## What Is Marlin (POND)?

Marlin is an open protocol that provides a high-performance programmable network infrastructure for DeFi and Web 3.0. The nodes in the Marlin network, called Metanodes, operate the MarlinVM which provides a virtual router interface for developers to deploy customized overlays and perform edge computations.

Notable overlays that can be built using MarlinVM include:
* Low-latency block multicast to scale blockchains
* Low-latency mempool sync for arbitrageurs
* Mesh networks
* Anonymity networks like mixnets
* Device optimization and caching responses of API to Infura, Alchemy etc

Its native utility token POND is used for:
* Running validator nodes on the network via staking
* Making and voting on governance proposals to determine how network resources are allocated
* Determining a set of network performance auditors and compensating users from an insurance fund in case of a SLA breach

Marlin aims to deliver on the promise of a decentralized web where applications secured via the blockchain are indistinguishable in terms of performance to users accustomed to Web 2.0.

### Who Are the Founders of Marlin?

Marlin is the brainchild of developers Siddhartha, Prateesh and Roshan, all of whom have extensive experience in peer-to-peer networking. 

Responsible for the development of Zilliqa, the first high-throughput blockchain to employ sharding in production, Siddhartha has had expexrience working at Microsoft and Adobe and is the author of the 2 US patents. Prateesh is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a focus on Computer Networks and Roshan, an avid open-source enthusiast, was a contributor to the Boost C++ libraries. 

The project employs former researchers at Ethereum Foundation, International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) world medallists and developers with experience at Facebook, Cisco and Bosch. It counts the former CEO of Bittorrent and professors at MIT and Princeton amongst its advisors including authors of seminal P2P papers such as Chord DHT. Marlin is backed by the likes of Binance Labs, Electric Capital and Michael Arrington.

### What Makes Marlin Unique?

Marlin is one of the few layer-0 projects focussed on network layer optimizations. Similar to Filecoin which is incentivized IPFS, Marlin claims to be the equivalent of an incentived libp2p. This makes Marlin ubiquitous in the decentralized web as any peer-to-peer application relies on networking between distributed nodes to function. 

Marlin is thus blockchain-agnostic. It offers gateways built for several layer-1 as well as layer-2 platforms. Unlike several other scaling solutions which suffer from the scalability trilemma where either one of performance, decentralization or security is sacrificed, improvements in the network layer are not subject to such constraints which primarily govern consensus layers.

###  How Many Marlin Tokens Are There in Circulation? 

There exist two tokens in the Marlin economy, MPOND and POND. MPOND has a total supply cap of 10,000 while POND is capped at 10,000,000,000. Conversion between the two tokens is facilitated via a bridge which returns 1,000,000 POND when sent 1 MPOND and vice-versa. Initially, 4,623 MPOND and 3,184,000,000 POND are created with POND primarily distributed amongst validators and the community. These numbers may vary over time due to conversions via the bridge. Every Marlin Metanode is required to stake MPOND and receives POND in the form of staking rewards. 

### How Is the Marlin Network Secured?

Built atop Ethereum, the correctness of execution of the Marlin smart contracts is protected by the network of Ethereum nodes. 

In addition-
* The Marlin network consisting of Metanodes risk having their staked MPOND and delegated POND being slashed if the network faces DDoS and spam attacks due to their failure to verify content that they introduce into the network. 
* Not unlike Proof-of-Work, the network uses tunable redundancy via erasure coding to ensure users receive performance and availability guarantees with the SLAs they demand and are proportionately charged for it. 
* A network of third-party auditors with probes across the globe, pre-approved by the Pond DAO, provide constant performance and coverage monitoring for applications that demand higher reliability. An insurance fund backed by the DAO is used to compensate users who incur a loss due to the network’s inability to meet its SLA guarantees.

