Created by NBA Top Shot developer Dapper Labs, Flow is a proof of stake blockchain designed for NFT collectibles and crypto games.
Dapper’s CryptoKitties clogged up Ethereum in 2017, prompting the development of Flow as an alternative.
When CryptoKitties, one of the very first non-fungible token (NFT) projects, brought the Ethereum blockchain to a halt in late 2017 due to immense congestion, developer Dapper Labs learned firsthand that current-gen blockchains weren’t built to handle such demand.
With NFTs—provably-unique tokens that can be linked to digital content—becoming increasingly popular, something needed to be done.
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Rather than simply find another home for its decentralized app (dapp) or wait for Ethereum scaling solutions to mature, Dapper decided to build the kind of blockchain that it and other developers could rely on.
The result is Flow, a blockchain purpose-built to support things like NFT collectibles and large-scale crypto games.
CryptoKitties will soon migrate to Flow, and with the surging success of Dapper’s NBA Top Shot, and many other developers signing on to build with Flow amidst the NFT boom, it could prove to be one of the leading blockchains for such creations.
Here’s a look at what Flow is, how it works, and how to get ahold of the FLOW token.
What is Flow?
Flow is a blockchain that is designed for extensive scaling without the use of sharding techniques, providing fast and low-cost transactions that make sense for dapps such as NFT marketplaces and crypto-infused video games.
As mentioned, Flow hails from Dapper Labs, which decided to solve its blockchain congestion problem head-on by building one primed for games and other interactive experiences. Dapper is now using Flow for all of its own projects, including NBA Top Shot, but it’s open to other developers as well.
How does Flow work?
Flow uses a proof of stake consensus mechanism that requires validators to stake a certain number of FLOW tokens to participate in the network.
However, the way that validation works is unique amongst blockchains, as Flow splits validation tasks into four separate types of nodes: consensus, verification, execution, and collection. All four node types participate in the validation of each transaction.
Dapper says that splitting up the tasks makes processing transactions more efficient than on rival blockchains. It’s an alternative option to sharding, or spreading out the storage and computational needs of a blockchain across numerous nodes. Flow does not use sharding, and by doing so, Dapper says that Flow keeps transactions atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID), and allows developers to build on each others’ work.
Flow also features upgradeable smart contracts, allowing smart contracts to be deployed in beta and then enhanced or fixed before being finalized and made immutable.
Did you know?
CryptoKitties will migrate from Ethereum to Flow, with Dapper promising new features for the breedable digital cats as well as use in future games running on Flow.
What’s so special about Flow?
Flow is built for the kind of collectible and interactive crypto experiences that are quickly growing in prominence, and could find much larger audiences in the years to come. NBA Top Shot has already demonstrated the potential for a blockchain-driven collectibles experience to generate huge sums of cash and find major mainstream attention. That’s just one experience built on top of Flow, with many more to come.
Flow + NBA + UFC
NBA Top Shot has already been an enormous success, but Dapper Labs has other high-profile partners in its stable, including the likes of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), CNN and Dr. Suess. Besides those brands, Dapper also has partners like gadget giant Samsung, game publisher Ubisoft, and Warner Music Group.
What can you do with Flow?
Right now, as a user, you can interact with Flow via NBA Top Shot or by buying artwork from the VIV3 NFT marketplace, as well as other working apps built on the blockchain. Developers can begin using the various built-in tools to experiment with Flow and start building their own dapps.
Did you know?
Dapper Labs raised a $12 million investment round in August 2020 that featured participation from several current NBA players, including Andre Iguodala and Spencer Dinwiddie.
Where to buy FLOW
Flow’s native FLOW token was initially offered to the public in October 2020 through CoinList, but was unavailable within the United States and Canada. Tokens sold through the offering were locked up for at least a year thereafter, which means they can’t be circulated until they’re unlocked.
On the other hand, FLOW rewards paid to validators can be transferred and sold, so there is some FLOW out on the market, and some exchanges—like Kraken and Huobi—let users transact FLOW. However, major exchanges like Coinbase do not currently handle FLOW. Binance recently listed FLOW.
The future
NFT collectibles blew up in a big way in late 2020 and early 2021, and Flow has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of that surge. Not only has Dapper Labs’ own NBA Top Shot been one of the most successful crypto dapps, but Flow reported a significant uptick in developer requests during the early weeks of 2021. In short, NBA Top Shot has been a successful proof of concept for Dapper’s custom-built blockchain, and now other developers want to tap into that infrastructure.
