships with Polkadot, Best Buy, Amazon, Indiegogo, PAID Ignition, Duckstarter, Poolz and Flybit.

Deeper Network

Self-described as "Polkadot's wild cousin," Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform that is designed to provide a massively interoperable and scalable framework for developers.

Kusama is built on Substrate — a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies. Kusama has almost the same codebase as Polkadot — one of the most successful interoperable blockchains.

By deploying on Kusama, fast-paced projects gain access to a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network, with features that are not yet available on Polkadot. To that end, Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”

The platform is designed to provide a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain and can be used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot — though many projects opt to stick with Kusama for their final product.

Kusama benefits from a low barrier to entry for deploying parachains, low bond requirements for validators, and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation.

Kusama

Billed as "digital money for the modern world," nano is a lightweight cryptocurrency that is designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments, without fees, and addresses some of the major limitations of both legacy financial infrastructure, and many modern cryptocurrencies.

Development of the project began in 2014 under the name RaiBlocks, and the coin (then termed XRB) launched the following year through a public faucet, which allowed users to claim small amounts of XRB after completing a captcha challenge. Anyone with access to a computer or phone could solve captchas, and be rewarded with RaiBlocks. The number of XRB people received per solved captcha varied over time

RaiBlocks (XRB) was rebranded to Nano in January 2018, with the new name chosen to better represent the speed and simplicity the project offers to users.

It is a peer-to-peer platform that uses a unique block-lattice data structure to allow users to easily transfer value to one another without relying on centralized intermediaries.

Unlike other platforms which typically use the combined proof-of-work of a massive mining network to achieve consensus, nano instead uses a system known as Open Representative Voting (ORV) — which sees account holders vote for their chosen representative, who then work to confirm blocks of transactions securely.

ORV makes Nano extremely energy efficient, positioning it as a more environmentally friendly alternative to proof-of-work (POW)-based cryptocurrencies.

In November, 2021, aiming to bring nano to the real world and to comply with the globally-recognized standards of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) requirements, nano adopted a new ticker and a standard symbol: XNO and Ӿ.

Nano

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

Moonbeam

Yearn.finance is an aggregator service for decentralized finance (DeFi) investors, using automation to allow them to maximize profits from yield farming.

Its goal is to simplify the ever-expanding DeFi space for investors who are not technically minded or who wish to interact in a less committal manner than serious traders.

Launched in February 2020, the service, formerly known as iEarn, has seen huge growth in recent months as new products debuted and developers released in-house token YFI.

yearn.finance

Ultra is a publishing platform and ecosystem for video games and video game content. Ultra’s mission is to do away with the current monopoly held by publishing platforms like Steam and provide new opportunities to game developers, players, and influencers. Ultra promises a solution that is more equitable to players and developers alike. Players can benefit from immediately playable games, earn UOS by using the platform, and access platform-exclusive games. At the same time, developers benefit from access to more effective marketing tools and the potential for 20% higher sales revenue.

Besides content and game publishing, Ultra offers a demand-side and service-side platform for advertisers, the opportunity for players to resell their used games, and a platform-exclusive app.