Koinos Community,

Back in October I shared with you the new Koinos Technical roadmap. If you have not had a chance to review it, you can do so our Medium blog as well as https://koinos.io/#roadmap. As 2024 comes to a close I want to give you an update on the roadmap and what we have planned for 2025.

As I mentioned in the original technical roadmap post, planning a roadmap is more of an art than a science and that has certainly been true the last couple of months. We had some reports of nodes halting. These reports were coming from community members, block producers, and business partners. We were seeing the same behavior on our nodes. Thankfully, due to running api.koinos.io and KoinosPro in Kubernetes with health checks, those nodes were automatically restarted, preventing any down time. Unfortunately, that was not the case with others and this led to regular down time of block producers and other services. We spent a considerable amount of time debugging the issue, finding several problems while doing so. We currently have a release candidate branch that has been promising. It has not been perfect, but we already have some final fixes that will allow the node to recover without needing manual intervention.

The two roadmap items that were slated to be completed by the end of 2024 are the KCS-4 upgrade for the KOIN and VHP contracts and Mempool v1.5. The previously mentioned work on p2p impacted both of these items. For the KCS-4 upgrade, we successfully deployed the updated contracts to the Harbinger testnet where they are currently running. This test used an expedited version of the mainnet governance process, which performs the same operations. The upgrade was successful and happened without any interruption of service and without nodes needing to upgrade or restart. Testing on Harbinger testnet has concluded and we are ready to create the proposal. However, we arrived at this point a couple of weeks later than expected and due to the month-long proposal process overlapping with the holidays, we decided to postpone the proposal until the beginning of January. This decision was made out of an abundance of caution. While we are confident of the success of the proposal, we did not want to place extra work on ourselves or our community during the holidays and want everyone to be able to enjoy some much deserved time off with their families!

With regards to Mempool v1.5, these changes were tightly coupled with the other p2p changes. Because of this, we needed to have the other p2p changes resolved before completing this work. As a reminder, this will update the Mempool and other microservices to be able to handle sequential transaction nonces. Currently, an account is only allowed a single transaction in the mempool at a time. For many users, this is not a problem. But it can be a problem when a user needs to make multiple transactions in quick succession or when a dApp has to batch many transactions at the same time. With these changes, they will be able to send all of the transactions at once, queuing in the mempool and being added to blocks in order. The primary changes were to the mempool, but touched the chain, block producer, and p2p microservices as well. In particular, p2p is important because transactions sent via gossip can be sent out of order. The p2p mircoservice needs to reorder transactions based on the nonce before adding them to the local mempool. It just so happens that the code that does this for blocks contained the aforementioned bugs and needed to be fixed before extending the capability to transactions. Testing is ongoing for these changes and is expected early Q1.

Coming up in 2025, we have the REST API v1.1 and the public snapshot service. We expect that both of these are still on track for Q1 of 2025. During my Thanksgiving holiday, I did some work on the REST API for fun and was able to complete a good amount of the requirements for v1.1. A couple more features need to be added and the entire update tested. The delays in 2024 likely push back this release to mid Q1 rather than early Q1 as we were hoping.

Thank you for taking the time to read this update. Steve, Ron and I are all excited about what 2025 has in store for Koinos. This is our first bull run and we cannot wait to show the world what Koinos offers them!

Roadmap Update Q4 2024 was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s been a big year for Koinos already, so let’s recap where we’ve been — and where we’re heading.

In this update I’ll discuss what you can expect from Koinos Group in early 2025. Remember, Koinos Group is just one participant in our decentralized ecosystem… but we have such clear plans for the future that our roadmap bears a short post of its own.

I would also like to talk about our outlook on the cryptocurrency markets as we enter a new era for crypto, (especially in the United States) and how Koinos is positioned for its first bullish cycle.

The market cycle

This upcoming year is shaping up to be another bull market for cryptocurrency.

And for Koinos, it’s the first time since mainnet in November 2022 that the market has been this exciting.

Koinos began at the tail-end of the last bull market, so it’s been a testing time to build. But despite this, the ecosystem has flourished and matured, with critical infrastructure put in place by the community and Koinos Group.

We now have great wallets and block explorers with fantastic user experiences as well as critical dapps — most notably our DEX, NFT marketplace, and token launcher.

In other words, we now have all the pieces in place for users to experience the future of Web3 which is, of course, feeless. Koinos is still ahead of its time, but that time is rapidly approaching.

The results of the US election has led to huge optimism for cryptocurrency as a whole and it is clear the markets are already starting to reflect this.

As the feeless narrative gains pace — and we’re seeing this begin to take shape with huge legacy players like MetaMask as they promote abstraction — we feel that Koinos is well-positioned to take advantage of this bull market and an emerging trend that could reshape the crypto industry.

On the engineering end

If you aren’t already aware, we will be proposing an upgrade to the existing VHP and KOIN contracts to require explicit approvals. This update is designed to increase the security of the blockchain which will have several downstream effects. Decentralized applications such as Kollection, KoinCity, and KoinDX will have the assurances required for them to automatically allow for listings on their sites without manual reviewing contracts if they so choose. This will have alleviated a longstanding bottleneck in the growth of the ecosystem.

One of the more complex microservices, P2P, has significant improvements currently in staging that are designed to improve network stability and microservice performance. I would like to thank community developers who have helped to test interim release candidates and provide logging in order to help us fix critical issues.

We are making major improvements to the user experience on Koinos by allowing subsequent nonces to enter the cluster without waiting for prior transactions to be included in blocks. This enhancement allows users to rapidly submit transactions without delay and truly delivers on the Web2 feel when using Web3. In short, this will dramatically improve the user experience for users on-chain while taking the burden off infrastructure applications like Konio and Kondor — it will just work.

I’m also happy to mention that work is already underway for the enhancements to the REST API. The features will be extended such that users will be able to perform all functions available to JSON-RPC with ease. Because the REST API leverages swagger, it will be easier than ever to interact with Koinos in virtually any programming language.

Because we do not want to create unnecessary work for our developers over the December holidays, all of these improvements are scheduled to happen Q1 2025. I look forward to working with all node operators and block producers to get these improvements live next year!

Our improved messaging

As you may have noticed, we have completed our branding refresh with a reskinned website and a consistent and memorable messaging platform based on the “Feeless, Frictionless, Familiar” narrative.

We’re focused not just on the technical features of Koinos, but also on what they empower — both for developers and end-users.

It’s not just that Koinos is cheaper than competitors… that’s what many chains aim to bring to users.

It’s that we enable Web3 for Everyone through the accessibility of feeless, tokenless transactions. We enable devs to build Frictionless and Familiar experiences BECAUSE we’re Feeless.

We now have consistent branding across all platforms controlled by Koinos Group, and it’s fantastic to see the community running with this new messaging too.

Our media kit has been simplified and utilized on all appropriate platforms, and I invite you to grab and use the new assets which you can find at https://koinos.io/media.

Please review the Key Messaging Toolkit to understand key concepts that we will be pushing during the upcoming months.

Advertising and outreach

It is critical that the Koinos message is prominent during this inevitable bullish cycle and there is no better time than now to execute on marketing. During 2025, you can expect to see an increase in advertising for Koinos.

As you may know, we’ve prepared an X advertising budget that we will begin deploying as the altcoin season plays out. We will launch several ad campaigns that will stretch across the upcoming months, some of which will focus on supporting the Feeless narrative, and some of which will have direct response mechanisms to prove the value of our approach to blockchain tech.

In addition to paid advertising, we will work to publish thought leadership pieces highlighting the pain points of Web3 and mass adoption, where the industry must go, and what the technology must look like. I think it’s painfully obvious that in order for Web3 to become mainstream we must remove the hurdles required to participate in it today.

Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Koinos Group has just signed a contract with a Tier 1 marketing firm that is set to begin work with us in January.

This will be the single largest marketing effort on behalf of Koinos so far. Currently we are under NDA, but I can share that this is a highly reputable marketing company that specializes in cryptocurrency advocacy.

I’m very excited to get started on this effort in 2025, and Koinos Group is committed to a major spend in the next few months to really kickstart awareness of our blockchain, and to drive traffic to our imminent proof of concept.

We are designing success metrics right now, and we hope to see significant increase in onchain activity, wallet creation, social media reach, and community engagement.

And of course, we’ll be asking for your support in boosting and amplifying all our efforts!

Exchanges

Early this year we had disruptions with our market maker but I am glad to report that this issue has been resolved.

We have chosen to support exchanges that have either the healthiest organic trading (MEXC and BingX) and also those which are great to work with (LCX) and that have great potential considering the regulatory climate in the European market.

The strategy moving forward is to maintain our high quality exchanges and improve liquidity on decentralized exchanges.

Currently, wrapped KOIN is available on Uniswap courtesy of Chainge. We intend on expanding availability when opportunity presents itself. I encourage the community to help bolster our liquidity where possible, whether it is on Uniswap, KoinDX, or on one of our centralized exchanges.

Internationalization

Going forward we will aim to capture wider audiences. Our Telegram has been restructured in order to foster discussion in a wide variety of languages. We will work to support various languages on our website(s) which will help us to target different communities throughout the world with targeted advertising.

We also aim to provide our website in multiple languages in the near future.

Although the Koinos blockchain is Made in America, the technology is intended to be borderless — which means that it aims to be easily accessible to everyone, wherever they may be.

In conclusion

Next year will be an exciting one for Koinos! I am looking forward to blasting our message out during this upcoming period of maximum attention.

The future of Web3 is feeless and Koinos is positioned to be the industry leader. Yes, it will take a major realignment of industry norms before our tech and our approach becomes the de facto standard for Web3… but if we didn’t believe it was possible, we wouldn’t have built Koinos in the first place.

Koinos has the potential to become one of the most important cornerstones of the crypto and blockchain industry. And now, with committed developers as well as skilful communicators and a passionate community, we have the people to complement the tech.

Koinos is Feeless, Frictionless, and Familiar. And 2025 is the year crypto discovers just how powerful that will be.

LFG.

Koinos Group Update: 2025 is Our Year was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Jon Rice, former editor-in-chief at Cointelegraph, Blockworks, and Crypto Briefing

Part One: The State of Play

If you think that technology appears to be making everything worse, you’re not alone.

The enshittification of the internet continues. Web3 is a minefield of broken promises and dubious projects. Artificial intelligence is blurring the line between fiction and reality — and not in a good way. There’s an app for everything, and none of them work together. Your digital media isn’t yours, because now everything is a subscription — to the extent that we look back fondly (!) to the good old days of cable TV bundles.

Ad companies track every website you visit and sell your data to the highest bidder. Security breaches are so normal that we have half a dozen identity-monitoring services active at any given time. Even your car is snitching on you to your insurance company.

You know all of this, of course. You have to suffer the small indignities of this digital salad every day.

