Why WebDollar can be everything that Bitcoin failed to be
2017 has been a great year for Bitcoin.
The value of the most famous cryptocurrency jumped over 18 times and managed to capture everybody’s attention. It has become the focal point for many vocal debates — can it be a true investment asset? Is it worth of having a place at the table with Gold, Forex and other commodities traded on the stock exchange? Can it be regulated? Can the risk be mitigated by the rise of futures in crypto? Bankers, state officials, private investors, even your colleagues at work; they all talk about Bitcoin, trade Bitcoins or “alts” and the craze seems bigger every day, mirroring the meteoric rise of Bitcoin’s value.
Yet, is Bitcoin what Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned? If we read his 8 pages white paper from 2008, the answer is… kind of… no.
Satoshi envisioned a “electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof” to replace fiat money created by the central banks. Instead, we got an investment asset.
True, the number of commercial entities accepting payment in Bitcoins knows a steady growth, but the slope of adoption as a means of payment pales in comparison with its exponential growth in value.
And for all the hype this year, Bitcoin is still under 1% of the total monetary mass in the world in value.
The reason for that is a mix of technological limitations and social factors that have yet to be tackled to reach mainstream adoption. We cannot blame Satoshi for that. What he started was visionary and revolutionary. Yet, it is time to leave the eulogy to the history books and see how cryptocurrencies can grow and evolve, standing on the shoulders of giants to reach new heights.
And that is WebDollar’s vision. To be the first coin to reach truly mass adoption, by wielding a series of advantages that Bitcoin failed to deliver.
Below there is a list of advantages that our team thinks it will help WebDollar deliver on that promise:
1. Simplicity. Our goal is to foster the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. In order to make that vision a reality, we need to address any kind of user, not just the tech savvy, like all the other cryptos do. For that, we aim to create the simplest possible user experience regarding the usage of cryptocurrencies. And in our quest to achieve that, we came to the basic premise that while very few people know how to mine Bitcoin or install a software wallet, everybody knows how to use browsers and visit web pages. Or, at least that is the basic level needed.
This is why WebDollar was design from day one to be native to browsers and to the World Wide Web. Written entirely in Java Script, WebDollar will be available directly in your browser. That means:
· No Installations
· No Downloads
· Mining directly in the landing page. Unlike any other crypto, you will be able to mine and create value for yourself in less than 5 seconds, just with a simple click on a button. Not only it is simple, but it is also fair. Our hash function of choice, Argon2 does not create a preference for specialized hardware and you can run it efficiently on any PC. Also, you can run as many threads as your hardware allows, having full control on the impact on your processing power.
· Access your wallet fast and safe in the browser. Without getting through the hassle of installing dedicated, complicated software and generating private keys that you have to save somewhere else, you can generate a new wallet with a single click and easily access from there all the needed functionalities, while not compromising security:
o Send or receive payments
o See your transactions
o Check your balance
2. Versatility of mining hardware. In order to make it easy for everybody to use it, anytime and anywhere, we rely on a light blockchain structure, involving the usage of mini-blockchain and Proof of Proof of Work (PPOW) consensus building. That greatly reduces the size of the data that has to be downloaded into the browser in order to be able to mine. In turn, this created the opportunity to mine on any PC or laptop, regardless of disk space, or even mine on mobile devices, tablets and smart phones.
3. Rethink mining from the bottom. Mining is a slang term for the verification of transactions. We have been using the term “mining” for such a long time, that sometimes we forget it is a social act — one that creates trust in the network without the need of a centralized authority. The way the traditional POW cryptos were mined and the GPU/ASIC-intensive hash functions they use tended, over time, to stimulate the centralization of the network around large mining centers, where processing power and hardware have the ultimate say. That created an undesired situation in which the network is dependent of the political or regulation climate in certain countries. For example, for Bitcoin, 80% of the processing power of the network is based in China, and over 50% of the network control lies in the hands of the 4 big mining farms.
This goes against the vision that Satoshi Nakamoto himself had for the Bitcoin — to be a decentralized coin. WebDollar wishes to come back to that vision, by rethinking mining from a hardware intensive activity, to a social activity. We do that by using a hash function that does not create a preference for specialized hardware (is ASIC-resistant) and by creating a referral system.
Everybody can easily become a pool, by loading the entire blockchain onto his PC. Then, he can invite friends to create wealth together, by mining in his pool. Through this social network approach, both the “regular miners” and the pool owner gain value — for each reward obtained by people mining in one’s pool, the pool owner gains a small percentage. This creates a strong stimulant to create, expand and maintain mining pools, thus decentralizing the network. It also helps a lot to create initial awareness for WebDollar, by capitalizing the early adopters’ social networks.
4. Create real value for content creators and capitalize upon your social network, by embedding a script in your webpage that uses the visitors’ processing power to create value for you, in a consensual, transparent way. No more need to insert annoying adds into your website or beg for support on donation sites. You can directly capitalize your traffic by easily inserting a script that create value for you based on the frequency and duration of visits on your site. And all that, in a transparent and consensual way.
5. Smart contracts. The primary purpose of WebDollar is to act as currency on the World Wide Web, to be a truly become the currency of the internet. To expand on this view, WebDollar aims to support smart contracts, which will allow decentralized organizations to create their own tokens or run complex operations, taking full advantage of the technological upper hand of our protocol.
6. Anonymity. By using an optional, off-chain solution, we will be able to provide to our users the benefits of full anonymity, far superior to the level of anonymity offered by Bitcoin or Ethereum.
7. The speed of transaction confirmation. In order to be a scalable digital currency, any crypto has to have a fast transaction confirmation time. To meet that objective, our protocol matches some of the fastest transaction confirmation speeds, generating a new block every 15 seconds.
8. Logarithmic fees policy. WebDollar aims to become a widespread and very easy method of transferring value on the internet. In order to stimulate the flows of WebDollars, we devised a logarithmic function of calculating the fees. Starting from a very small value (we have implemented Large numbers function, allowing for up to 21 decimals), the value of the fee, expressed as a percentage of the transaction value, becomes smaller and smaller as the value transacted gets bigger.
9. Integrated end-user app for money transfer. By using our planned peer to peer exchange facility, you will be able to send money directly from your account to someone continents away, in their account or crypto wallet, via an automatic off-chain exchange service using WebDollars.
For all the reasons above, we are confident that the crypto ecosystem will welcome WebDollar.
We plan to launch the Beta Net at the end of December 2017.
If you wish to hear more from us, if you have any comments or question or if you wish to get involved in developing the WebDollar open source protocol, below are our Telegram channels and our GitHub repository:
