Electroneum: A Simple Mobile Interface For Mass Adoption

What is Electroneum?

Electroneum is its own blockchain built on the CryptoNote Algorithm. This is a tried and tested algorithm that forms the foundations of both Monero (a top ten cryptocurrency) and Bytecoin. The focus of cryptocurrencies built on the CryptoNote Algorithm is normally privacy. Using ring signatures it can mix transactions in with a pot of transactions and anonymise the sender and receiver.

They might all share the same underlying algorithm, but Electroneum differs from Monero and CryptoNote significantly. You can mine Electroneum on Android phone through an app downloaded from the Play Store and there is a planed app for iOS. If you know a little about proof of working mining, you are probably scratching your head right now wondering how this network is secured with mobile phones. The simple answer is that it isn’t

Mobile mining doesn’t do the proof, bu it still rewards miners with tokens for installing and running an application on their phone. Why would Electroneum give away tokens for something that doesn’t contribute to the network? The Electroneum team knows that by gamifying mining and rewarding users for involving themselves in cryptocurrencies there is a greater chance of them buying, holding and mining Electroneum tokens and other cryptocurrencies. There is an emission algorithm that determines how many coins mobile miners will receive. The Electroneum emission algorithm +Y / app miners / X, where Y is any additional coins left over from the token sale and X is the time period of emission which is a restriction based upon a minimum coin release for mobile mining experience and a maximum mobile mining coin release and control is also subject to the market value of Electroneum. The hash rate of the user’s phone is also a deciding factor in how much users can earn mining Electroneum. The issued hash rate is reflective of the devices CPU processing power. Since the process doesn’t add blocks to the chain, it doesn’t cause the device to overheat or use significant data. There is no copy of the blockchain downloaded to the device.

At the time of writing, Electroneum is the most popular App in the finance category in the Play Store. The mobile mining experience is the only part of Electroneum that is a centralized system and not a decentralized one. 

There is real mining done on the hundreds of computer that secures the Electroneum network, but I think that considering the success of the Electroneum app, and their goal towards mass adoption, we should all just get over the fact that their mobile mining doesn’t add computational power to the network. Think of it like a token distribution process, it’s an airdrop, masquerading as a mining tutorial. Companies painstakingly calculate the costs per acquisition of every impression or conversion in their marketing funnel. At least this way, that money comes back to the user. 

If you are already invested in cryptocurrency, it is easy to remember that some people aren’t. They don’t have an exchange they use or gone through the know your customer process and verification. It can be daunting setting this all up. Electroneum is a easy way to get ahold of some cryptocurrency.

What Will Electroneum Be Used For?

Aside from mobile mining, the team mention in their whitepaper that Electroneum is going to target a gaming use case. They plan on changing the way gamers and game companies work together during the constant migration of gamers to what’s new and exciting. The average retention rate of a multiplayer online game is just 20% after the first 30 days. The app based Electroneum virtual currency exchange will allow gamers to transfer some of their hard work and time from one game to a new game by enabling them to monetize their “in-play” virtual currencies and take them with them into the real world. At the same time the game company develops an exit based revenue stream and an additional introductory revenue stream –whitepaper

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have a lower player retention rate than mobile games, with a remarkable 80% drop in the first 30 days. Hard work, lost. Most multiplayer or player interaction games have some kind of virtual currency Currently the time and hard work that a player puts in to a game is all lost the moment they choose to leave it in search of something else.

The game companies will be incentivized to allow this by sharing the profit from the BID/ASK spread (the price difference between buying and selling), allowing them to monetize people leaving and further monetize people joining the game.

The CryptoNote algorithm is ASICs resistant. There have been a few ASICs made for Monero, but the team have just hard forked to avoid centralization and raising the barriers to entry. Only time will tell how Electroneum will continue to favor GPU mining, but I think that there are a few hard forks in its future. Buying a mining rig, or mining on your existing hardware is a small investment that should pay for itself in less than a year. The CryptoNote algorithm is well understood by miners, and I am sure that Electroneum will become a popular cryptocurrency for miners. 

Electroneum Coin (ETN)

There is a total supply of 21 billion coins. This is exactly 10xs the amount of total mineable Bitcoin. Richard Ells really is a marketing wizard. The reason given for this total supply is that transactions will only have 2 decimal places and this will give the amounts a real money feel. Sending 0.04 BTC or even 0.004 BTC doesn’t have much real world context. These aren’t human numbers. The larger total supply means that 1 ETN will never be worth 1 BTC. It would take 10xs the total market cap, which I think is unrealistic.

Should I Invest In Electroneum?  

I think that if you are going to invest in Electroneum, you should go into it knowing that this coin is running on pure hype. I might be wrong, but it seems very unlikely that Electroneum will ever be used at the scale that Ethereum, ICON, OmiseGO, Rchain and other promising cryptocurrencies will.

That isn’t to say that Electroneum isn’t a good investment. If people were making decision based on the promise showed by a coin’s technology then the top ten would look entirely different. Millions of people are going to download the Electroneum application, the team is going to continue their intensive marketing, and there is talk of making it possible to mine Electroneum on Playstation and Xbox. There is still the release of the iOS mobile miner to look forward to. All of these are hype driving hysteria inducing announcements. 

Who Are The Electroneum Team?

Richard Ells is founder and Director of Electroneum. He has a history of building successful digital business. His last venture, Retrotal.com is a white label social media management and marketing tool used by fortune 500 companies like Herbalife and Avon. Previously, he founded and grew a successful digital agency, which is still running today, over 20 years later.

It is hard to gauge the experience of the team’s developers. Dean Cole is the appointed Blockchain Manager of Electroneum. Previously he was a PHP Developer at Retortal, Terry Hunter (Terence Hunter), similar experience. It is real corporate developer stuff, and the only information available about it is buried in the company that is creating this crypto.

Electroneum is being built by Retrotal. The backing of a company isn’t a bad thing, but as
Yeezytaughtme put it on Bitcoin Forum “Electroneum team is almost entirely formed of Retortal employees. Is Richard Ells using his personnel to create a team that convinces us into believing in trust and credibility? How do Retortal as a business operate with their own day-to-day duties now that Electroneum has obtained a $40m investment, 200k userbase and blockchain ready to go live in a week? Has focus been shifted from Retortal on to Electroneum?”

How to Invest in Electroneum?

For more information on the investment prospects of Electroneum read Coinlist’s complete investor’s guide to investing and holding Electronenum as it goes through upcoming news event, speculation and market sentiment. Read it here.