Technology is basically fucked, and there is one common denominator: Centralization.

The potential of the internet was real. It just wasn’t realized.

The design had a vulnerability. An attack vector. It was a decentralized communications protocol, but it didn’t have a decentralized financial system. It didn’t have decentralized applications. This left space for centralized companies to exploit the strengths of the internet to grow exponentially, to outcompete, and to take control.

Blockchain can mitigate this attack. Bitcoin added digital money to the internet. Ethereum added decentralized applications and a financial system. Countless other blockchains have made iterative improvements to the digital world, although I will argue that they have not taken the vital step from ‘incremental improvement’ to ‘revolutionary leap forward’.

The problem with previous blockchains is partly that, like the internet, they have centralization vulnerabilities.

The Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism that powers Bitcoin puts miners with large compute resources in control. Proof of Stake (like Ethereum) puts large stakeholders in control. And the transaction fees give those in power the lever to extract wealth from the system.

And the other failure is that pretty much every blockchain has an absolutely dreadful user experience, primarily because they all charge fees to use the chain — which means that any given user has to jump through a plethora of intrusive and counterintuitive hoops just to obtain the tokens they need to use these chains.

These volatile fees make the user experience of blockchains unacceptable to everyday people, but they remain the dominant paradigm because, well, that’s how the people in power make money. If you believe that incentives matter, this should not surprise you.

While the design decisions made in Bitcoin and Ethereum were perfectly reasonable and noble at the time, it’s high time we reevaluate those decisions.

Because after years of excuses and scaling solutions and new features, blockchain advocates are still saying the same damn thing. Mainstream adoption is just around the corner! Just give us more time! Give us more money! Use our L2s! Use our L3s!

When the developers of Koinos started out on their journey in 2020, they had one simple thesis; No matter what crypto people said about mainstream adoption being just around the corner, as long as gas fees were present everyday people would not (and in many cases, could not) use the blockchain.

Koinos has been designed to mitigate that problem, while remaining truly decentralized and fair.

It does away with traditional gas fees. It isn’t controlled by venture capitalists who keep extracting more and more money from crypto investors. Its design means that anyone, anywhere, can use the blockchain without even realizing it.

Koinos is the evolution of Web3, and the first blockchain that truly offers the opportunity to deliver on its promise.

And if Koinos can deliver Web3, and Web3 can deliver more agency to the users of technology, then Koinos is the first step toward the internet we always wanted and deserved.

So what is Koinos?

Part Two: Changing The Paradigm With Koinos

Koinos is a blockchain.

It was developed by a handful of folks at a company called The Koinos Group who had previously worked on Steemit, which was a big deal in the crypto industry a few years ago until it suffered a hostile takeover by a rich guy called Justin Sun (boo, hiss).

As a result of their experiences with Steemit, the architects of Koinos — which comes from the Greek word for ‘common’ — decided to gift this blockchain to the world, as, quite literally, a common good.

They didn’t keep anything for themselves. They didn’t give any tokens to venture capitalists. They didn’t give any to friends, or to family, or even to me. They literally built it from the ground up and gave it away because:

a/ They figured they could build a business on this new blockchain, and that this new business would become profitable (it’s at koinos.pro if you want to check it out), and:

b/ They are committed to the idea that Web3 should be for everyone.

(Also, this way they wouldn’t get into trouble with the SEC for accidentally being both American AND entrepreneurs, which is a whole other story.)

Like any blockchain, it needs digital tokens to work. Anyone with a computer was able to join in the minting of new tokens over a 6-month period in 2021 and early 2022. The mining announcement was featured in Hacker Noon, Cointelegraph, and on the Bitcoin Forum. And lots of people duly went off and mined their portion of the 100M tokens that would go on to power the Koinos blockchain (including the Koinos Group).

Koinos went live on November 5th 2022 — a date selected at least partly for its revolutionary significance — and it’s been humming along nicely ever since.

And Koinos, at least to the best of this author’s knowledge, is the only blockchain in the world that has these three things going for it.

1. It adheres to the original decentralized and fair ethos of crypto
2. It’s technically capable of delivering on the promise of crypto
3. It opens crypto to everyone, whether they own tokens or not

Seems simple, right? It’s not.

Crypto is a horrible, horrible, horrible industry full of thieves, scammers, get-rich-quick artists, more thieves, finance bros, sketchy influencers, even more thieves, vulture capitalists, and other assorted scumbags. I know, because I’ve interviewed half of them.

So when I say that Koinos epitomizes everything good about that original ethos of crypto, it’s flying in the face of almost everything that’s happened since Satoshi Nakamoto gave us Bitcoin.

And even when there ARE good people and good projects and good intentions (I’ve also met hundreds of these people, who rarely get the credit they deserve) they tend to get overlooked because the rich thieves and scammers and vulture capitalists are so busy flooding the market with their awful shitcoins.

No wonder so many people think twice before giving up their bank information and parting with their hard-earned cash. But Koinos addresses this, as we shall see.

As for technical capability?

Web3 is a collection of technologies which promise an improved internet, one in which individuals have a greater degree of agency, and centralized authorities are not all-powerful.

In practice, this means that digital ownership, data sovereignty, and value exchange will become easier and less reliant on intermediaries. And hopefully, it will usher in an era of de-enshittification of our digital world.

But in order for that to happen, blockchains and the smart contracts that operate on them will need to be:

• Feeless
• Frictionless
• Familiar

I’ll get into these in more detail later, but in summary, and as I wrote in Cointelegraph last year:

“Free” means free for the user, “frictionless” means as easy as opening an app or playing a video game, and “familiar” means we need to stop asking regular people to change their behavior to meet the limitations of our tech. We need to meet them where they already are.

Right now, we are zero for three. In fact, we’re so far away from where we need to be that we’re not even trying to address these problems seriously — we’re busy making small, incremental improvements to dysfunctional tech rather than addressing the root of the dysfunction itself.”

Be honest. Would you want to give up your bank details so you could buy tokens to search on Google?

Do we expect everyone in the world to learn how to operate a hardware wallet, go to an exchange, find a token, purchase it, blind sign their transactions, blah blah blah just to get access to their health data, or their real estate title, or to transfer some money?

And do we expect them to learn this super nerdy tech stuff from scratch in an age of misinformation (and the aforementioned thieves and scammers)?

The only thing worse than the scammers, are the user experiences that give them the opportunity to BE scammers.

Crypto delivers the worst user experience in tech, ever, bar none. And that’s coming from someone who grew up with VHS recorders.

There is no blockchain in the world that solves these problems. Except Koinos.

Because Koinos is a blockchain that ordinary people can use, without actually needing to go buy tokens on an exchange and hold them in a wallet.

Crypto skeptics tend to focus on the fact that blockchain technology hasn’t yet led to a scalable social network, or to a scalable payments system, or even interoperable gaming solutions.

And that’s a fair critique, because it’s true. And I will argue here that the reason for that is very simple.

No blockchain until Koinos has solved the problem of allowing ordinary people to use it in a manner that is free, frictionless, and familiar.

In order to show how Koinos solves the problems that crypto has today, we need to refresh our memories on what crypto is supposed to actually do, and take a look at why existing blockchains don’t do it.

Part Three: The Promise Of Crypto

The first blockchains were fundamentally just digital ledgers. They accounted for who owns what.

Later came smart contracts on blockchains: Self-executing pieces of code triggered by predetermined conditions, the results of which can be immutably stored on chain.

Put them together and you have an extraordinarily powerful combination.

Tracking the provenance of a Picasso? That’s a job for blockchain!

Automatically finding the best price for an asset across multiple venues? That’s another!

Anywhere you might need trust, there’s the potential for a blockchain application. Trust in people is supplanted by trust in the integrity of the chain, and the smart contract that sits on it.

(This is where a lot of the crypto crime you read about occurs. Any smart contract that handles significant value can become a target for hackers: By trusting a smart contract, you’re trusting that the coder is smarter than the hacker. This is sadly not always the case.)

And it’s not always just about money or goods. I remember editing this piece on a blockchain project to aid the Rohingya people of Myanmar, who lack a centralized authority that issues the papers — passports, birth certificates and so on — that most people take for granted.

“When the Burmese Army staged a coup in 1982, the Rohingya were delisted as an official ethnicity by the state in a new citizenship law. Essentially, their citizenship was removed and they were rendered stateless. The [blockchain-based] Rohingya Project uses digital identity to recognize the individual’s origin and allow them to gain access to services. It is not meant to be a competitive identity card to existing state-based identity systems, but a digital ‘proof of existence’.”

Smart contracts (when coded correctly) can’t cheat, lie, steal, betray, or any of the other insalubrious things that people do every day.

The real promise of crypto, therefore, is to replace human weakness and vulnerability with trustless code.

And while some of the applications may seem frivolous — like owning a unique shirt in a metaverse — some of them could fundamentally change human society.

Which leads us to one of the reasons I believe crypto has found ‘product-market fit’ in its philosophy and potential, even if it hasn’t yet solved the problem in practical terms.

Defense Against Surveillance Capitalism

The rise of surveillance capitalism and the monetization of our data by tech platforms has influenced the general evolution of the cryptocurrency industry as much as the financial crisis gave rise to Bitcoin.

Countless lawsuits against tech firms have resulted in billions of dollars in fines and settlements for illegally harvesting data, targeting us with ads, selling our private information and so on. But the data they gather is too valuable, the lawsuits are simply the cost of doing business, and unless you have a degree from Harvard law, you wouldn’t understand the terms and conditions you agree to every day even if you bothered to plow through them.

So they just seem to keep on doing it.

Here’s one from a few weeks ago, a class action against Larry Ellison’s Oracle that was just settled for $115M.

“In the course of functioning as a worldwide data broker, Oracle has created a network that tracks in real time and records indefinitely the personal information of hundreds of millions of people… This process provides Oracle with a virtual panopticon: Oracle purports to have vision on virtually everything ascertainable in electronic form about Class members, from where they live, to the media they consume, to the things they buy, to the views they hold.”

$115M seems a lot? Ellison is the second-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, and $115M represents 0.00055% of his wealth. To put that into context, Oracle’s fine for recording almost everything about you is equivalent to someone with $100,000 in the bank paying a $55 parking ticket.

Lots of people who are attracted to crypto don’t want every detail of their life — their browsing history, their purchases, their political views — packaged and sold for profit.

Actually, lots of people in general don’t like it, whether they’re into crypto or not. But that is what Big Tech does, and it does it with a quite staggering level of efficiency.

Whatcha gonna do? Stop using Microsoft and Google and TikTok and Facebook?

The bigger and more effective these companies became, the more data they could harvest, which made them more money, which made them bigger and more effective…

(I’m writing this on Google docs right now. Shakes head ruefully.)

Data sovereignty is “the idea that individuals and organizations have the right to control their data, including how it is collected, stored, shared, and used.”

