Community First: One Protocol’s Plan to Give Users a Seat at the Governance Table

A “next-generation” mobile payment protocol has unveiled new features — including “incentives” for users who own and run the nodes that perform vital roles on its network, including the verification of transactions.

Crypto.com says the new program is a result of a partnership with Allnodes, which is offering its hosting services for the platform. Users who want to participate can either get involved through the Crypto.com Wallet app, or via Allnodes.

The Hong Kong-headquartered company, which was founded in 2016, says the native blockchain powering its Crypto.com Pay service delivers “instant, seamless, secure and cost-efficient” transactions for merchants and crypto consumers alike — reducing processing fees and waiting times for businesses that have been reluctant to accept virtual currencies as a payment method so far.

Kris Marszalek, the CEO and co-founder of Crypto.com, told Cointelegraph, “The role of the council nodes will be essential to the performance and security of the Crypto.com Chain, as they will be entrusted to execute settlement, order and verify transactions, and provide an escrow.”

Extensive consideration has been paid to how the blockchain will be governed, as the team wants a mechanism that produces “quality decisions that benefit the larger community.” After taking notes on other projects, both on-chain and off-chain, Crypto.com has listed three priorities for its governance mechanism going forward: First, it must be easy to understand and to adopt; second, inclusive and open to community participation; and lastly, a system that encourages users to contribute, the team says.

Continued development

In a recent developer update for the Crypto.com Chain, the platform’s team revealed that the code driving its platform has gone open-source. It is hoped that the Apache license will encourage other developers to include its technology in third-party software. At present, the code that has been released is described as “preliminary and experimental,” as new features are constantly being added.

Developments that remain in the pipeline include an extension to Crypto.com’s accounting model, with a recent blog post explaining that “changes will be required to facilitate functionality beyond simple transfers, mainly related to basic fee, staking and reward management.” The platform’s client architecture remains under “heavy development,” and there are also plans to focus on scalable privacy mechanisms.

At the end of May, the team announced that its Crypto.com Chain had received one of three Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) commercial licenses in Asia that will enable it to be “secure, privacy protected and highly performant,” the company emphasizes.

New offerings

The ongoing work to strengthen governance and the blockchain’s development comes after Crypto.com unveiled two products designed to help users enjoy “greater financial empowerment.”

While Crypto Earn enables consumers to deposit digital currencies for fixed periods and accrue incentives along the way, Crypto Credit allows users to borrow against their assets without having to sell them — potentially reducing the financial impact that price volatility can bring.

These products complement the MCO Visa Card, which can be loaded up so users can complete purchases with crypto on the goods and services they buy every day. Crypto.com is now planning to roll out this card around the world after a successful launch in Singapore, with cashback on purchases, additional rebates on travel bookings, and free subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify among the advantages.

Discussing the trio of Crypto.com products, Marszalek added: “MCO Visa Card, Crypto Earn, and Crypto Credit together form a powerful product suite that nobody else in the industry has today. We've never been more excited about the potential of our platform and look forward to continue scaling it globally later this year.”

The platform also recently performed a demo of Crypto.com Pay, which enables crypto payments to be made instantly through existing merchant systems. The company says this enables consumers to pay complete transactions using more than 25 cryptocurrencies, and there are plans for the technology to be rolled out to more than 100,000 locations in 2019.