Preamble
The concept of decentralization has created opportunities that have given many the liberty to take charge of their financial lives. Digital currencies have broken geographic barriers that hitherto were inimical to the transfer of values.
In this article, we shall take an impassionate review of Navcoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency that can be used as a store of value or instrument of transfer of value. The essence of the review is to ascertain if the digital currency is worth investing in as a means of exchange.
NavCoin: An easy to use decentralized cryptocurrency
Navcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency that is based on the blockchain. This means that there is no central authority in charge of issuing the coin, but a network of nodes is responsible for the issue and security of the network.
Navcoin is open-source, the design code is accessible to anyone who wants to participate in the project. Its use of energy efficient proof-of-stake makes participation in the project easy through staking of Navcoins.
Navcoin solves the scaling issue of many digital currencies as the coin boasts of high speed transactions that are confirmed in seconds on its easy to use platform.
Important Milestones
The Navcoin team has been working to create the best digital currency ever. This is evident through an array of projects meant to support the Navcoin ecosystem.
Some of these features are:
Kauri Staking
Kauri Staking, a special Navcoin wallet meant to support staking of a node on desktop or remotely using a Rapberry Pi. Its Kauri Enhanced has basically enabled automation of transactions.
With it, users can handle recurring payments, pin numbers and other features that are traditionally seen with banking applications.
Kauri DAEx
Its Kauri DAEx is a decentralized atomic exchange that enables users set up and transact peer-to-peer exchange of cryptocurrencies that are supported by the Kauri wallet.
The NavDelta has been integrated with a number of currencies thereby creating a payment gateway for holders of NAV to conveniently exchange or make payment with supported currencies without the need for conversion.
NavTech 2.0
Another feature of Navcoin is the NavTech2.0 ‘Rimu’ which makes the transactions private. This feature meets the need for anonymousness in transactions. The redesigning and upgrade enables the distribution to run at protocol level.
More Projects to Enhance Navcoin
Even with these accomplishments, the Navcoin team is not resting on oars as there are still upcoming projects aimed at adding more features such as:
Navcoin Next, Nav Explorer,NavCoin m8, NavCoin ATM and the Kauri Wallet, all of which are in different stages of development. Of interest to many users is the Navcoin Lightning network which is still in its early stage (15 percent).
Cross-Chain Possibility of Navcoin
The implementation of this protocol will allow atomic swap between the Navcoin network and other supporting currencies. This cross chain activity means that holders of NAV will have greater liberty at spending. It will also enhance adoption of the digital currencies and add to the scalability of the network.
Project Evaluation
Navcoin is one of the digital currencies with great potentials mainly due to the vision and competence of the team behind it and its hard work at accomplishing the project’s roadmap. It is one of the few coins whose team is focused in adding useful features without the usual hype and this has shown in the progress made by the team.
Although Navcoin was built before the recent wave of ICOs, the coin has seen consistency in terms of project development and addition of features due to its knowledgeable and focused team.
A Privacy Coin
As a privacy coin, it has not experienced the high level of adoption or the popularity of other privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero but it makes up nicely with its myriad of exciting features.
Built and Modified from Bitcoin Code Yet Cheaper and Faster
The Navcoin team is professional in their approach to building a coin that has real utility. Navcoin foundation was Bitcoin although the team has made a lot of modification to the original Bitcoin code to build a coin that is faster and cheaper, enabling anonymous payments due to its ability to run a subchain.
Global Team With Mainly Anonymous Profile
The Navcoin team has a tendency towards anonymousness as seen from their profiles. Not having a public face that speaks for the coin may be instrumental in its low public consciousness.
At the Navcoin website, there are 11 team members most of whose profile information are sketchy. The impression one might get from this is that the team comprises mostly of geeks whose work are at the background.
Alex V. apparently one of the founders is a programmer whose GitHub profile says his location is Berlin. He is proficient in C++, Python and Go.
Matt whose location is Auckland said in his GitHub profile, “Generally I work with web technologies to build second layer services on top of blockchains such as NavCoin.”
The same scantiness of information was noticed in the profiles of all the other members of the team whose names are Paul Sanderson, Victor Jones and Troy Cornwall among the software engineers.
Others are Admir Sabanovic, Universal, and Ivan Muller. Kieren Hyland, Laura Harris, Josh Drummond, Guy Sinclair, and Melissa Davies are the other members in support services. The legal team comprises six members.
The Navcoin Business Model
Navcoin’s proof-of-stake enables holders to stake and earn 5 percent of their stakes annually. The community recently prevailed on the team to reward contributors to the Navcoin project. This has led to reduction of staking profit to 4 percent.
A fraction of stakes from blocks generate funds for the community. These funds are disbursed for projects and contributors with the approval of majority of Navcoin stakers through votes.
Community funds are protected through a consensus layer that not even developers have access to them.
Navcoin Technology
The strength of Navcoin as a privacy coin lies in the adoption of RSA, an algorithm that has been proven to be safe boasting powerful encryption technology. It uses 2048-bit-length keys that could be doubled for extra layer of security.
Major Hurdles
The staking reward for Navcoin is too low and there realistically is no incentive for more nodes to stake the coin considering the high rate of inflation and volatility of the coin market.
Conclusion
Navcoin has come a long way as a proof-of-stake coin. It is common knowledge in the coin community that it is one of the undervalued coins. The potentials of this cryptocurrency is immense although investors are always advised to conduct their own due diligence before investing.