But the problem here isn’t just data harvesting. It’s not even just ownership — of your data, your digital media, your creative output.

(As Facebook notes: “Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.”)

It’s also that these companies are so gigantic, that they are so ubiquitous, and that our world is now so interconnected, that the tech companies have become too big to fail.

No lawsuit will bring the data thieves to their knees. No government can truly take on Big Tech. They own us. They own every detail of our lives, and at some point this is likely to lead to Very Bad Things.

Only a mass exodus of their users will change their business models. And that requires a fundamental change in how we use the internet.

This is what Web3 is supposed to do: Change how we use the internet — in fact, change what the internet IS — so that we’re not all at the mercy of Big Tech, Big Banking, Big Government and so on. And so that we can return to a world in which we own what we own, without exchanging it for the dubious benefit of accessing Facebook.

(There’s an excellent — and very fair — primer on the promises and challenges of Web3 in this article from the Harvard Business Review.)

So — aren’t existing blockchains already doing this? Ummm… No.

Oh, Bitcoin!

Imagine if Bitcoin was actually useful.

Okay, that’s a pretty hardcore statement for someone who has a special attachment to Bitcoin, particularly in the context of talking to an audience of people who probably also have an affinity for the original cryptocurrency.

But let’s acknowledge that Bitcoin has moved beyond its original purpose, which was to facilitate peer-to-peer cashless payments.

Today, Bitcoin is a trillion-dollar asset because it is, in fact, somewhat useless.

It’s not a good way of paying for products and services. It doesn’t lend itself well to smart contracts. It is an inelegant solution for artists, or gamers, or payments, or the internet of things, or… well, you get my point.

It’s hard to produce, inefficient, and it’s not programmable.

But partly because of its intrinsic scarcity, its decade-long journey to true decentralization, and the fact that it laid the groundwork for a multi-trillion dollar industry, Bitcoin performs one function very well indeed.

It continues to morph into a jolly effective Store of Value, complete with capitalization (and market capitalization) to fit. I won’t go into the reasons for this, because plenty of other people have written cogently and persuasively on the subject and the evidence is overwhelming. Bitcoin is digital gold, and it’s very good at being digital gold.

And like gold, not a whole lot is really expected of it other than to lie around in vaults being worth a lot of money.

But of the many possible reasons early adopters chose to mine or buy their bitcoins, storing their wealth in this digital asset most certainly wasn’t one of them.

Ironically, Bitcoin’s failure to be fit for its original purpose is why it’s worth so much now.

If it were a great way to transact — if we bought our coffee every morning with bitcoins instead of dollars — it would not have become the valuable asset that it is today.

We’d have spent it.

Ok, what about Ethereum?

Now imagine if Ethereum was actually useful.

Whoa, tiger!

I realize I’ve now made ‘unfit-for-purpose’ assertions about the two most popular and valuable assets in our industry. But hey, we’re all friends here. So let’s just be honest.

Ethereum isn’t the answer.

Ethereum was the first digital asset to introduce smart contracts, those self-executing pieces of code that have enabled the rise of Web3.

And rather like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s first-mover advantage (plus the generous allocation of the assets granted to themselves and the Ethereum Foundation by its highly-motivated founders) have helped it dominate the smart contract space, even though over the years it has proved to have very significant problems that newer technology has solved.

Ethereum is slow. It is expensive.

It is about as far from being an efficient processor of validated smart contracts as you can get.

And the user experience is, to put it charitably, absolutely awful — something it has in common with all other blockchains.*

(*You don’t need to look to the bottom of the page for the caveat here… I’ll help you out. Koinos is the exception. Yay! But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

In short, Ethereum does not allow for the majority of decentralized applications we can imagine today. Because, quite simply, it’s too expensive.

Sure, there are now “layer-2” solutions that can considerably lower the cost of a transaction. But it’s at the expense of further complexity, potential concessions in security, and other undesirable side-effects.

As Andrew Levine of Koinos Group rather elegantly put it, layer-2s are “a bug masquerading as a feature”.

So if Ethereum is so useless, why is it so valuable?

Forgive me. I didn’t in any way intend to imply that Ethereum is useless. It’s actually incredibly useful, but rather like Bitcoin, it’s useful in a way that isn’t exactly what its progenitors intended.

For instance — and it’s just one example — if you’re adding your hard-earned crypto to a yield-bearing protocol controlled by smart contracts, you’re more interested in the security of that protocol and transaction than the few bucks it might cost you. So for DeFi (decentralized finance) participants, the stability, reliability and proven track record of Ethereum are extremely attractive.

Ethereum’s interoperability, ubiquity, and security are all advantages — and they might last for years. Or they might not. It kinda depends on the crypto industry’s real appetite for mass adoption of Web3 technology, which is oft-cited in marketing materials and seldom-evidenced in action.

Anyway, my point is that both Bitcoin and Ethereum emerged to solve problems that they didn’t end up solving, even if they solved other ones along the way.

And of course, this is not a dig at either protocol. Bitcoin is why I’m in crypto. Ethereum is an elegant work of staggering genius. But I suspect that in 20 years, both will be seen as the forerunners of something else.

In other words, it’s okay to hold two ideas in one head. We can revere Karl Benz and Henry Ford as extraordinary pioneers, while accepting that the Model T isn’t the pinnacle of modern automotive technology.

What about all those other blockchains?

Since Ethereum launched in 2015, plenty of foundational blockchains have launched with the promise of faster, cheaper transactions.

Solana, Avalanche, Algorand, Internet Computer, Binance Chain, Ton, NEAR, Aptos, Sui… the list goes on and on.

And some of them do indeed provide major advantages over Ethereum — lower costs, faster times to finality, more transactions per second.

Essentially they provide iterative improvements over their predecessors.

But — and this point is absolutely crucial to my argument for Koinos — there is a difference between ‘cheap’ and ‘free’ that radically changes the accessibility of Web3.

And it’s not just the cost.

Plenty of people in the world of crypto claim that because Solana fees, for example, are a fraction of a cent, Solana has ‘solved’ the issue of Ethereum transaction costs.

This is somewhat true for crypto-natives. We’ve been conditioned to accept that every transaction has a financial cost, and that to pay for it we need to hold a native token. So we send our passports and KYC details to an exchange, followed by our fiat cash, which we exchange for the token (paying the exchange for the privilege), which we send to a wallet, where we authorize a transaction… and we deal with it.

But this is not the way the rest of the world works.

Crypto folks love to say that mass adoption is right around the corner. How many times have these platforms used phrases like “onboarding the next billion users” to promote their offerings?

So let’s consider what ‘mass adoption’ really means.

For the internet, probably the closest historical analog to crypto, it meant abstracting away all complexity. And keeping it free.

Here’s CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) in 2023, celebrating 30 years of the open internet following Tim Berners-Lee’s development of the HTML concept he created in 1989:

“The release of the World Wide Web was launched by an internal document, addressed “to whom it may concern” and signed by Hoogland and Weber. Back In 1993, copyright licensing standards were in the very first stages of development. In this first release, the document states that “CERN relinquishes all intellectual property rights to this code, both source and binary form, and permission is granted for anyone to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it.””

“If we had not had that document, we would not have the Web,” said Berners-Lee in 2003.

It’s strange to think that the internet we take for granted could have been a closed-source, paywalled platform open to just a few scientists.

But if it had been closed source and paywalled, it would never have grown at the rate it did. It would never have had the level of developer adoption that it did.

Experimentation and iteration allowed us to find the most valuable applications… and no entrepreneur wants to pay to experiment and iterate beyond what’s necessary when there’s a cost involved. Any paywall at all, even a solitary cent, would have dramatically reduced adoption (and opened an opportunity for an alternative free solution).

Instead, today there are around 5.45 billion people connected to the internet. The five most valuable companies in the world are all tech companies.

The internet turned into kind of a big deal.

But that one decision — to keep it open source and free — is the reason. It gave the Sergeys and Larrys and Steves and Bills and Jeffs and Susans of this world the chance to build products that people really wanted.

Browsers made it virtually frictionless. And although we may pay fees to companies that connect us to the internet, and those that provide specific services we want to use… the internet itself is free.

Contrast the experience of opening a browser and typing (or telling your AI companion) the address of a website, with the user experience that crypto delivers today.

It’s not in the same league. It’s not even the same sport.

And it’s why crypto is stuck in a rut (and why Koinos digs us out of it).

Instead of being free, frictionless, and familiar, crypto is paid, complicated, and confusing.

What we really need, if we truly value the concepts of decentralization, data sovereignty, and disintermediated value exchange, is to be able to use these clever blockchain-based ideas with the same user experience as the internet. So that the market for applications is not just a few million nerdy enthusiasts, but a few BILLION regular human beings.

So let’s summarize this.

• People don’t want to pay for what should be free.
• They don’t want to do difficult things that should be easy.
• They don’t want to change their behavior to fit crypto’s limitations.

And if we agree on that, we really can move on to how Koinos solves these problems.

Part Four: Feeless Begets Frictionless Begets Familiar

Solving the first problem — fees — is literally the way Koinos solves the other two problems.

Every other blockchain charges the user to transact. Which means they need to hold a token to pay for that transaction.

If the blockchain is free-to-use, then you don’t need to hold a token to use it. It’s Feeless.

If you don’t need to hold a token, you don’t have to go through the education and onboarding mess that I’ve already described. You can just open an app and use it. It’s Frictionless.

And if you don’t need to go through that whole onboarding nonsense, you can design apps that are just like the ones we use today. It’s Familiar.

The way this works is actually pretty simple. It’s an ownership model. When you own something, you don’t need to pay someone else to use it. You can just use it.

Bitcoin solved the problem of owning digital tokens in that you, and only you, can do whatever you want with that asset. But it doesn’t give you ownership over the network because in order to use the network you must pay block producers a fee.

Arguably the most transformational feature of Koinos is that it extends digital ownership to the network itself.

Owning the token is equivalent to owning a percentage of the network.

There are around 100 million KOIN powering the network. If you have a million KOIN, you should be able to control about 1% of the network. If you want to use the network yourself, you should be able to use about 1% of the network’s resources. If you want to let other people use the network for free, you should be able to let them use about 1% of the network’s resources.

That’s how you get tokenless access to the blockchain.

This is huge, because it means that owning KOIN is more like owning a piece of digital real estate. And it can accrue value to the holder in four ways:

1. You can develop an app that has a blockchain component, and then charge users for access to that app — without having to pay for access to the blockchain yourself.

(Think of other blockchains as similar to the App Store: Usually, integrating blockchain means there is a COST to use the network, just like the 30% you have to pay to Apple. But with Koinos, there is no fee.)

1. You can offer free access to users to maximize growth, while charging for products and services — just like traditional online businesses.

