Navcoin: The Crypto Project to Watch for 2018
As the crypto wave moved into first gear during 2017, I kept coming back to one project that now has me thinking it will gain much wider appeal in the upcoming year due to its fundamental advantages: Navcoin.
The name of the game when it comes to the Navcoin project is efficiency. Over the last year, Bitcoin has achieved usage at scale, with great energy cost: It now takes upwards 215 kilowatt-hours to verify a single Bitcoin transaction, according to a report by Vice — enough energy to run an average American house for a week. By contrast, Navcoin’s algorithm for verifying transactions, known as a “Proof of Stake”, is orders of magnitude more efficient. Take a look at this graphic produced by the Navcoin community:
The benefits for transacting on the Nav network are astounding in terms of energy and time saved: The energy cost of a transaction on the Nav network is approximately 0.08 kilowatt-hours, just 0.037% of the energy required to verify a Bitcoin transaction. Likewise, the average time to verify a block of Nav transactions is about 30 seconds, which is much more speedy than Bitcoin’s recent average times of 100+ minutes.
The beauty of the Nav network is that the coin supply is infinite, with a fixed inflation of 4% per year, and one string attached: A person who holds Navcoins is only entitled to receive the 4% bonus if they hold their coins in a full node wallet that is connected to the network. The full node wallet can be run on a conventional computer, or for maximum efficiency on a specially configured raspberry pi device. One Nav community member put it nicely:
This fundamental reward system is what encourages all Navcoin holders to keep their currency in a full node client which further ensures the network’s integrity and speedy processing of transactions.
One counter-argument to the Nav network is that receiving the fixed inflation rewards requires a user to have a spare laptop running 24/7, or the time and knowledge to set up a raspberry pi. While valid in the short term, I expect over the long term that services offering access to a staking “pool” will pop up, providing easy access to the inflation rewards for a low fee. But don’t take my word for it! Buy Nav on the exchange of your choice and try a transaction for yourself! I’m willing to bet you and many others will be pleasantly surprised in 2018.
Navcoin resources:
