Garrett Camp has announced that he will be seeding $10 million dollars into his own, new, cryptocurrency gambit.
As if Uber and Expa weren’t enough to keep tech founder Garrett Camp busy, he has announced that he will be launching a new cryptocurrency. He hopes to create a coin that will be used as a payment tool by every-day users. Eco will be funded with $10 million of Camp’s own dollars and will skip the ICO fund-raising (and any legal issues related). Eco will start out with one trillion coins, half of which will be given away for free. If you want to get in on the action, head over to their website and be one of the first billion to sign up. After that, the dispersal breaks out, with 20% going to universities running nodes, and 10% going to advisors, strategic partners and the Eco Foundation, each. The Eco Foundation is the body in charge of creating and maintaining the blockchain network.
A problem-solving approach
According to Eco’s white paper, the currency seeks to fix some of the major issues common to digital currencies. Specifically, the paper mentions the use of verified nodes, larger token supply, and energy efficiency.
There is give and take with some of these solutions. For instance, the use of verified nodes increases network security. This structure will eliminate more than half of the attacks and frauds committed. However, verified nodes mean that the system is not really decentralized, as with other crypto networks.
A larger token supply makes Eco a consumer-friendly choice. Token conversion rates to the dollar will be smaller, making a purchase of tokens more accessible, and integrating these coins with a web and mobile app make Eco even friendlier. Anyone should be able to figure out how to use their wallet!
Eco will seek to eliminate the need for electricity-gobbling miner-networks and will feature faster transaction times. All of these improvements sound great, but, we have heard them all before…
Lacking ingenuity
Eco does not bring anything new to the table here. Litecoin and Ethereum both feature faster blockchains that lead to faster transaction rates. Token and Kin token are making a grab at the every-day user market. They both offer higher token count and lower token cost. Ripple relies solely on trusted nodes as a security measure. Ethereum is currently developing more energy efficient methods, and NEO is already ahead of that game. I could continue, but the point is that the crypto market is full of admirable approaches to the issues Eco seeks to solve. Those issues are not why cryptocurrency remains in its infancy.
Real-life, every-day users do real-life, every-day things. We need currencies that support our activities. Service providers, merchants, and banks all need to get on board with this movement in order for cryptocurrencies to actually function on a daily level. Getting that ecosystem in place is a huge hurdle. No one has yet jumped quite high enough to clear it. Eco has a chance at being the forerunner here. Garrett Camp already has successful ventures under his belt and is well-known in the tech industry. Perhaps his clout will give the crypto movement the steam it needs to get going.
If you can’t wait for Eco to debut, fret not: the system should be up and running by the year’s end- and you can sign up now to reserve some tokens!