(Removing friction and fees from the onboarding process gives you a much better chance of building a scalable and profitable business. This is why Google doesn’t charge you to search on its homepage, and instead moves the monetization of the platform elsewhere.)

1. You can rent out your KOIN’s mana to other developers.

(This would allow developers to build blockchain-based apps without even needing to secure their KOIN first, lowering their startup costs and allowing them to scale as demand increases. And the owner of the KOIN can garner a yield on their holding.)

1. The value of KOIN may appreciate as the network becomes busier.

(This is the other half of the dual-revenue model of which real estate landlords are so enamored, because even as they monetize their asset through rent, that asset is also appreciating in value over time — especially if the neighborhood becomes more popular.)

There are costs to maintaining any online business, but most don’t try to recoup that cost the moment a potential customer “comes in the door.” Google doesn’t do that. Amazon doesn’t do that. But other blockchains do.

Koinos changes the paradigm. It lets you choose your monetization strategy as a developer or entrepreneur, and eliminates the pain points that stand in the way of acquiring customers.

Understanding Mana — The Key To Free

The way Koinos has solved the fee problem is by introducing mana, which is a property of the native token of the Koinos blockchain — KOIN.

As noted above, holding KOIN entitles you to a share of the network, in perpetuity, for as long as you hold the asset.

Mana is not a separate token, but it’s used to pay for transactions on the Koinos blockchain. Every KOIN ‘contains’ mana, and some of that mana is depleted when you execute a transaction.

But — here’s the clever bit — the mana regenerates over a few days.

While it’s regenerating, the KOIN that contains that mana is locked. It can’t be transferred until the mana is automatically replenished.

In other words, as the sharper minds will have deduced, you’re paying for your transaction with time — not with money.

And in time, your mana regenerates, giving you back your KOIN.

How does this solve the problem of friction and familiarity? Well, it gets even more clever here.

Anybody who’s building an application on the Koinos blockchain can DELEGATE their mana to a smart contract… which means that they can pay for their users’ transactions.

So if you want to build, say, a social network… you can figure out how much KOIN / mana you need to pay the transaction costs of the first 10,000 users. Let’s say you expect 10,000 on chain transactions in one day (because, for example, each user gets to mint one non-fungible token (NFT) every day).

Then you would need to hold a certain amount of KOIN to provide that mana to your users.

But the user experience would be entirely unlike any other crypto experience that exists today.

All the user would have to do is open the app, click on MINT NFT… and it’s done. You have now established ownership of your post or picture on the Koinos blockchain.

No exchange. No KYC. No token. No friction.

You had the Familiar experience of opening an app and simply using it.

Gamers have always had a particular skepticism about crypto — after all, why complicate things? So we can’t move our hard-won battle rep from one game to another, that sucks, but oh well, it is what it is.

Well — what if you could? Once something like this becomes possible, the next step is for it to become probable, and then it becomes ubiquitous… I know plenty of blockchain gaming advocates who are utterly convinced that in five years, most video games will incorporate Web3 elements like data portability.

And of course, these are just two of countless potential consumer users of a feeless blockchain. I won’t even begin on the potential B2B uses — but any kind of microtransaction would be fair game.

All of this user-friendliness would be fantastic for crypto adoption even if it made the people who invented the technology a lot of money.

But in fact… There’s a lot more to Koinos than simply creating a Web3 experience that can work for everyone.

Part Five: Koinos & The Original Ethos Of Crypto

Decentralization

There are many reasons behind the rise of cryptographically-secure digital assets. But among them, three proximate factors stand out.

1 — The global financial crisis of 2008

2 — The rise of ‘surveillance capitalism’ as enabled by centralized tech companies

3 — An urgent and debilitating worldwide shortage of monkey jpegs

Sorry. Just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention.

You can read about these phenomena elsewhere, so I’ll just remind you of what was inscribed in the Bitcoin genesis block — a headline from the Times of London:

‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.’

Bitcoin was posited as a decentralized alternative to banks and government-controlled money. As Nakamoto wrote, “The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”

So we can infer that Bitcoin was a reaction to the financial collapse even if Nakamoto him, her, or themselves was not particularly political in their writings (although they did reference libertarianism).

The Bitcoin white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto opens with these words:

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

While there are many reasons for the financial crisis of 2008, and that dictated the efforts to mitigate it, there is one thing they all have in common: Centralization.

Small groups of bankers got us into the mess. Small groups of regulators failed to see the potential issues of subprime mortgages. Small groups of politicians deregulated the industry and bailed out the banks. And at every step, the response to the economic meltdown that impacted billions of people worldwide was overseen and managed by the people responsible for the policies and procedures that led to it.

Bitcoin was always supposed to be decentralized, even if the word never actually appears in the white paper. No one person or entity was in control.

It’s important to note here that one of the most important qualities of decentralization is censorship-resistance. The more decentralized a network, the harder it is to shut down. At the time of writing, even Google isn’t immune to this threat — as a centralized company, it’s the target of a Department of Justice antitrust suit that could break up the business.

Koinos is completely decentralized. Nobody owns it, nobody controls it, nobody received tokens at launch unless they mined them or paid for them.

And it is completely community-governed. (Governance is entirely on-chain, and has been from day one.)

Fairness

Bitcoin launched with a Proof of Work mechanism that allowed almost anyone to mine it — at least, at the beginning.

And that’s exactly how Koinos launched, too.

The term ‘fair launch’ may seem pervasive in crypto today, but for years and years this was not the case.

In fact, over the last decade crypto founders have found innumerable ways to give themselves a distinct — and unfair — advantage over their users. The decentralization that was so important to Nakamoto has been perverted by ICOs, IDOs, IEOs, pre-mines, and various other clever-but-deeply-centralized mechanisms for launching cryptocurrencies, all of which have one thing in common: They have enriched the few at the expense of the many.

But Koinos is different.

After announcing the mining period, the people who built the blockchain released a CPU mining software that ran a Proof of Work consensus algorithm. The more computing power that early miners put into the mining, the more KOIN they minted. The resulting KOIN were originally created as Ethereum-native ERC-20 tokens, and after the mining period users could claim their ERC-20s for an equivalent number of native mainnet Koinos tokens.

Mining continued for around 6 months, until around 99.74 million tokens had been created.

During this time, enterprising folks created pairs on Uniswap, a decentralized exchange, to buy and sell the ERC-20 tokens. So anyone who held KOIN at mainnet either mined or bought their tokens at market rate, with none held back to be doled out as ‘free money’ for founders or investors.

It should be noted here that even the original PoW mining was made as fair as possible: Most mining these days is performed on expensive graphics cards (GPUs) that the average computer user doesn’t necessarily have available. The Koinos mining used the central processing unit (CPU) — something that every computer has, by definition.

Environmental considerations

Bitcoin is not very environmentally-friendly these days. And this might be fairly considered to be a ‘failure of fairness’.

After all, why should residents of towns in Texas have to deal with the constant hum of Bitcoin mining farms? Why should the population of the world have to suffer amplification of human-caused climate change, as the energy required to produce bitcoins continues to ramp up? The only winners here are the miners themselves. Which doesn’t seem very fair at all.

There are plenty of arguments that make it clear that Bitcoin mining is neither as bad for the environment as it’s made out to be, nor anything like as good as it should be.

But Koinos neatly side steps that entire minefield.

After the initial Proof of Work mining period, the blockchain launched with a novel Proof of Burn consensus mechanism that allows people to run the blockchain on their existing hardware, barely increasing energy use at all.

Proof of Burn differs very significantly from Proof of Work, because it doesn’t require a major investment into the ASIC mining rigs that Bitcoin requires. All the ‘mining’ of new KOIN (which increases the supply by about 2% a year, rewarding miners for securing the network) is done virtually. No capital equipment or intensive energy use required.

You can read all about this process in the official documentation, but for the sake of simplicity here are the more important advantages of Proof of Burn, each of which enhances the inherent fairness of the blockchain — not just for its users and miners, but for the world at large.

1. It does not require a capital investment into mining hardware.
2. It does not require intensive electricity usage.
3. It does not require that a miner locate to a region with cheap electricity, thus promoting geographical decentralization as well as financial fairness.
4. Only miners who have committed their KOIN to the network in this way are able to participate in governance, which ensures that decisions are not necessarily made by those with the most money — but by those with the most commitment to the network.

Part Six: Other Koinos Advantages

Now that you have an idea of the problem that Koinos solves, and the kind of people who built it, you won’t be surprised to hear that there are other slightly more technical improvements over other blockchains.

For instance — if you want to code smart contracts on Ethereum, you need to learn a specific programming language, Solidity.

Some estimates suggest there are up to 200,000 Solidity developers in the world. Electric Capital tracks developer statistics, and suggests that there were just under 7,900 active Ethereum developers in December of 2023.

Stack Overflow estimates that Solidity is used by around 1.1% of developers, compared to the 62.3% of devs who use JavaScript. Restricting the pool of developers hinders innovation.

So, if one of the goals of Koinos is to bring Web3 to everyone — well, that includes developers.

The key to meeting developers where they are is using the technologies they already use, including the programming languages they already know.

Koinos was built from the ground up on top of widely used, open source software, with robust language support. Technologies like WASM and Protobuf were created by the biggest tech companies in the world (like Google) and continue to be foundational technologies within their infrastructure — which means they are continuously improving.

This means Koinos is constantly getting performance improvements, new tools, and software enhancements with zero effort or cost.

And because these technologies are widely used and designed for new language support, Koinos can also get new programming languages.

Koinos already has TypeScript and C++ smart contracts (the two most common programming languages in the world) and C and Rust have been added to the roadmap. Many more languages are possible.

So instead of trying to bludgeon developers into learning an obscure and proprietary language, Koinos takes the best principles of open source technology and applies them to blockchain.

There are other technical advantages: Koinos does not need to fork to upgrade the blockchain, for example. This negates the need for all kinds of hassle and limits the possibility of unpleasant potential outcomes (Bitcoin SV, anyone?) and you can read about the governance procedure needed to do this here.

There are other features of Koinos’ architecture that take it significantly beyond earlier blockchain capabilities, but explaining them is better-suited to technical documentation — available here.

The takeaway is that Koinos is thoroughly modern in its design, and that it’s fast, scalable, secure and upgradeable.

Part Seven: Why Koinos: Web3 For Everyone

In this essay I’ve argued several points.

1. The internet — and technology in general — has become enshittified, and it’s getting worse.
2. This is a failure of centralization.
3. Web3 is a collection of technologies that have the potential to return agency and power to users.
4. Existing Web3 platforms have a terrible user experience due to their reliance on fees, which creates an insurmountable obstacle to mass adoption.
5. People in general don’t want to pay for what should be free, or to abandon ease of use in favor of a poor user experience.
6. Koinos is a feeless blockchain that allows builders to create familiar and frictionless experiences akin to how we use the internet today.
7. Koinos is truly decentralized and fair, which mitigates the potential for any single entity to change its nature for their own benefit.
8. Koinos is a logical foundational step toward Web3 for Everyone.

