The momentum of the cryptocurrency space has snowballed exponentially over the past decade. Each market cycle to this point has brought a cornucopia of new strides and breakthroughs in blockchain technology. The rapid growth has led to immense profits for an uncountable number of long-term participants.
Adoption continues to spread with increased institutional backing and consumer payment channels. Indeed, all signs point to cryptocurrencies reaching a new plateau on the stage of global commerce. An essential question must be asked at this transitory junction in what appears to be the early stages of another bull market. How far will profit allow the underlying blockchain technology to deviate away from the roots of its essence and justification? There is no better source to reflect upon than the Cypherpunk Manifesto.
That which ages among the best is that which only becomes more biting and significant over time. Originally published by Eric Hughes in March of 1993, the Cypherpunk Manifesto has a short, sweet, and directly to the point message with an especially understated foresight about it that’s decades ahead of its time. It is a must-read for any digital native. It emphasizes the essence of digital privacy, decentralization, censorship-resistance/immutability, and the freedom to remain anonymous at-will. It argues that these principles be made manifest for any form of communication or commerce. Its backbone lies with every individual coder who cherishes the fruits of civil liberties and dares to counter and obsolete the many intrusive and invasive forms of technology with open-source, cryptographically effective solutions for the greater good of society.
These were the principles that Bitcoin was constructed with and designed to honor. While its inherent technology stays true to this nature (mining aside), the infrastructure that has been built up around it is flawed by design and sacrifices a good number of strengths and freedoms. Most notably are the many vulnerable points of exchange run by central authorities on trust where funds are at risk to be frozen or stolen, KYC (know your customer) policies, and the traceability, restrictions, and risks that come from these two points.
Shortly after BTC found a value that could be directly pegged to the USD (and with the USD, every global currency), a number of exchanges offering trade between the two opened for business. The first of these exchanges was the infamous Mt. Gox which implemented KYC policies by 2011 before exit scamming in early 2014. KYC policies were initially introduced to comply with the many regulations regarding the exchange of various fiat currencies for crypto in addition to demanding a deeper sense of customer accountability. Up until the point that they were introduced, the only sure way it would have been possible to trace specific addresses is if the recipient publicly disclosed their wallet address. KYC brought a considerably more advanced form of traceability with it. In addition to e-mail addresses and bank accounts, everything from names, addresses, full ID info, and pictures of each and every customer became tethered to their respective deposit and withdrawal history. Though somewhat convoluted with the nature of exchange wallets, there are patterns that can be followed and traced.
As BTC continued to grow, so did the number of its forks and competing cryptocurrencies pegged to its value in satoshis. The forks grew to be numerous and with them, the number of centralized C2C exchanges where you could trade them for BTC. Like the fiat-to-crypto exchange points before them, KYC was implemented on numerous C2C exchanges as well.
Centralized exchanges of all sorts are perhaps the weakest link in entire cryptocurrency space. They have repeatedly proven to be weak in terms of security. This year alone, the following exchanges have been compromised: Binance, Bithumb, Coinbene, Coinbin, Cryptopia, and QuadrigaCX. What’s worse, they’ve sacrificed many of the core principles of the cypherpunks that built Bitcoin in the first place.
How can crypto be censorship-resistant and immutable if exchanges can decide to freeze funds or put a certain wallet into maintenance at whim? How can it be private if every account has every bit of trade, deposit, and withdrawal history it has done tethered to its name? How can it be anonymous at-will if full documentation is demanded, sometimes as a ransom for frozen funds? How can it be secure when billions of dollars have been hijacked from weak security? It could be argued that these exchanges are the antithesis of the cypherpunks: an easily-exploitable honeypot of funds and user data with a central authority.
Consider the efforts of the X9 Developers building Stakenet. True to the nature of the cypherpunks, they have been working to make these numerous vulnerabilities in the cryptocurrency infrastructure obsolete. To strengthen censorship-resistance and decentralization in this space, they have been implementing an immutable and purely decentralized exchange into their network where no central authority can freeze funds, where exit scamming is impossible, and where security is as tight as the blockchain technology it runs atop. To restore the principle of at-will anonymity, their immutable DEX will have no KYC, nor will it require registered accounts. In the interests of privacy, they have built a solution that allows for one-click TOR lightning swaps that strengthen the privacy of every participating coin and the Lightning Network itself. To strengthen the nature of the decentralized exchanges that are already out there, they are working on a DEX aggregator that pools together the offerings of many promising DEXes suffering from low volume or difficulty of use.
Put briefly, this team has the foresight and skill to acknowledge and address the numerous risks and shortcomings that anyone coin may face the second it is sent from a private wallet to any other point in trust. They are compounding these solutions into one streamlined and convenient wallet where funds are firmly secured, trustlessly staked, and instantly tradable from one singular point.