With developer interest comes commercial interest, too; in June 2021, NFT marketplace Rarible, which has to date focused on Ethereum-based NFTs, announced that it would expand its offering to Flow with the proceeds of its $14.2 million Series A fundraising round. Dapper has its own additional collectibles platforms in the works, as well.
Flow’s also building out its infrastructure. In June 2021, Dapper Labs launched FUSD, which it described as the first U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin on Flow; the stablecoin is backed one-for-one by U.S. dollars deposited at financial infrastructure provider Prime Trust.
That’s part of Dapper Labs’ wider ambitions for Flow, which envisage it being used for more elaborate game experiences beyond NFTs: Dapper calls it the “blockchain for open worlds.” On one hand, “open” implies decentralization—but it may only be a matter of time before it plays host to large-scale crypto games, as well.
The ASSEMBLE Protocol is a blockchain-based global point integration platform that exploits ASM utility tokens, whilst establishing a business ecosystem that can integrate, utilize and monetize existing points and miles with point providers, consumers and retailers. Below is Assemble Protocol’s roadmap:
2019 Q3~Q4
Team Building
Service Application Concept Development
2020 Q4
White Paper Release
ASM Token Generation Event
STA1.Com Partnership Announcement
ClubPass Partnership Announcement
Wanchain Tech Partnership Announcement
Luniverse Tech Partnership Announcement
ASP Plug-in Point Accumulation API Development Completion
ClubPass ASP Plug-In Commercialization
2021 Q1
ASSEMBLE Wallet Development
ASSEMBLE Wallet Alpha & Beta Test
ASSEMBLE Wallet Release
Point Exchange Android & iOS App Development
Point Exchange Android & iOS App Release
2021 Q2
ASSEMBLE Market Development
ASSEMBLE Market Alpha & Beta Test
ASSEMBLE Market Release
2021 Q3
Plug-In API Center Development
Plug-In API Center Alpha & Beta Test
Plug-In API Center Release
ASSEMBLE Wallet & Point Exchange Desktop Version Development
ASSEMBLE Wallet & Point Exchange Desktop Version Alpha & Beta Test
ASSEMBLE Wallet & Point Exchange Desktop Version Release
2021 Q4
ASSEMBLE Wallet, Market & Point Exchange Language Pack Development
ASSEMBLE Wallet, Market & Point Exchange Language Pack Alpha & Beta Test
ASSEMBLE Wallet, Market & Point Exchange Language Pack Release
Starting Today, Wednesday October 20, transfer ASM into your Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Support for ASM will generally be available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions with certain exceptions as indicated in each asset page here. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT)Thursday October 21, if liquidity conditions are met.
Starting Today, Wednesday October 20 we will begin accepting inbound transfers of ASM to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) Thursday October 21, if liquidity conditions are met.
Once sufficient supply of ASM is established on the platform, trading on our ASM-USD and ASM-USDT order books will launch in three phases, post-only, limit-only and full trading. If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules.
We will publish tweets from our Coinbase Pro Twitter account as each order book moves through the phases.
Assemble Protocol (ASM) is an Ethereum token that powers Assemble, a platform where users and merchants can aggregate, manage, and spend reward points. On Assemble, point providers and retailers can run special events or promotions, providing benefits like discounts for ASM
ASM is not yet available on Coinbase.com or via our Consumer mobile apps. We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added.
With new currencies coming up each day on the Ethereum Network, today with us we have Jasmy, which is nothing but an organization that is known to develop the “Internet of Things” or as commonly referred to as IoT, founded by Kunitake Ando. Also, before moving on further, it is worth mentioning that, JASMY is the native utility token for the Jasmy platform and an Ethereum token that powers Jasmy.
Instead of coordinating networks of data and devices with the help of centralized servers, Jasmy is one such platform that focuses completely on decentralizing the process with help of storing and computing data on a decentralized storage network, IPFS. Other than this, JASMY that I mentioned earlier, can very well be used for several purposes, one of which is to transfer tokens amongst payments as well as devices for services on the network itself.
Jasmy claims that the platform abides by the concept of data democracy, meaning that its objective is to return all the personal data files in the hands of the rightful individuals, it belongs to. Not just that, the basic foundation of the entire network is trust, it aims at building with its customers as well as companies that often use their platforms. Building a new era of information, Jasmy wants to create an environment where data can securely be exchanged as valuables.