I’m not suggesting that the internet will be magically fixed next month if everyone hops over to Koinos. Or to Web3, for that matter. The evolution of self-sovereign technologies might even take longer to come to fruition than the internet itself — instead of a blue sky opportunity, this is a road already paved by Google and Meta for their own benefit. They’re going to make it tough for Web3 to break through.

But I believe that some version of Web3 is inevitable. At least, it is if it can deliver the same user experience as the existing internet, but with the security, privacy and ownership that blockchain-based solutions can deliver.

The backlash against Big Tech may seem contained for now, but human beings have something of a habit of revolting against usurious and oppressive systems.

Bitcoin arose from the ashes of the global financial crisis of 2008. And while I hope that it won’t take a similarly painful experience for us all to recognize that the tentacles of Big Tech have reached too far into our lives, it’s precisely because of the continuing failure of centralization that we need to take back control of our data, our interactions, the reality-based information we need to make informed decisions, and of course, our finances.

We need Web3. So we need Koinos.

Because so far, there isn’t a credible alternative.

About the author:

Jon Rice is the former editor-in-chief of Cointelegraph and Blockworks, and the co-founder of Crypto Briefing. Over the past eight years he has interviewed hundreds of the most notable people in the blockchain industry, written dozens of stories, and edited or commissioned thousands more. While he continues to believe in the potential and promise of Web3, he has yet to see the industry move from the early-adopter phase to the early-majority era, and he believes this won’t happen until (and unless) Web3 is as easy to use as Web2. He holds a prudent amount of KOIN.

Thanks to Andrew Levine for editing and technical assistance.

Why Koinos: A Deep Dive Into Web3 For Everyone was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are excited to present our new Key Messaging document which is designed to empower every community member to share a vision of Koinos that is both consistent and compelling.

Inspired by Jon Rice’s incredible article, Why Koinos: Web3 for Everyone this document encapsulates our core values and provides the Kommunity with the tools to communicate the unique advantages of Koinos to developers, users, and even crypto skeptics.

Our goal with this document is to unify our voice so we can amplify our impact. Whether you’re engaging on social media, collaborating with developers, or introducing Koinos to someone new, this document will help you convey our message clearly and consistently.

Together, we can bring Web3 to everyone, everywhere.

KEY MESSAGING

This document is designed to give the Koinos community the tools to effectively spread the word about Koinos. By using consistent messaging and clear terms, we can collectively raise awareness about the unique advantages of Koinos.

Whether you’re engaging on social media, talking to developers, or explaining Koinos to someone new, this guide will help you communicate Koinos’s core values — feeless, frictionless, and familiar — and position it as the blockchain solution that removes barriers and empowers everyone to join Web3.

Elevator Pitch

When you need to explain ‘Why Koinos’ in two sentences:

• Koinos is the first blockchain that allows anyone to use decentralized applications without paying transaction fees or needing to hold tokens. It’s designed to be as easy as using the internet, making Web3 feeless, frictionless, and familiar.

Core Messaging Pillars

Feeless, Frictionless, and Familiar

Feeless

The problem: Gas fees, no matter how cheap, prevent blockchain applications being deployed at true scale. In addition, they dictate that any user of a given blockchain has to obtain tokens and learn how crypto works before they can even use a blockchain-based app.

The solution: Koinos eliminates transaction fees, making blockchain accessible to everyone, without the need to hold or purchase tokens to use applications.

Frictionless

The problem: Crypto has an enormously high barrier to entry. The user experience is far too complex for the majority of potential users. Blockchain-based apps will never attract an audience of millions (or billions) until they are as easy to use as the products and services they seek to replace.

The solution: No more jumping through hoops or complicated onboarding processes. Koinos allows users to interact with blockchain-based applications as easily as using the internet because users do not need to obtain and hold a token.

Familiar

The problem: Web3 cannot be easily integrated into familiar applications because there is an unfamiliar and complex learning process that the user has to go through before they can use Web3 features.

The solution: Koinos enables developers to build apps that look and feel like the ones users already know. There’s no need to learn new behaviors or overcome technical barriers.

The Problem Koinos Solves

Technology is Centralized and Overcomplicated:

• The internet and blockchain ecosystems today are riddled with barriers like transaction fees, centralization, and poor user experiences. Users are burdened with high costs, complex processes, and a lack of ownership over their own digital activities and assets.

Koinos Changes This:

• Koinos decentralizes ownership and eliminates transaction fees, empowering users to access blockchain technology without needing tokens or jumping through administrative hoops. It democratizes blockchain, making it usable and accessible to everyone — even those who aren’t crypto-savvy.

Unique Selling Points (USPs)

1. Feeless, Frictionless, Familiar (see Core Messaging Pillars)
2. Developer-Friendly:

• Unlike other blockchains that require learning specialized languages, Koinos supports widely used languages (like TypeScript and C++), meaning millions of developers can build on Koinos without learning new skills.

3. Fair Launch & Decentralization:

• Koinos had a fair launch, with no venture capitalist allocations or premines. Governance is fully decentralized, and decision-making is in the hands of the community.

4. Modular, Forkless Upgradeability:

• Koinos doesn’t need to fork to upgrade, making it future-proof and allowing it to evolve without disruptive splits in the community or network.

Target Audience

Developers:

• Koinos is designed to be developer-friendly. It allows them to focus on building applications rather than worrying about blockchain infrastructure, with no need to master blockchain-specific programming languages.

Users:

• Koinos is for users who want to experience the benefits of blockchain without the complexity and cost barriers that characterize traditional blockchain systems. It provides an experience that’s seamless and easy to use.

Entrepreneurs:

• Koinos allows entrepreneurs to choose their monetization strategy without transaction fees slowing them down. Whether offering free services or charging for premium features, Koinos offers flexibility that traditional blockchains can’t.

Crypto Skeptics:

• Koinos appeals to those disillusioned with the centralized, fee-driven world of crypto. By returning to the core ethos of decentralization, ownership, and community governance, Koinos offers a fresh, accessible alternative.

Key Differentiators

• No Fees: Koinos is the only blockchain that truly eliminates transaction fees, making it the most accessible for developers and users alike.
• No Centralization: Koinos was launched without giving tokens to insiders, ensuring true decentralization from day one.
• Usable by Everyone: Whether you’re a crypto-native or a total beginner, Koinos offers an experience as easy as using any traditional app on the internet.

Key Messaging Framework

Short Slogan:

• Koinos: Feeless, Frictionless, and Familiar

Elevator Pitch:

• Koinos is the first blockchain that allows anyone to use decentralized applications without paying transaction fees or needing to hold tokens. It’s designed to be as easy as using the internet, making Web3 feeless, frictionless, and familiar.

Explainer:

• At its core, Koinos is a feeless blockchain that gives everyone, regardless of their tech savvy, true access to Web3.

Recommended Terminology

To foster a strong sense of identity and community, we encourage the use of specific terms that embody the spirit and unique qualities of Koinos.

Gas-Based Chains:

• A term for blockchains that rely on volatile transaction fees (gas fees). Highlighting this emphasizes the fundamental barriers these chains present to everyday adoption and contrasts them with Koinos.

Gas-Less Chain:

• Describes Koinos as a blockchain that operates without gas fees, removing cost unpredictability and improving user experience.

Feeless, Frictionless, and Familiar:

• The core principles that define Koinos and its user experience. This phrase should be consistently used to highlight Koinos’s advantages.

Long-Term Vision

Koinos is all about making decentralization accessible to everyday people, everywhere. As Web3 grows, Koinos will be at the forefront by providing a blockchain that anyone can use without barriers. Its feeless model will attract developers, businesses, and users from across industries, leading to mass adoption of a fairer, more accessible, less exploitative internet.

Koinos is the foundation for a Web3 revolution where technology is truly for the people.

This document is intended to be a living document, if you have any suggestions about how to improve the key messaging, you can view the latest version of the document here and leave comments.

Announcing Koinos Key Messaging was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

October has been an incredible month for Koinos, so here’s a recap:

1. We announced a partnership with TaskOn and launched a TaskOn community for Koinos with a prize pool of $1,250 to reward people for performing tasks that help grow the Koinos community.
2. Koinos Group released a new technical roadmap aimed at making Koinos far more accessible to developers.
3. Kondor released a major new version with an improved user experience and user interface.
4. Lords Forsaken Season 1 is live and ongoing.
5. Lords Forsaken and Koinos Group partnered to provide liquidity to a $FAITH-$KOIN pool on KoinDX
6. Chainge provides bridge for $FAITH on Koinos and Linea
7. KoinDX hit a new milestone of $4,000,000 in total trading volume.
8. The KOINDX pre-sale went live.
9. The developer of Koiner announced he’s been working on a revamped version of the app along with a modular developer toolkit for building smart contracts on Koinos and a new concept aimed at community growth building.
10. Koinos Group and Lords Forsaken released a TaskOn Quest with a $500 giveaway.
11. The Koinos telegram grew over 100% surpassing 8,000 members.
12. Koinos achieved 20,000,000 blocks produced on main net.
13. Former Cointelegraph and Blockworks editor-in-chief Jon Rice released his in depth article about how crypto has failed to bring Web3 to everyone, and why Koinos can buck this trend.
14. The creator of Konio announced their latest project, Sovrano, a financial application that simplifies the process of using blockchain to earn yield, access dApps, and make frictionless payments.
15. We’ve made the Koinos telegram friendlier to non-English speaking community members! If you speak Persian, Dutch, Indonesian, Italian, Bengali, German, Chinese, Turkish, and more, you can now go to the dedicated topic for your language and meet other members of the Kommunity who speak your native tongue. If you would like us to add another language, just let us know. Go to telegram.koinos.io to join the conversation.
16. Testing of the updated KCS-4 version of the KOIN and VHP contracts has been ongoing. Koinos Group has been working with developers to ensure dApps are ready for the update so that is as smooth as possible. While we have had governance proposals before, this is the largest one so far and perfectly showcases why Koinos is capable of using in band upgrades. As far as we know, no other blockchain has ever updated their core token with zero down time while the blockchain was operational.

To stay up to date on everything happening in the Koinos ecosystem, follow @KoinosNetwork on X.

Koinos October Recap was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today I have the pleasure to interact with you all in a new capacity, as CTO of Koinos Group. In many ways, this is not all that different. Steve and I co-designed and built Koinos together. And even while some of our day to day responsibilities have changed, we still have technical discussions and are both a part of all technical decisions made regarding Koinos. I am happy to say that Koinos is in a fantastic position technically. There are always a few bugs we are tracking down here and there, but we are incredibly satisfied with the stability and reliability of Koinos.

