BrianDColwell — Interview with Viscolex of Solaris!
Hey Solaris Community!
We are glad to bring you a recent interview with the one and only Viscolex, a core team member of Solaris. We hope you find this informative and insightful!
Source: https://briandcolwell.com/2018/07/a-d-y-o-r-starter-on-solaris-coin/.html
A D.Y.O.R Starter On Solaris Coin
“Solaris is a decentralized open source cryptocurrency focused on privacy, innovation and the advancement of technology.”
Imagine this potential investor: “I’m new to cryptocurrencies, have heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum, but have no idea what masternodes are or what PoS means” … explain Solaris Coin: What is Solaris Coin and how does it work?
Solaris, (XLR) is a community-focused, privacy based coin. The team is driven to maintain sustainable growth, development and fair practices within the cryptocurrency coin space, while utilizing best practices, features and ideas from DASH, PIVX and Zerocoin.
Solaris operates with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, meaning that anyone who can prove they hold XLR can help secure the network, and get rewarded in the process by creating new blocks. Proof-of-Stake is also considered an environmentally friendlier solution than the electricity demanding Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism used by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero.
The purpose of masternodes in the Solaris network is to process functions for the network, thus aiding in the creation of new blocks just like Stakers. Masternodes receive part of the block reward for their participation in the network also. Exactly 1,000 XLR coins are required as a collateral to run a Masternode, which you can stop at any time and unlock the collateral.
What are some common misconceptions about Solaris Coin that should be cleared up?
I believe a common misconception for a long time was that Solaris was a 1 man project, with me (Viscolex) running the show. This is simply not true. From an early stage of the project we made a decision that Developers are not needed in the public discussions, as most of the content there is irrelevant and it’s easier to someone centralized like me to gather feedback and deliver it as a neat package for our deliberations. Drama and Development don’t work well together, and this gives more time for Developers to concentrate on what they do best.
In recent months we have expanded our team with Lauvrud taking a position of Marketing and Business Manager in the core team. We also have amazing admins on both Telegram and Discord, who provide constant support for any user in need. We have also onboarded a number of advisors, all experienced and influential crypto personalities, to help us challenge ourselves and crypto conventions.
Secondly, the anonymity of the core team. Privacy as a choice is the core ethos of Solaris, and this is a choice that team that has made. Regardless, the team has provided KYC documentation to relevant parties such as Partners and Exchanges.
Tell me more about where Solaris Coin comes from… is it a fork from, or clone of, another project, and if so, which and why? What’s the base of the Solaris Coin privacy tech — is it a zerocoin implementation? What’s the differentiator that makes Solaris Coin a leader long-term?
Solaris is a fork of the Pivx project, which in itself is a fork of Dash, and Dash is a fork of Bitcoin. While these projects are similar in nature, Solaris’ primary goal is to settle near instant and private transactions, while employing a sustainable development and added value proposition both crypto and real world use.
And yes, Zerocoin is the base of the privacy tech of Solaris. Zerocoin provides full privacy to our users. Our implementation of the Zerocoin protocol converts your publicly available transaction details into an anonymous one. When a user wishes to spend funds, they appear as a new coin without a spending history or origin. At Solaris, we are strong believers in privacy as a choice, so it is completely up to the user to use this functionality.
In short to mid term, the coin attributes and features are irrelevant. Every fork of Pivx, Dash or Bitcoin is virtually the same with minor differences. The main difference that you will see with Solaris compared to other projects is the teams dedication and determination, attainable goals and the constant ability to deliver on our promises. A main differentiator is the Solaris XLR masternode, where node holders will be able to earn passive income not only from block rewards, but also by linking them to txbit.io, a next gen crypto to crypto currency exchange. We explain this in greater detail through our txbit.io development updates, which you can find on our Medium Blog.
The Solaris Coin community, in my experience, is collaborative and enthusiastic… how have you achieved this success? How were you able to attract a group of loyal, like-minded, investors with the intention of staking/masternoding rather than trading? What sorts of demographics best fit the Solaris Coin philosophy, mission, and vision? Who is your target audience? How is Solaris Coin seeking adoption?
Since the very beginning of Solaris in April 2017, the team has been dead set on making it a successful, usable cryptocurrency. The massive market spike at the end of 2017 has only driven us further to work on every aspect of this project for the next market upturn. Regardless of price or market conditions, Solaris has continued to develop & execute roadmap milestones. One of the biggest projects that Solaris team is currently developing, is a joint venture with a privacy oriented crypto to crypto exchange, txbit.io.
“We feel that the Solaris community is our greatest achievement.”
All the growth Solaris has experienced has been organic from day one. We believe that our core values of being open, forward and communicative is what sets us apart from other coins, and this constant engagement with users is what developed loyalty for the project. Now, even in bear market, we see this loyalty among our users who realise that great things take time to develop.
Solaris seeks adoption through various commerce and crypto related integrations. One of the major projects that Solaris has undertaken as part of a joint venture, is building a next generation cryptocurrency exchange called txbit.
“XLR will play a major role on cryptocurrency exchange txbit: XLR holders will be able to link their Masternodes and Staking amounts to receive a share of the Transaction fees from the exchange, thus receiving both Masternode or Staking rewards AND txbit rewards at the same time.”