Through all of this, it seems like Jasmy is much likely to position itself in the marketplace as one of the major solutions for the Fourth industrial revolution, as and when it happens! Furthermore, in a report, officials on the platform say that, with this big wave coming along, a lot of new goods and services including sharing economics like automatic driving, dispatch services as well as check out a free convenience store that’s are unmanned are born.
In addition to all of this, as mentioned previously, with the help of Jasmy, there is no need for service providers to hold on to the personal data of users, whereas the respective individuals can very well decide on their own how exactly they want to use it. Also, with the help of this, services providers tend to reduce the overall cost of information security, increase service levels as well as make use of information that is stored by the users outside the company.
As far as JasmyCoin goes, it is known to provide profits in exchange payments and has been able to receive interest from several potential investors from all around the world. The sudden uprise in the platform’s growth and popularity has really attracted a lot of investors. On a similar note, it is probably worth mentioning that, Jasmy is one of the most hottest selling projects, with a value skyrocketing at over 130 percent.
As a result, recently Jasmy has been made available to one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges available, Coinbase, where customers will now be able to easily send, trade, receive as well a store JASMY. As far as the JasmyCoin is concerned, it is vital for you to know that the token has the ability to be used by an unspecified number of businesses as well as individuals in order to transfer tokens with the help of virtual devices as proof of value exchange and probably for the purpose of payments of services on the platform itself. However, by not limiting the overall usability of the token, it really can have a wide range of purposes.
Investing in Jasmy
As of today, the price of Jasmy is about 0.088169 US dollars with a twenty-four-hour trading volume of 165,464,790 dollars. Not just that, in just the past twenty-four hours, the value of the JASMY has gone up by 21.55 percent. With the market cap of the platform not available, the platform is currently placed at #2675 position as per the CoinMarketCap rankings.
Also, it is worth mentioning that, the maximum lifetime supply of Jasmy is 50,000,000,000 JASMY coins but unfortunately, the current circulating supply of the currency is not yet available. In just the past week alone, the price of Jasmy has gone uphill by 448.63 percent.
Hart was a professional trader at Goldman Sachs with background knowledge in computer science. He left his trading business to join crypto fully. Hart first discovered Risk Labs in 2017, a protocol for transferring synthetic risk.
He was able to raise $4 million with this open-source protocol from Dragonfly and Bain Capital. With the capital, he developed a unique cryptocurrency. Also, within the same period, Hart united with seven other professionals, including Regina Cai and Allison Lu.
Allison Lu was formally the Goldman Sachs Vice President who started working with Hart in 2018. They designed an economic Oracle-based protocol for verifying data known as UMA ‘Data Verification mechanism’.
Regina Cai is an educated financial engineer and financial analyst at Princeton. She also contributed a significant quota in UMA development.
In December 2018, they released a draft of the UMA project White paper. The developers announced the full UMA project days later, with the launching of USStocks as its first Mainnet product.
The USStocks is an ERC20 special token that tracks the U.S top 500 stocks. These top U.S stocks allow crypto owners to invest in the U.S stock market.
What Is UMA?
Universal Market Acess (UMA) is one of the protocols on Ethereum. It enables users to trade any crypto assets they want with ERC-20 tokens. UMA enables users to use unique collateralized synthetic crypto tokens capable of tracking the prices of everything they want. Hence, UMA enables members to trade assets of any kind using ERC-20 tokens even without accessing the assets.
The protocol operates without the presence of a central authority or a single failure point. This helps anyone to have exposure to assets that would ordinarily be unreachable.
UMA features two parts, namely; A self-enforcing contract used for implementing financial contracts. And an Oracle “ provably honest” to margin and value these contracts. The platform supports financial innovations through blockchains with concepts gotten from traditional financial derivatives (fiat).
Like other cryptocurrency tokens in DeFi, the UMA crypto token serves as a tool for governance in the platform. It serves as the price oracle for the protocol. The significance of the protocol is because it’s boosting DeFi to good heights.
It allows users to deposit their DAI into another protocol, Compound. There, other users can borrow the DAI and pay interest up to 10% annually. People who make the deposits will then receive aDAI tokens for the investments.
Another important aspect is that users could use their aDAI as collateral. They can mint new Synthetic tokens representing an asset such the Gold. Also, users can create Synthetic tokens that will earn 10% interest every year through the aDAI they’ve locked. Buy UMA with Our Top Broker
What Does UMA Protocol Do?
