The Rise of the Lemmings

Crypto is a Ponzi

The doubters and non-believers are running rampant! They are everywhere! It is impossible to avoid them, spewing their wisdom when I turn on the evening news, open my news app, listen to my podcasts, and scroll through my favorite blogging and social media sites.

Obviously, when markets turn down as much as they have, this is an opportunity for the lemmings to strip everything bare. Undoubtedly, you are also getting bombarded with these headlines and comments:

• Crypto is a ponzi 📉
• Blockchains are just casinos 🎰
• Crypto is dead 🧟‍♂️
• Tokens are scams 🦹

Real World Use Cases

I feel compelled to defy the wave of industry ending proclamations and defend the developers that I admire so much and have been spotlighting for nearly a year now. Having warped around the greater ecosystem of the Cosmos during this time, I am going to highlight a small collection of these blockchains, protocols, and dApps. First and foremost, these are the ones that solve real world problems and are disrupting or modernizing traditional industries with awesome technological solutions. Second, they are where the artists, creators, and entrepreneurs can join the grassroots micro-economies.

Next time, when someone is once again spouting their cries of doubt, you can forward this summary of all the great and useful technologies in the Cosmos. And as a bonus, the Sources section below will have links to everything discussed here. It is tailor-made for those doubters and non-believers that actually do want to learn more. 😉

Cloud Services and Data Integrity

When you stop scrolling on your phone and typing on your computer for a moment to ponder where all that information you are accessing and storing is being held, you realize quickly how large the cloud computing industry is. Akash Network is the decentralized answer to the centralized juggernauts of this industry. Providing cloud services at a fraction of the cost of the largest providers in the world, Akash has created a novel marketplace for their cloud services.

Another up and coming blockchain in the realm of cloud computing is Cudos. Based on the premise of utilizing spare computing capacity, Cudos is building a decentralized network to offer cloud storage services at a fraction of the cost versus the traditional centralized corporations that dominate this industry. After years of development and extensive testnet work, the blockchain just launched their mainnet into production.

Chainlink has an oracle module running on the IRIS Network, enabling cross-chain integrations for smart contracts. With its decentralized network, it supports smart contracts with real world data and off-chain computations. The Chainlink oracles are used by smart contracts running on a large number of blockchains and dApps, including Kava, Akash, Umee, CosmosHub, IRISnet, and Crypto.com in the Cosmos, with many more on the Ethereum Mainnet, Layer 2’s, Avalanche, and Solana. Application use cases vary as much as the places where the network is deployed, including insurance, decentralized finance, gaming, and NFT’s.

Caring for the Planet 🌍

“Farmers are the stewards of our global landscapes.”

Working together with farmers across the globe, Regen Network’s aim is to effectuate the regeneration of our ecosystems. Farmers have a detailed understanding of how the cropland, pastureland, wetlands, and forestry are impacted by both natural phenomena and artificial influences. Understanding this, Regen Network is incentivizing farmers to collect this data and employ sustainable practices in the process.

With a public blockchain, called the Regen Ledger, developers, validators, and scientists are working together towards a common goal. The objectives consist of creating and delivering a more efficient, transparent, and economical solution to solve the greatest challenge of our time: safeguarding the future of Earth.

Caring for our Health

Launched in 2017, MediBloc recently celebrated its five-year anniversary with a promising set of goals for the coming years. Medibloc has created an integrated platform to create efficient data sharing and privacy for patients, medical professionals, medical organizations, and insurance companies. Very much centered around the patient, the dApps are designed to bring together the fragmented data into one easily accessible set of health records. Headquartered in Seoul and focused on the Korean market, the future use cases and possibilities for this innovative blockchain are enormous. 🤒

Privacy First

Virtual private network (VPN) solutions are traditionally controlled and marketed by large companies with massive data centers. Through a clever decentralized deployment, Sentinel Network has turned this model upside down and provides a lower cost solution. With mobile apps from multiple partners, using VPN’s has become easy, unrestrictive, and inexpensive.