One of my responsibilities as CTO is planning the next steps for Koinos, and that is what I want to do today. Koinos has a phenomenal foundation and we want to see the technology reach full maturity, ready for developers and large audiences. Coming up with a roadmap is tricky. It is not an exact science figuring out what to do and when. My goal when creating this roadmap was to have high resolution estimates for tasks that can be completed in the short term, with decreasing resolution the further out we go, ending with loftier and more nebulous ambitions for Koinos. Estimating time to complete work is more of an art form than a science, and so I am doing my best to include buffer time for projects that take longer than expected and work that we did not expect at all.

The roadmap is also not as dense as it could be. There is an important reason for that. Our strategy is two-fold. First, we want to create tools to empower developers that want to build on Koinos. This primarily includes developer tools such as SDKs and client libraries. You’ll see more on that in a bit. Second, we want to create applications for users that are built on web3 but feel like web2. We feel that we are best positioned to build the developer tools that will enable developers to build great applications. But that does not mean that we want to focus exclusively on developer tools. When opportunities arise, we want to have the flexibility to partner with developers to help them achieve their vision. In order to do that, we cannot have a full schedule. If those opportunities do not materialize, then we will be able to execute on the road map faster, but I would not necessarily view that as a good thing. Furthermore, things break and bugs are discovered and we need to plan for the unexpected. This is a realistic roadmap of what Koinos Group can do right now with current staffing and resources. There are many other projects that could be added to the roadmap. Just because your top idea is not on here does not mean we are not interested in it or do not believe the project would be valuable. This roadmap is a living document and will change as tasks are accomplished and as the needs of Koinos shift. The projected dates in this roadmap are extremely reasonable given our current plans and workload, but as always they are subject to change and we will do our best to communicate any changes as soon as we are aware of them. My plan is to have quarterly updates on the roadmap even if it is just to say what we accomplished and to note no new changes to the roadmap.

Without further ado, here is the Koinos technical roadmap!

Improve Security of KOIN and VHP (Q4 2024)

This is an effort that has been underway for a long time. It was started by Julian, but has been pushed to the sideline due to other priorities. A couple of months back, Koinos Group picked up the reins and began working on it again. These updates to the Koin and VHP contracts will increase their security by making them fully compliant with the KCS-4 standard which requires the use of allowances and clearly defines interactions between tokens and smart wallets. Furthermore, it will allow Kollection, KoinDX, Koin City, and others to be more trusting of creators because the attack surface on Koin and VHP will be much smaller. These updates are about to go live on testnet, if they have not by the time this is released, and the proposal will be published to mainnet when all impacted dApps are ready for the upgrade.

Mempool v1.5 (Q4 2024)

Many users have complained about transactions being rejected when they are sent in quick succession. When Koinos launched, these transactions would be accepted by the API, but would not always be included. We improved the mempool to be nonce aware so that if transactions are added to the mempool, every effort will be made to include the transaction in a block. Unfortunately, this led to users seeing more errors.

We are going to improve the mempool to return the pending nonce as seen by the mempool. This will enable the client libraries to track the next nonce according to the mempool which will increase reliability of sending transactions in quick succession and reduce the number of errors that users encounter when using Koinos.

Public Snapshots (Q1 2025)

We have had some developers at different times upload Koinos snapshots for general use. However, we have never had a dedicated service for this. Through our experience running Koinos nodes, we have had times where a node went down and needed to be recovered. We have had great success snapshotting state from other running nodes and restoring that state to the down node. Koinos Group needs a snapshotting service to improve the redundancy and reliability of our nodes. It does not make sense for us to build this infrastructure and keep it for ourselves. We will make our snapshots publicly available. This is a needed service for the ecosystem as a whole and is an important backup in worst case scenarios.

REST API v1.1 (Q1 2025)

The Koinos REST API has been a great addition to our infrastructure. Not only is it easier to use than the JSON-RPC API, but it is self documented with Swagger and has better tooling to document and test the functionality of the API. One of my personal favorite features of the REST API is the ability to interact directly with smart contracts without needing to use Protobuf. The REST API automatically downloads the contract ABI and does the translation for you. It also does this when querying blocks and transactions, which is a long requested feature of the JSON-RPC API.

The JSON-RPC API also suffers from some short sighted design decisions. I do not mean to minimize its importance in the development of the ecosystem, but JSON-RPC was chosen primarily because that is what I was used to working on with Steem and it was easy to implement. Further doubling down on short sighted design decisions was how we chose to design the API itself. We chose to make the JSON-RPC API a thin wrapper around the internal API that the microservices use to communicate internally. We were able to define the internal API using Protobuf and then have JSON-RPC dynamically know about all the APIs, how to de/serialize requests and responses and which microservice should handle each request. It was easy to create and got us up and running quickly. I have no regrets over that decision, but it has left us with a sub-optimal API.

As mentioned previously, while JSON-RPC does translating from JSON to Protobuf, we have Protobuf nested within JSON that it is unable to easily translate. The REST API has implemented this feature already. Furthermore, JSON-RPC being a translation layer to the internal API has started to become a hindrance. Instead of designing the internal API for what the internal API needs, we have to consider the external API as well. We cannot break the external API, which means we have to continue supporting existing API calls. With the REST API, it lets us break up the external and internal APIs. The benefit here is that what the microservices need is different from what a developer needs and we should be able to address those needs separately.

The REST API needs a few more features before it is ready to stand on its own. We believe the following features need to be added. This is not an exhaustive list of everything that could be added, but everything that we want to add prior to shipping REST as the primary method for interacting with Koinos.

• Lookup blocks by height
• Directly call read system calls via a “raw” endpoint
• Add missing system calls, such as contract metadata, to appropriate locations (e.g. `/v1/contract/{contract_id}/metadata`)
• Calling a contract write method should return the serialized operation
• Extend token and NFT interfaces to support allowances
• Extend token and NFT interfaces to support write methods, returning serialized operations
• Block submission

I want to point out the addition of returning serialized operations when calling contract write methods. With this additional method, you can fully prepare a transaction using the REST API alone! You can call all the contract methods you want for the transaction, have the REST API construct the rest of the transaction with the Chain ID, nonce, operation merkle root, and transaction ID. The only data missing are the transaction signatures.

With these additional features, the REST API will have feature parity with the JSON-RPC and will enable easy creation of client libraries. Many languages already support API generation, statically or dynamically, from Swagger files. Using this, we can have a native interface for the API almost for free. The only thing the library needs to do is support transaction signing, which is not difficult to do because Koinos uses secp256k1, which is the same elliptic curve as Bitcoin. Any library that can sign Bitcoin transactions can be used to sign Koinos transactions.

With the completion of the REST API, we would then deprecate the JSON-RPC API and work on updating existing libraries and tools, such as Koilib, to work with the REST API to make updating dApps as easy of a process as possible while steering new developers to make use of the REST API.

Authority System v2 (Q2 2025)

The idea behind letting contracts define their own authorization logic is a fantastic feature of Koinos, but this feature remains underutilized because the design is complicated and difficult to explain to developers.

The biggest problem with the system is the enumerated authorization types. They are not needed and add a complication to the system. The context of the authorization can be determined by the contract by calling other system calls. Furthermore, the initial launch of Koinos did not verify the authorization type when ‘authorize’ was being called from another contract and so the authorization type could not be trusted. We plugged this hole by discarding the passed in authorization type and always pass the correct type to the caller.

But this still leaves a system where contracts can override some authorizations and not others and trying to explain this to a developer creates a layer of complication that is not needed. It also makes auditing a smart contract more difficult. An ‘authorize’ override may have a vulnerability if certain authorization types were overridden vs others and so the process of auditing a contract requires checking the contract upload transaction for the correct configuration.

We want to streamline this entire system. Moving forward, contracts will either override their authorization or they won’t. Functions will be added to the SDK to make deriving context easier. All contracts uploaded with the old system will continue to work with the existing behavior and system code will handle interoperating between new and old contracts so that you only have to develop for the old or new behavior, not both.

More Client Libraries (Q3 2025 Onward)

Some of the most requested library languages, from developers and partners, are Python and Golang. With the updated REST API, we want to create client libraries for these languages and many more to reach developers where they are currently at.

C SDK (Q3 2025)

Koinos currently has two SDKs for building smart contracts, C++ and Assembly Script (AS). We will create a C SDK which will not only give developers yet another powerful option for writing smart contracts, it will also lay the foundation for adding even more languages in the future and creating an even better C++ SDK. Part of our reasoning behind using Protocol Buffers and Web Assembly is that they are mature multi language technologies. In an effort to bring more languages to Koinos smart contract development, we are going to create a C SDK.

The C SDK will be built from scratch. We have already started looking at other C Protobuf libraries to replace the Embedded Proto library we were using which was a large pain point of C++ development. This SDK will enable us to move faster on other language SDKs afterwards. Many programming languages support calling C functions from them. By writing a simple, lightweight, C SDK we can use it as a base for creating other SDKs. These SDKs will all share a similar interface and feature set. This is just the first step in expanding the reach of Koinos to many more developers.

VS Code Extension (Q4 2025)

An important tool that Koinos is missing is a full integrated development environment (IDE). Thankfully, since its launch, Visual Studio Code has become increasingly popular as a full featured IDE. This extension will provide a first party experience, streamlining and simplifying the development, testing, and deployment of Koinos smart contracts making it even easier to build on Koinos.

C++ SDK (Q1 2026)

After the C SDK, we want to recreate a new and improved C++ SDK. This is the simplest language to do this with, but will ensure we have designed the C SDK well enough to be used as a core for future SDKs.

Rust SDK (Q3 2026)

Rust also supports calling C functions and is an increasingly popular language, especially within the crypto space. By adding Rust support, we can extend our reach to even more developers and prove that Koinos is truly language agnostic.

WASM VM Optimizations (Q2 2026)

When deciding to use Web Assembly as our underlying VM, one of the deciding factors for us was the growing ecosystem and maturing technology. When we chose the Fizzy WASM VM, we met with the development team and were hopeful for continued development. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. For us to improve the Fizzy VM will require us to maintain the VM. With so many WASM VMs out there, it does not make any sense to maintain a WASM VM ourselves. Instead, we will analyze the current state of WASM VMs and test different VMs for performance and compatibility with Koinos. Through this process, we hope to improve the performance of Koinos while maintaining backwards compatibility. As a result of improved performance, we will be able to increase resource budgets, which will decrease mana costs for all transactions.

Koinos Data Store Microservice (2026)

Koinos nodes currently store redundant data. While this is not a huge problem currently, but this will become problematic as Koinos grows. There are three independent, but related, microservices that handle block and transaction information and storage. Those are the block store, transaction store, and account history microservices. During Koinos’ development we decided to keep the block store and transaction store separate because the block store is required and the transaction store is not. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable rationale. However, the problem with this approach is that every transaction is included within a block. Likewise, with the account history microservice, every transaction or event is contained within a block or a receipt.