### How Can I Earn Marlin (POND)?

As a layer-0 project and true to its community ideals, MPOND is distributed amongst stakers of different layer-1 platform tokens via a mechanism called FlowMint. POND can thus be earned by converting such MPOND to POND via the bridge in addition to staking MPOND towards Marlin Metanodes which receive POND in staking rewards.


Marlin

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

iExec RLC

Aevo

Braintrust

Celer Network

VVS Finance

Pundi X (New)

Prom

Vanar Chain

SwissBorg

Alephium

Kermit

Wall Street Baby

Gaga (Pepe)

Origin Ether

Index Cooperative

Reserve Rights (RSR) is an ERC-20 token that will serve two main purposes for the Reserve Protocol: overcollateralization of Reserve stablecoins (RTokens) through staking and governing them through proposing & voting on changes to their configuration.

The Reserve Rights (RSR) token was launched in May 2019 following a successful initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Huobi Prime platform.

Reserve Rights

Celer is a blockchain interoperability
protocol enabling a one-click user experience accessing tokens, DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, governance, and more across multiple chains. Developers can build inter-chain-native Dapps using the Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework to gain access to efficient liquidity utilization, coherent application logic, and shared states. Users of Celer-enabled dApps will enjoy the benefits of a diverse multi-blockchain ecosystem with the simplicity of a single-transaction UX, all from a single chain.

Smart contracts often struggle to access dependable data, but application programming interfaces (APIs) have been touted as a solution to this problem.

API3’s stated goal is to allow decentralized versions of APIs to be built, managed and monetized at scales. As blockchain technology plays an ever bigger role in the economy — from decentralized finance to supply chain management — the team behind this project says it has never been more important for smart contracts to provide “timely, reliable real-world data.”

The whitepaper for API3 was unveiled in September 2020 and set out the main problem that’s associated with APIs at present: connectivity. At present, there’s no way for smart contracts to establish a direct connection with APIs for the latest data — and this has led to an explosion in the popularity of oracles.

Although this has helped solve the problem to some extent, the industry has since been grappling with the “Blockchain Oracle Problem.” Oracles are a form of middleware that sit in between APIs and smart contracts — increasing costs and centralization. API3 intends to get around this problem by enabling API providers to operate their very own nodes.

API3’s token went live at the start of December following on from a token sale that generated tens of millions of dollars.

API3

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

Contentos

xMoney (formerly known as Utrust) was designed to provide a solution to the problems resulting in low usability of cryptocurrency as means of payment, particularly the underdeveloped transactional security of payment platforms and relatively high fees.

The main goal of the platform is to build a system that will enable fast and seamless crypto transactions at lower fees, therefore allowing merchants to reach a large audience of crypto holders.

The platform allows buyers to make secure purchases while also offering an option for refunds and protecting sellers from the high volatility of the crypto market.

The main goal of the platform is to build a system that will enable fast and seamless crypto and fiat transactions at lower fees, therefore allowing merchants to reach a large audience of crypto holders.

The platform allows buyers to make secure purchases while also offering an option for refunds and protecting sellers from the high volatility of the crypto market.

xMoney also aims to create a more reliable payments platform by combining the best features of blockchain and traditional fiat systems.

By leveraging cutting-edge technology and a strategic partnership with MultiversX, xMoney empowers individuals and businesses to optimize their payment processes, drive growth, and deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. With its commitment to innovation and excellence, xMoney continues to lead the way in transforming the financial industry.

xMoney (UTK) native token and its tokenomics UTK 3.0 primary purpose is to drive desired behaviors, such as accepting crypto and fiat for businesses and facilitating payments with the same for users. This encourages more companies to join the ecosystem, creating a flywheel effect that benefits buyers, users, investors, token holders, and businesses. The adoption of decentralized financial tools and currencies is further fostered through this collaborative approach.

xMoney

Orchid (OXT) is the native token of Orchid, a cryptocurrency-powered virtual private network (VPN).