What’s your view on the privacy coin market right now?
Privacy is a topic that has been in constant discussion in the cryptocurrency sphere, for both right and wrong reasons. It is easy to see why though, most newcomers have the assumption that Bitcoin is completely private… because this is what the media has been telling them. But we all know this is far from the fact, with many parties publicly stating that they are constantly scanning and monitoring the BTC blockchain.
Needless to say, users that realise this and are privacy conscious, may look for an alternative. In this regard I think competition is good. No single privacy related mechanism in crypto has proven itself perfect, and better and more efficient ways to anonymize transactions are being thought of constantly. It’s only through implementation and real life use that we can learn about the true up and down sides of each technology.
While Solaris values privacy deeply, it is not a main focus point of the project. Privacy as a choice is one of our core ethos, and we are dedicated to providing Solaris with what we think is the best technology for privacy, and at this moment that is the Zerocoin Protocol.
How is Solaris Coin focused on fair distribution, decentralized coin supply, and good governance? Specifically… what sorts of actions are being taken and plans being made?
Fair distribution and decentralizations are not just buzzwords that Solaris uses abundantly, we stick by them and have facts to back them up. Solaris started as a Proof of Work consensus mechanism coin, meaning anyone with mining equipment could receive Solaris. We feel this is a much fairer way of distribution than running an ICO, where the rich can buy exorbitant share of coins. Leading up to Proof of Stake consensus switch, this fair early distribution through Proof of Work has led to an extremely decentralized network, where no single party any significant share of the total supply of Solaris.
Community governance and decision making is another important aspect that we hold with pride. Any important decisions to do with the project get discussed with the Solaris community, and historically a vote was held on Bitcointalk forums to get the decision. We are planning on introducing a more advanced layer of governance, by allowing anyone who hold XLR to vote on important governance decisions. All of this will be easily done in a graphical interface on the Solaris website, please stay tuned for updates on this system in the coming months.
What % of Solaris Coin is owned by the top 10% of wallets? Top 25% of wallets? How many masternodes are there? What’s the month-to-month growth of masternodes this year? What about in the last 30 days… % growth? Is it growing or declining, and why do you think this is so?
Rich list source: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xlr/#!rich
At first glance, it looks like the top 10% own nearly 15% of the total supply! But rest assured, things are nowhere near this bad, as the number 1 richest address in the list belongs to KuCoin exchange. The third,fourth and fifth addresses belong to exchanges as well. The second richest address is the Solaris development fund, and it contains roughly 2% of the total current supply.
“Looking further into the statistics, we can see that top 100 address own only 25% of the circulating supply, which is a significantly lower than most of our competitors.”
Now let’s take a look at our competitors and their distribution for top 100 addresses: Phore — 38%, ColossusX — 45%, Zoin — 35%, Denarius — 35%. As you can see, Solaris is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of fair distribution and decentralization.
The masternode count is at about 783 at this moment, and has been steadily growing since Masternodes got implemented in October 2017. We believe there are a number of reasons that is fueling the growth; firstly the stability and achievable milestones the team has set out to complete, and secondly the added value proposition that txbit brings with its release later this year.
Some of our other statistics as of 4th of July, 2018:
- Current Total Supply: 1,425,519
- Locked In Masternodes: 783,000
- Locked In Staking: 287,000
- Combined Locked Coins: 1,070,000
Masternodes can serve a variety of functions. What’s the function of the Solaris Coin masternode? What functions do you see Solaris Coin masternodes having in the future? Is the masternode important for Solaris Coin infrastructure and/or scaling? How?
Solaris has implemented the following masternode features in XLR:
- Privacy Increase through the Zerocoin protocol
- Instant Transactions through SwiftTX
- Governance and Voting
- Budgeting and Treasury
Masternodes are not standalone nodes, they are in constant communication with other masternodes to create the decentralized network that Solaris aimed to create.
“Solaris utilizes double validation method, where a staker validates a block and a masternode validates a block, then they both take a share of the XLR block reward. This also makes it much harder to attack the Solaris network with a 51% attack, unlike Proof of Work chains.”
Developers are key to every cryptocurrency project, and i see many underpaid for their efforts. Is the Solaris Coin dev team growing? Are the devs compensated at industry standard levels, or better?
The Solaris core team has been expanding over the last couple of months, especially concentrating marketing and communication area of the project, which we hope can be seen through the Social Media changes already, and more so in the coming months. We’ve also expanded our network of developers through reputable cryptocurrency firms with impressive portfolios. Everyone working on the project is compensated for their work from the development fund, but considering the main ethos of Privacy as a Choice, we would like to keep the figures confidential.
Why invest in Solaris Coin?
Solaris is well positioned for the market upturn in the coming future. We have made much progress since the beginning of the year, from switching from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, to expanding the integrations and partnerships in many industries. We’ve also updated branding on all socials, and created a helpsite to make Solaris one of the most user friendly cryptocurrencies available. We believe that investing back into our user’s experience will create an even more loyal community. At any given time, roughly 70% of our total supply is locked between masternodes & stakers. This adds another value proposition similar to a scarce resource like gold, or in this case, XLR.