This has led to duplication of a lot of data when running a Koinos API node. The data store microservice will be a replacement microservice for the block store, transaction store, and account history. Our original rationale still applies here. Only storing blocks is required to run a node. And by default, that is all the data store microservice will do. But when configured to do so, it will index transactions by ID and track account history. Because these live in the same microservice the data does not need to be replicated. The end result is running a Koinos node will require considerably less disk space than it currently does.

Redundant Microservices (2027)

The original vision of using microservices for Koinos included the ability to run multiple copies of the same microservice at the same time. This allows for better scaling and redundancy for specific microservices within a cluster. Right now, this behavior is not supported and running multiple instances of identical microservices results in undefined behavior. By adding support for scaling individual microservices, nodes in enterprise environments become more performant and redundant.

Optimistic Execution of Transactions

Many transactions have no effect on each other. In this case it does not actually matter which transaction is applied first, which means the transactions can actually be applied in parallel. This is an optimization that in the best case enables full parallel transaction execution. In the worst case, the performance is the same as full serial execution that we have currently. The work needed to implement this optimization will allow the framework to interact with transactions in more ways that help create building blocks that will enable radical improvements in the future.

Dynamic Sharding

This goal has been in the back of my mind for a significant amount of time. All other scaling solutions such as serial optimizations, L2s, faster block times, static sharding etc. are all minor compared to dynamic sharding. Dynamic sharding allows the blockchain to split into smaller pieces based on usage. Block producers then become responsible for a subset of the whole blockchain while ensuring sufficient overlap to guarantee consistency and decentralization.

I want to be clear that this is a stretch goal for Koinos. There are many things that need to happen before we get here. To even begin working on this now would be premature because Koinos does not need this kind of scaling. But if we want to achieve our goal of bringing Web3 to the masses, we are going to need scaling solutions like this in order to support that much use.

Koinos Technical Roadmap was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are intensely focused on growing the Koinos ecosystem which is why we’ve launched a TaskOn community!

We evaluated the top options and found TaskOn to be the most powerful points platform capable of driving users to Koinos and by joining that community you can win from a prize pool of $1,250 USDT by completing some simple tasks.

Join the community here: https://taskon.xyz/quest/333189736.

Why?

- Expand Our Reach: We’re increasing social media followers by leveraging TaskOn’s extensive user base of over 4 million users and promotional channels.

- Attract Real and Active Users: Quality matters. TaskOn’s anti-bot mechanisms ensure that we attract genuine users who are truly interested in Koinos, helping us build a vibrant and engaged community.

- Growing the Koinos community: Through customized tasks and a dedicated community hub, we want to encourage users to interact more deeply with the Koinos ecosystem, fostering long-term engagement and membership.

Early Results

We’re already seeing some great results with over 500 new members in Telegram and Twitter. Help us keep this growth going by creating a welcoming environment and sharing the TaskOn Community link with anyone you think might be interested.

What’s Next?

Future campaigns will be more focused on highlighting the amazing dApps we have on Koinos like Lords Forsaken and KoinDX, so be sure to join the TaskOn community to stay updated on those initiatives: https://taskon.xyz/quest/333189736.

Boosting Koinos Growth with TaskOn was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am excited to announce that testing of the updated KOIN and VHP contracts has begun on the Harbinger Testnet! This announcement is primarily for Koinos developers, but all community members are welcome and encouraged to help test this update.

The proposal

This governance proposal updates the KOIN and VHP contracts to be compliant with the new KCS-4 standard. This standard extends the allowance feature of the KCS-3 standard to respect smart contract wallets and adds optional memo fields to transfer, mint, and burn operations. For the KOIN contract this is also a conversion from C++ to Assembly Script.

What does this mean for existing dApps?

The biggest change for existing dApps is the addition of allowances for KOIN and VHP. If your smart contract interacts with KOIN, you will need to approve an allowance transfer beforehand. For most contracts, you can create the allowance in the same transaction as an earlier operation or in an earlier transaction prior to calling your smart contract. It is best practice to request the smallest allowance required for the transaction to succeed. Almost all dApps that interact with KOIN are affected by this change.

The requirement of allowances also impacts block production. As you know, in order to produce blocks you require VHP. In order to acquire VHP, you can burn KOIN using the Proof of Burn contract. This interaction is the exact kind of interaction that allowances are designed to secure. As such, in order to burn KOIN for VHP, you will either need to set an allowance for the PoB contract prior to burning KOIN, or you will need to burn KOIN using a smart wallet that explicitly approves the operation. Burning VHP during block production will remain unaffected as it was decided that this particular circumstance is unique and secure via governance.

We have confirmed with Julian that Fogata will continue to operate without any updates. However, BurnKoin’s current contracts are not compatible with this change and as a result will no longer be able to operate without a new smart contract. BurnKoin will be announcing more information on how to navigate the planned KCS-4 update. Additionally, anyone operating a node manually will need to add this step when burning KOIN for VHP.

The contract addresses for KOIN and VHP will also be changing. This is a good time to remember to retrieve the addresses of these contracts using the built in system name service (‘koin’ and ‘vhp’ respectively) or nicknames (‘@koin’ and ‘@vhp’ respectively).

For anyone needing the contract addresses for testing, they are:

KOIN: 1HnCM6v2bLg8Qhw6BKCVhGPeoTamJbkbFi
VHP: 1CrLSiK8aJVEg7L94TapoGTmAqnZW9qNzA

How do I test?

The new contracts will go live on testnet shortly. If you use any dApps regularly, please reach out to those developers for information on using their dApps on testnet.

Additionally, we have created two contracts that have been helpful in our testing of the update. They are here: https://github.com/koinos/koinos-contracts-as/tree/koin-wrapper

The first contract, KOIN Wrapper, does exactly what it says. It is a thin wrapper around the KOIN contract that allows you to easily call any of the KOIN functions from another contract. This is useful in testing scenarios where a token is being called from another contract. With the update, transferring KOIN using the KOIN Wrapper contract should be forbidden unless you grant the KOIN Wrapper contract an allowance or explicitly allow the behavior from a smart wallet.

KOIN Wrapper: 1Bq58wf8mMSZQF3Rk7UUe1ziY8NjsaGAQx

The second contract is the Mock Smart Wallet. This contract creates a mock smart wallet for interacting with contracts. By default, it authorizes all calls, but you can set authorizations using the set_authorization function. With this function you can specify a contract, entry point, and boolean expressing authorization or not. When authorization is requested for the contract and entry point, the desired authorization will be returned. You can also pass in an entry point of 0 to set authorization for all entry points in a contract. You can also call the clear_authorization function to clear authorizations set for a contract and/or entry point, resetting them to the default. Using this contract, you can test the smart wallet aspects of this update and ensure KOIN and VHP are correctly defaulting to the smart wallet when it exists.

You will need to build and upload the Mock Smart Wallet yourself.

If you need tKOIN for testing, you can always request some automatically using the Faucet in Discord. Or, if you require more, you can request tKOIN from @vandeberg in the #testnet channel or via a direct message in Discord.

Next steps

This update affects many aspects of the Koinos ecosystem. We want to be sure the upgrade goes smoothly, so we will be waiting for the go ahead from major stakeholders of the ecosystem such as, but not limited to, KoinDX, Kollection, KoinCity, Fogata, Kondor, BurnKoin, and others. When we have certainty that the upgrade will proceed smoothly, we will propose it on mainnet. After a week for review, the proposal will be voted on by block producers.

If you are operating a burn pool, please inform your users of how you will be voting.

If you are participating in a Fogata pool or BurnKoin, please engage with your pool operator about whether they will approve the proposal or not so that you can move your VHP accordingly to align with your desired outcome. Whether you approve of this proposal or not, it is crucial that you understand how your VHP will be counted, either in favor or against the proposal, so that you can participate in Koinos’ governance process.

Resources

The operations in the proposal do the following:

1. Set the new Koin contract as a system contract
2. Set the get_accout_rc system call to the new Koin contract
3. Set the consume_account_rc system call to the new Koin contract
4. Set the Name Service record ‘koin’ to the new Koin contract
5. Transfer the ‘@koin’ nickname to the new Koin contract
6. Remove system contract permissions from the old Koin contract
7. Set the new VHP contract as a system contract
8. Set the Name Service record ‘vhp’ to the new VHP contract
9. Transfer the ‘@vhp’ nickname to the new VHP contract
10. Remove system contract permissions from the old VHP contract

Here is the proposal operation JSON for inspection:

{
  "call_contract": {
    "contract_id": "17MjUXDCuTX1p9Kyqy48SQkkPfKScoggo",
    "entry_point": "submit_proposal",
    "args": {
      "operations": [
        {
          "set_system_contract": {
            "contract_id": "1HnCM6v2bLg8Qhw6BKCVhGPeoTamJbkbFi",
            "system_contract": true
          }
        },
        {
          "set_system_call": {
            "call_id": 201,
            "target": {
              "system_call_bundle": {
                "contract_id": "1HnCM6v2bLg8Qhw6BKCVhGPeoTamJbkbFi",
                "entry_point": 759581355
              }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "set_system_call": {
            "call_id": 202,
            "target": {
              "system_call_bundle": {
                "contract_id": "1HnCM6v2bLg8Qhw6BKCVhGPeoTamJbkbFi",
                "entry_point": 2162423241
              }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "call_contract": {
            "contract_id": "13NQnca5chwpKm4ebHbvgvJmXrsSCTayDJ",
            "entry_point": 3796420410,
            "args": "CgRrb2luEhkAuA4z1VEWTTde23Vcj6yVbdFtaF-McboV"
          }
        },
        {
          "call_contract": {
            "contract_id": "1KXsC2bSnKAMAZ51gq3xxKBo74a7cDJjkR",
            "entry_point": 1560272691,
            "args": "CgRrb2luEhkAuA4z1VEWTTde23Vcj6yVbdFtaF-McboVGAE="
          }
        },
        {
          "set_system_contract": {
            "contract_id": "1FaSvLjQJsCJKq5ybmGsMMQs8RQYyVv8ju"
          }
        },
        {
          "set_system_contract": {
            "contract_id": "1CrLSiK8aJVEg7L94TapoGTmAqnZW9qNzA",
            "system_contract": true
          }
        },
        {
          "call_contract": {
            "contract_id": "13NQnca5chwpKm4ebHbvgvJmXrsSCTayDJ",
            "entry_point": 3796420410,
            "args": "CgN2aHASGQCB_f8HtuFLrw_ICPpn442FeW7frX9u7oc="
          }
        },
        {
          "call_contract": {
            "contract_id": "1KXsC2bSnKAMAZ51gq3xxKBo74a7cDJjkR",
            "entry_point": 1560272691,
            "args": "CgN2aHASGQCB_f8HtuFLrw_ICPpn442FeW7frX9u7ocYAQ=="
          }
        },
        {
          "set_system_contract": {
            "contract_id": "17n12ktwN79sR6ia9DDgCfmw77EgpbTyBi"
          }
        }
      ],
      "operation_merkle_root": "EiCgKrK7aQ5XTDRs85o8bpKq4_PMGRcEQCLSpTzvQt0hww==",
      "fee": "6000000000"
    }
  }
}

Upgrading the KOIN and VHP Tokens was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The advent of Bitcoin granted to the world a unique opportunity to re-envision what the world financial system could be. The existing fiat system uses debt to create money out of thin air. The only major difference between fractional reserve banking and a Ponzi scheme is that fractional reserve banking is legal with the possession of a banking charter. In this article I hope to explain how the partnership between Chainge and Koinos takes a small step toward delivering on that original vision of a new kind of financial system.