Launched in December 2019, Orchid describes itself as the world’s first incentivized, peer-to-peer privacy network.

Its aim is to overcome internet freedom limitations by using cryptocurrency payments to allow anyone to purchase bandwidth from any participating provider. This is done using so-called probabilistic nanopayments, which occur using OXT, an ERC-20 standard token on Ethereum.

Regular payments to providers occur off-chain, allowing Orchid to avoid problems with congestion and gas fees on the Ethereum network.

The service is pay-per-use, meaning that users only have to contribute funds when they actually connect, instead of paying monthly or annual fees.

Orchid

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

DODO is a DeFi protocoldecentralized finance (DeFi) protocol and on-chain liquidity provider whose unique proactive market maker (PMM) algorithm aims to offer better liquidity and price stability than automated market makers (AMM).

The PMM pricing mechanism, which mimics human trading, utilizes oracles to gather highly accurate market prices for assets. It then provides enough liquidity close to these prices in order to stabilize the portfolios of liquidity providers (LP), lower price slippage and negate impermanent loss by allowing arbitrage trading as reward.

DODO also caters for new crypto projects with a free ICO listing through its Initial DODO Offering (IDO) which requires issuers to only deposit their own tokens.

DODO’s smart contract operates as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network.

DODO

Bluzelle is a decentralized storage network for the creator economy.

Bluzelle delivers high security, un-matched availability, and is censorship resistant. Whether you are an artist, musician, scientist, publisher, or developer, Bluzelle protects the intellectual property of all creators. Bluzelle is data storage, file storage, oracles, and more. Its is specific for NFTs and DeFi.

Bluzelle’s core products are all related to data and powered by its Tendermint Blockchain:

Bluzelle DB - a decentralized database for software developers to store information

Bluzelle Oracles - a truly decentralized pricing oracle that provides high speed and high security for Defi applications

Bluzelle Staking - where BLZ holders can currently stake their tokens and earn rewards for providing storage and pricing data.

Bluzelle

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

Covalent leverages big-data technologies to create meaning from hundreds of billions of data points, delivering actionable insights to investors and allowing developers to allocate resources to higher-utility goals within their organization.

Instead of painstakingly sourcing data from a small handful of chains, Covalent aggregates information from across dozens of sources including nodes, chains and data feeds. The Covalent API then sources end-users with individualized data by wallet, including current and historical investment performance across all types of digital assets. Most importantly, Covalent returns this data in a rapid and consistent manner, incorporating all relevant data within one API interface.

Having achieved product-market fit, we are now planning to execute the next phase of Covalent, which is a progressive decentralization that will enable the Covalent Network to be owned and operated by its users. Of course, a critical piece to this is CQT.

CQT is the native token of the Covalent Network. It has three primary purposes:

CQT is a governance token, whereby token holders vote on proposals to change the system parameters.

CQT is a staking asset. Validators will earn fees for answering queries.

CQT is a network access token that fulfills data queries for users of the API.

Developer resources include:

Covalent Knowledge Base for extensive guides on how to use the Covalent API. 

Covalent API Documentation.

Covalent

DIA (Decentralised Information Asset) is an open-source oracle platform that enables market actors to source, supply and share trustable data. DIA aims to be an ecosystem for open financial data in a financial smart contract ecosystem, to bring together data analysts, data providers and data users. In general, DIA provides a reliable and verifiable bridge between off-chain data from various sources and on-chain smart contracts that can be used to build a variety of financial DApps.

DIA is the governance token of the platform. It is currently based on ERC-20Ethereum protocol.

The project was founded in 2018, while the token supply was made available to the public during the bonding curve sale from Aug. 3 through Aug. 17, 2020, where 10.2 million tokens were sold.