To build up the world of cryptocurrency is to honor the ways of the cypherpunks and carry on their torch. It is to fight for freedom from the intrusiveness and corruption of centralized authorities by obsoleting them. It is preserving the privacy of funds, resisting mutability, and decentralizing any and everything which stands to benefit from it. Whether that be a store of value, the means by which that value is secured and traded, or the platforms on which these mechanisms are discussed. This era of mass-censorship, intrusiveness, digital balkanization, and monopolies from many of the premier digital spaces not only shows how right they were 26 years ago but that there is still a considerable amount of work to do.
Price is cooling off... For now. I'm honestly expecting $1 shortly after DEX launch.
Nathaniel Jackson
Have they actually got proof of btc/eth or is it still proof of concept?
The admin in the discord said that it's not btc/eth trade because eth doesn't comply with it's own erc20 lol. I'm under the impression that it's not going to be btc/eth... but it'll be btc/weth.
Would genuinely drop 5k link more into this if they have some sort of proof of btc/eth
I read that it literally can't be BTC/ETH yet because ETH doesnt conform to its own erc20 standard. Only when it is will it be possible(the ETH team have to update it or add it in ETH 2.0)
Kevin Bennett
this is correct from what i understand. but if they can do btc/weth, they can do any erc20 token. that is huge user, and they have proved they can do it and are doing it.
Yeah I appreciate it's huge, but still a slight bummer. BTC/ETH would have made this project a legitimate top 5.
But that still means they can trade btc/usd, which is good.
Top 10 is still cool though, lol.
Xavier Foster
A masternode or the equivalent (15k XSN) in todays price in Chainlink tokens?
Which will make one richer?
Jack Harris
10MN is 10K link in equivalent stacks.
I have 10K link and 5MN. Hoping to make it by eoy 2021
Joseph Sanders
Xsn is the king of kings
Carter Walker
So you say 1MN= 1K link in terms of making it
So 1MN costs like 7k whereas 1k link 11k I can get more value for the same amount of money. So a XSN is a better investment for todays prices.
That's what you tell me?
Jeremiah Clark
Where's the best place to buy xsn? I believe it's only in livecoin, beaxy and coinall. Haven't heard about beaxy and coinall, are they any good? Livecoin has had breaches I don't really trust them
Ian Perez
They can already do BTC/WETH I’m in the Raiden test group they already have a video of it and I myself have done swaps so I know it works. They put out a video yesterday but that was XSN/WETH not sure why they put that out and not BTC/WETH as they have one but suspect it’s because they wanted to get this multi-trade video of BTC/WETH swaps out to blow people’s minds.
WETH is not the same as something like WBTC. ETH is basically spaghetti code and doesn’t even conform to its own ERC20 standards, mainly because ETH was made prior to the ERC20 standard. In order for ETH to conform it needs to be wrapped but the difference is WETH is backed by its own blockchain, ETH so is completely safe. Something like WBTC isn’t though as you have to trust a 3rd party that’s holding your BTC and in return they give you a token to represent its value so it’s not the same as WETH.
Livecoin works fine as a no-KYC deposit-and-immediately withdraw exchange.
Logan Smith
Well yea, XSN is lower and will pump harder... That's pretty obvious lmao.
God I hope this all goes smoothly. Is the dex any different in the raiden? I wish I was there. Fuck man. That's some serious shit.
Jayden Perez
Livecoin has the most volume. Just buy the coins and download the core wallet. If you can't get core wallet get a stakenet cloud account
Jayden Jones
god this is gonna pump hard
Nathaniel White
A lot of its competitors have $300-400 million mcaps already. The fact that XSNs mcap is like $40 mil is the only reason I strongly agree that it can still moon violently into a 9-10-11 (peak bull) digit mcap. That, and its scarcity.
Blake Lee
Don't forget that if they can't be bothered with the cloud account, join the discord, ask to join the dex beta, and store their funds in the light wallet and keep full control of their coins and no need to bother with downloading the core wallet.
Zachary Foster
I don't think you guys understand. The DEX launch alone will get us a nice 5-10x. Raiden will probably at least 2-4x. Hydra could get us another 5-10x too.
Aiden Martin
Soon as I get my mns I will be shelling with you brother. Until then SCAM
Aaron Long
Works exactly the same as doing BTC/LTC trades once it’s all set up so if you have used the DEX at all then you know how it works
Isaac Allen
weth is backed 1:1 by eth contractually.
it's not "eth", but it's as close as you can get in an erc20 compatible form.
Josiah Carter
Has anyone noticed what the fud guy is gone? Probably fomoed in at some level and left his dream entering at 600 stats behind him.
Oliver Martin
oh boy those digits
Angel Sanders
$40 post Hydra, minimum.
gonna take at least $100k to buy a Master Node once this becomes the standard dex for erc coins.