TVL: Inherently Flawed?

Cryptocurrency had an opportunity to change things, but unfortunately the same trends are beginning to emerge. Lending platforms with high yields are becoming more and more popular. While not a bad metric, Total Value Locked (TVL) is inherently flawed because value can be locked for yield, then used by the custodian and locked again in another protocol. The initial value locked can be counted multiple times as it passes through different protocols. At no point does this increase the amount of value within the system, but the effect on TVL is larger than the initial deposit. This is not different from a deposit being used to make a loan which can be deposited which can be used for a loan, ad-nauseum.

Not to hone in on a single protocol too much, let’s look at Lido. While they do not participate in recursive staking and are extremely up front with their business practices (risk of loss of investment and delays in withdrawing ETH), they are a common destination for users looking to receive yield. There is nothing wrong with utilizing capital. In fact, Lido is one of the good protocols because they are up front with the risks and their (relatively) modest reported APY of 2.81%. But other protocols utilize Lido without communicating the same risks to the users (when they are in fact still there). Novice cryptocurrency users then utilize these protocols as a sort of high yield savings account, not understanding the significant risk they take on.

At some point these practices will come back to bite users. We have an opportunity now, to work with businesses and protocols that are doing things differently, in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Chainge is one such business.

Earn on Koinos: Ethical & Simple

As we began exploring a partnership with Chainge we had many questions about their technology and business practices. Even more when we began discussing bringing their Earn program to Koinos. Our initial discussions assumed that they were utilizing bridged tokens to earn yield and then sharing the profits with their users. But they do not. Their business model is ethical and much simpler.

How it works

As Chainge bridges to different blockchains they integrate with the exchanges on each blockchain. They then offer easy conversion between tokens within their app and utilize the exchanges to provide the best price to their customers. Chainge takes a small fee on trades and bridges for their services. It is out of these fees and unique arbitrage opportunities that Chainge sees their profits. Chainge never uses your tokens for yield farming. All bridged tokens must be accounted for in the vault address of their home blockchain and instantly accessible at the moment they are requested. The vault is secured with a multi signature key split amongst a consortium staked and backed by the Fusion chain.

It is a simple, yet effective, business model. Historically, one of the primary services that banks provided was the evaluation and exchange of money. Certainly, they still exchange money, but for many people that is a secondary or tertiary service. But when all money were coins made from precious metals with varying degrees of quality, evaluating the worth of money and facilitating the exchange between coinage was a much larger role.

Positive Feedback Loop

This is precisely what Chainge is doing, but with cryptocurrency. We do not need custody services, but interoperability and exchange between blockchains is a necessary function of our new decentralized world. By sharing profits with individuals that bridge tokens, Chainge creates incentives for providing liquidity on different platforms, improving Chainge’s ability to provide you with the best exchange rate possible, increasing profits, and APY to token holders. This is an incredible positive feedback loop that relies entirely on providing an actual service rather than leveraging user capital on their behalf.

The partnership between Koinos and Chainge is an obvious one. Koinos was founded on the principles of freedom and property rights. With cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, we all have a vote in the future of global finance. We can choose to use scam protocols with larger than life yields, or work with companies and protocols that act ethically and value their users.

The beauty of the Earn on Koinos program is that it lets you have your cake and eat it too. You can support sustainable business practices while getting to take advantage of a very high yield!

The Need for Ethical Yield was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I would like to take a moment to share with you some recent changes within the Koinos Group organization. We have collectively decided to “shake things up” internally. As a result of this shake up, the team has graciously nominated me to take a leadership role in the company. While I am honored by their vote of confidence, I also understand the weight of the objectives at hand and the challenges of the road ahead. However, I know the unrealized potential of this revolutionary technology we call Koinos and with a handful of changes, I’m hopeful we’ll finally be able to share it with the world.

From this point forward, I will be the CEO of Koinos Group. The new structure will be as follows:

Ron Hamenaham will continue to act as Chief Operating Officer.

Andrew Levine will now serve as Chief Communications Officer.

Michael Vandeberg will now serve as Chief Technology Officer.

Current initiatives

We are working towards three key initiatives in the short-term: Accessibility, Visibility, and Outreach. I want to share a short summary of our progress thus far.

We’ve made great progress toward Accessibility. Aside from the recent CEX listings, we are making great strides in the decentralized sector, which is arguably more important for the vision of crypto as a whole. With the recent integration of Koinos on the Chainge bridge, we’ve added significant liquidity to the Uniswap in both ETH/wKOIN and USDT/wKOIN pairings. With Solana integration coming down the pike, Koinos is well-positioned in the crypto space when it comes to interoperability. We will be looking to facilitate liquidity on either Raydium or Jupiter when this becomes available to us.

We’ve finally had our circulating supply verified on CoinMarketCap. This has been a long and arduous journey, but it is an absolutely critical piece to our Visibility objective. While recent events have created new inaccuracies on the CoinMarketCap page, the hard part is behind us and this will probably be an on-going effort to ensure the information remains correct.

Finally, I will recognize that our Outreach has been lackluster. This is the next step for Koinos Group to tackle in the upcoming months.

Let’s talk about what comes next.

Koinos Group & KoinDX

We believe that Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is an important pillar for any respectable decentralized network. Koinos Group has always been impressed with the work being done over at KoinDX which is why Koinos Group will be making a direct investment into KoinDX.

As part of this partnership, Koinos Group will not only do its part in facilitating the growth of KoinDX through liquidity provision but also partnerships and joint marketing programs. We will begin immediately by working with KoinDX to launch their native DEX token which will have, in my opinion, a very desirable property: profit sharing. The $KOINDX token will allow users to earn a portion of swap fees on KoinDX.

But wait, there’s more.

Koinos Group & Chainge

Chainge has demonstrated that they are one of our most valuable partners. Chainge has graciously selected Koinos to be the first to participate in their new product; Earn modules.

The new product, Earn on Koinos, will incentivize users to bridge BTC, ETH, and USDT to the Koinos blockchain, earning them yield as per the following schedule:

If you’re anything like us, you must be asking yourself “Where do these yields come from?” and “What is the risk?”. Well, I’m glad to report that this yield will be paid for by Chainge through their bridge swap fees. That’s right — they’re sharing their profits as well and all assets are 100% liquid at all times. You can bridge to and from Koinos and claim your APY immediately at any time. APY will be claimable on a first-come first-serve basis.

In order to sweeten the deal, Koinos Group will match your earned APY in KOIN. This means that bridging USDT to Koinos could earn you up to 16.24% APY. Where does this KOIN come from? You guessed it: profit sharing. Koinos Group will be funding these rewards through block production. In an effort to accommodate this new initiative, Koinos Group will be doubling our block production VHP and sharing the profits with you, the community. The total APY schedule will look like the following:

How the pieces fit together

I hope by now you are beginning to see the big picture. We are incentivizing TVL on KoinDX. We are making it highly profitable for users to bridge their assets from other chains over to Koinos and then providing liquidity on qualifying KoinDX pairings which will earn you KoinDX points that are redeemable for KoinDX’s profit sharing token, $KOINDX. If you take full advantage of this program you can find yourself earning 16.24% plus $KOINDX tokens.

Our joint efforts

Chainge’s objective is to boost TVL on Koinos which, in turn, drives traffic and increases demand for Chainge. Koinos is one of the first non-EVM compatible chains they’ve integrated into their dApp as they believe in its vision and tech. It’s a win-win.

From Koinos Group’s perspective, boosting our TVL on KoinDX to a respectable number will justify integration into Chainge’s DEX aggregator. This will create organic trade volume flowing through KoinDX and thus profits for those who hold $KOINDX. Users of Chainge’s bridge may not even be aware they are using Koinos because it will happen seamlessly through their interface.

A word on Outreach

Along with launching this joint initiative, we are supplementing the effectiveness in two ways.

First, we are working with Chainge to leverage a quest platform called TaskOn that will award users additional $KOIN and $XCHNG for performing simple tasks such as following @KoinosNetwork on X, joining our Telegram, and bridging assets to Koinos. The details of this program will be blasted out from @KoinosNetwork once it is available — I hope you all will take advantage.

Second, we are going to work with a handful of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) in order to extend the reach of this campaign beyond Koinos’ borders. Obviously it is critical for us to reach beyond our community and spread the message of Koinos — that feeless decentralized technology is the future.

Finally

All of this is possible because of the blood, sweat, and tears by members of our community. I’d like to personally shout out a handful of them: Julian, who has has delivered countless critical components to the ecosystem including Kondor, Fogata, and Arkinos — all of which are absolutely stellar and important pieces of the ecosystem; Justin, who has lead the effort on KCS (Koinos Contract Standards) and developed one of my personal favorite on-chain dApps, Kollection; Adriano, for his innovative vision on blockchain accessibility with his work on Konio and Veive protocol; MiXiBo, for injecting fun and utility into Koinos through his dApp, KoinCity; Ederalang, DoӃterӃraaӃbeen, and Saleh, who have delivered the premier DEX on Koinos with an impressive user-experience, KoinDX. This list isn’t exhaustive, there are so many incredible community members shaping the future of Koinos in both Telegram and Discord.

I’d also like to take a moment to thank my team, Koinos Group. Ron, Michael, and Andrew have all dedicated their efforts to the success of Koinos. Over the last four and half years we’ve tackled countless hurdles together. At no point has anyone on this team doubted the potential of Koinos or let up fighting for its success and I’m honored to be able to continue this journey with them.

I hope you are all as excited about the upcoming events and partnerships as I am. I look forward to hearing from the community and watching our ecosystem grow into the decentralized network it ought to be. Keep an eye out for an upcoming X spaces where I will make myself available for any questions you may have.

Buckle up ladies and gentleman, there’s many exciting announcements to come — it’s time to take Koinos to the next level!

Steve Gerbino

CEO of Koinos Group

A message from Steve was originally published in Koinos Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.