Alien Worlds (TLM) is a decentralized, non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse, where players compete for scarce resources, Trilium (TLM), in a stimulated economy centered around planetary worlds. Due to this, Alien Worlds also has a decentralized finance (DeFi) element to the game, as players advance by staking TLM and using TLM to vote in Planet Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

Play-to-earn (P2E) NFT games have seen an exponential rise in popularity and value this year. Alien Worlds allow the players, called “explorers” to earn monetary rewards through gameplay or participation in Planet DAOs. By mining in Alien Worlds, a user is rewarded with the native, in-game currency — Trilium (TLM) or NFT packs. Players can stake TLM to boost their rewards or battle with other users for NFTs.

To date, Alien Worlds has established a fair amount of its roadmap, having TLM on Binance launchpad and farming period of TLM on Binance Launchpool. A large portion of game developments have been forged as well. Moving forward, Alien Worlds aims to automate the claiming process of daily allocation to landowners in the game. Artifacts NFTs are soon to be released, and future plans include NFT interoperability.

Alien Worlds

Aergo describes itself as an open-source enterprise blockchain platform optimized for hybrid deployments, which consist of both permissioned and permissionless blockchain architectures. It includes support for SQL allowing for easy data handling and familiar smart contract programming for developers.

The platform is built and utilized by Blocko, the Samsung-backed South Korean blockchain technology company that, according to Korean media sources, has deployed production blockchain solutions for large-scale clients including Lotte Card, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange, Hyundai Motors, and more.

Aergo

Reef is a Reliable Extensible Efficient Fast Layer-1 Blockchain for DeFi, NFT & Gaming. Built using Substrate Framework, it provides high scalability, enabling almost instant low-cost transactions, and supports Solidity and EVM, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their DApps from Ethereum without any change in the codebase.

Reef Chain is the most advanced EVM-compatible blockchain. It's self-upgradable and has on-chain governance. Its infrastructure also allows for EVM extensions which allows for native token bridge, scheduled calls (ie. recurring payments), and smart contract in-place code upgrades. In the near future, it will support additional VMs which will allow developers to write code in multiple programming languages. The network runs on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which offers scalability and low fees.

REEF is the native token that is used for:

Fees for processing transactions and storing data.

Running validator nodes by staking REEF tokens.

Nominating which validator nodes should be part of the network.

Reef is backed by multiple leading funds and venture capitalists including NGC, QCP, Bitcoin.com, Kenetic Capital, LD Capital, TRG Capital, Krypital Group, Genesis Block, Woodstock Fund and others.

Reef Chain development tools include:

Remix and EVM integrated development environments for uploading and deploying smart contracts.

Reefscan blockchain explorer to assist with deploying validators, bonding and nominating validators, debugging contracts, and understanding network performance.

Reef command line tools that allow developers deploy applications from local environments.

Reef wallet for accessing and interacting with the blockchain

Reef

Radworks

SKALE, described as a modular blockchain network, is designed to bring scalability to Ethereum. SKALE is the only blockchain network capable of running an unlimited number of fast, on-demand, pooled-security Blockchains with zero gas fees to end users. These individual chains are known as SKALE chains and can be dapp-specific or shared.

The project’s website says it wants to enable people to build and run DApps in a “decentralized modular cloud built for real-world needs and configured for your requirements.” This emphasis on decentralization isn’t at the expense of security.

According to SKALE, those who build on this platform can run Solidity smart contracts “thousands of times faster at a fraction of the mainnet cost” — with games and content streaming services among the projects that already take advantage of its infrastructure.

SKALE

Cartesi is an app-specific rollup protocol with a virtual machine that runs Linux distributions, creating a richer and broader design space for DApp developers.

Cartesi Rollups offer a modular scaling solution, deployable as L2, L3, or sovereign rollups, while maintaining strong base layer security guarantees.

Cartesi

NKN (NKN), or New Kind of Network, is a network that focuses on creating a decentralized and open-source network protocol for public blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to share network bandwidth and internet connectivity. Its main objective is to address the challenges faced by today's internet, such as centralization, scalability issues and security concerns.