Secret Network is building an entire ecosystem of privacy first applications on its blockchain. With viewing keys, users decide who is permitted to see their data and transactions. The applications focus on practical use cases and range from cloud storage, file sharing, messaging, and decentralized finance, to NFT’s for digital art, film, gaming, and media.

e-Money

Carving a niche, focusing entirely on the European market, e-Money has developed a suite of stablecoins. These consist of:

• eEUR
• eSEK
• eNOK
• eCHF
• eDKK.

The central focal point of e-Money’s strategy is on establishing a bridge from fiat-based payment systems to the blockchain. It does this by providing European banks and businesses with secure access to its payment network. Transactions are settled fast and with very low transaction costs. They can be made from both bank accounts and credit cards.

The network is secured by its validators, staking its NGM token. e-Money has developed partnerships with commercial banks to hold collateral to back its digital assets. They are audited by Ernst & Young for proof of funds, demonstrating full compliance.

Celebrating the Creators in the Ownership Economy

IRISnet has created a non-fungible token (NFT) application framework. With Uptick, creating, transferring, and NFT marketplace activity can be integrated across blockchains with compatibility and interoperability standards. This opens up NFT digital assets to many existing industries, entrepreneurs, and creators, including digital art and collectibles, virtual goods, music, videos, and electronic publications.

By way of a library of Andromeda Digital Objects (ADO’s), the Andromeda Protocol has developed a modular framework that leverages the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) architecture. Teams from across the Cosmos can use this technology to build applications in the sectors of DeFi and NFT’s, all the while interacting with each other across IBC.

Enabling artists to independently own their musical creations is nearly a reality with Bitsong. Creators will be able to publish music NFT’s, which will be traded on Bitsong’s Music DEX. A Fantoken module and a NFT module are being developed. Together, the Music DEX and the NFT marketplace will allow everything from music NFT’s to merchandise, tickets, and fan tokens to become a part of Bitsong’s trading and entertainment experience.

Digital artists are already fully able to create, mint, and trade their work in the Cosmos. 👩‍🎨 The following NFT marketplaces are some of the popular ones that are fully operational:

• StargazeZone
• Passage3D
• Omniflix
• Stashh
• Knowhere
• Talis.

Several exciting new applications celebrating creators in the ownership economy are under development and expected to launch soon:

• MantlePlace by AssetMantle
• Loop NFT Marketplace.

Boundless Tech

With their negative propaganda, the crypto doubters and non-believers are clearly only focusing on the relatively small proportion of blockchains, protocols, and dApps that have fallen on hard times. However, mismanagement of businesses and projects happens in every industry. Why? Because, there are actual humans that propel all of these companies and organizations into existence. Unfortunately, there are people operating in every sector, who are not good stewards of their trade, overconfident, dishonest, unnecessarily brash, or simply incompetent. By far, these individuals make up such a small group, relative to all the great teams developing incredible tech.

Instead, I choose to celebrate the best that this burgeoning industry has to offer and decisively turn away from the naysayers. The next wave of great technology is here and I simply can not stop learning and experimenting to squeeze out all the potential it has to offer! 🧑‍💻

More importantly, I invite the non-believers and doubters to join me. For just one ecosystem in the vast universe of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, I have provided you with a curated set of tools to start learning about real world cases yourself. The expansion of the Cosmos has arrived and we can all be a part of this wondrous journey. Clearly, crypto is not dead!

Niet haten, verspreid liefde — Opa.

Sources, References, and Further Reading

Akash Network — https://akash.network/
Cudos — https://www.cudos.org/
IRIS network — https://www.irisnet.org/mainnet
Chainlink — https://chain.link/
Regen Network — https://www.regen.network/
MediBloc — https://medibloc.co.kr/en/
Secret Network — https://scrt.network/
Sentinel Network — https://sentinel.co/
e-Money — https://e-money.com/
Uptick Network — https://www.uptickproject.com/
Andromeda — https://andromedaprotocol.io/
Bitsong — https://bitsong.io/
Stargaze — https://app.stargaze.zone/marketplace
Passage3D — https://market.passage3d.com/
Omniflix — https://omniflix.market/home
Stashh — https://stashh.io/collections
Knowhere — https://knowhere.art/
Talis — https://talis.art/
MantlePlace — https://marketplace.assetmantle.one/
Loop — https://nft.loop.markets/

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