In permissionless Defi systems, using legal recourse as a mechanism to finance contracts seems to be difficult. It is capital intensive, and this makes it accessible to only large crypto players.
However, the UMA protocol eliminates this challenging mechanism leaving only “the margin” as the best option. Developers achieved this by creating a trustless and permissionless mechanism that can use only economic incentives to secure the contract.
On a deposit of sufficient collateral into the UMA platform, a user can create a synthetic token for the asset with a contract term for the token. The contract term is then enforceable with the aid of financial incentives.
Normally, a “price oracle” ascertains when any token issuer lacks enough backup finances for their tokens due to price fluctuation (undercollateralized). UMA protocol instead offers financial incentives to its users for identification and liquidation of token issuers they believe to be undercollateralized.
The UMA technology sees the adoption of oracles as a major Defi challenge. This is basically due to their probability of failure due to an unknown virus outbreak (“black swan” financial conditions). And because hackers can easily manipulate them if there is enough cash to corrupt the oracle on the table.
Instead of addressing this challenge, UMA rather uses its oracle only to resolve liquidation problems. They programmed the occurrence of these disputes to be very rare.
With these analyses, UMA is seemingly an “open-sourced” protocol where two parties complementing each other can create and design their unique financial contracts. Each UMA protocol consists of the following five components:
The counterparts public addresses.
Functions for maintaining Margin balances.
Economic terms to determine the contract value and.
An oracle source for data verification.
The addition, margin balance, withdrawal, re-margin, settle or terminate functions.
How Does UMA Work
UMA contract operation is easy to comprehend and can be summarized using these 3 elements;
Token Facility
The framework that creates “synthetic token” contracts on its blockchain (Token Facility).
Synthetic tokens are tokens with collateral backings. It has the tendency to experience price fluctuations according to its (token) reference index.
Data Verification Mechanism-DVM
UMA uses an Oracle-based DVM mechanism that has an economic guarantee to eliminate corrupt practices in the system. Since normal Oracle-based protocols can still face corruption, UMA adopts the cost variation principle to checkmate this.
Here, the cost of corrupting the system (CoC) is designed to be higher than the profit from corruption (PFC). The cost value for both CoC and PFC is determined through voting by users (decentralized governance).
More so, the design feature of an oracle-based system with economic guarantees needs to measure the CoC (Cost of Corruption). It also measures the PFC (Profit from Corruption), and ensures CoC remains higher than PFC. More details on this area in the DVM whitepaper.
The governance protocol
Through the voting process, holders of UMA tokens decide on the issues regarding the platform. They determine the type of protocol that can access the platform. Also, they consider the major system parameters, upgrades, and the types of assets to support.
Through the DVM mechanism, UMA token holders can also participate in resolving contract disputes. The “smart contract” is not the sole custodian or owner of the asset. Instead, it is just the counterparty holding the derivates agreement.
Holders of UMA tokens can also use the “Token Facility” smart contract to add new assets or even remove contracts. They even shut down some smart contracts when there’s an emergency case.
Another aspect to consider is that UMA token holders can use the UMIPs (UMA Improvement Proposals) to create a standard consensus for their proposals. The rule is simply that 1 vote requires 1 token, and every proposal must get 51% votes from token holders.
After the proposal has gotten the community approval, the UMA team “Riks Labs” will immediately implement the changes. But, the team has the right to reject a proposal that has garnered a 51% vote.
UMA Token
This is the ability of the UMA smart contracts to create synthetic tokens representing user assets in the UMA platform. The process involves meeting and defining these 3 characteristics. The first one is to get the collateralization requirement.
The second one is the price identifier, while the third is the expiration date. With these three elements, it is easy for anyone to develop a ‘smart contract.’
The person or user who develops the ‘smart contract’ making it available for synthetic tokens is a (Token Facility Owner). After the smart contract creation, other users who wish to participate in the contract to give out more tokens will deposit collateral. These groups are the ‘Token Sponsors”.
For instance, if A ‘Token Facility Owner’ develops a ‘smart contract’ for creating (synthetic) gold tokens. A meets the basic requirement of depositing the collateral before creating it.
Then B ‘Token Sponsor’ seeing that the (synthetic) gold tokens may increase value indicates interest in issuing some token. They are to deposit some sort of backup (collateral) to be able to give out more (synthetic) gold tokens themselves.
Hence, UMA token facility mechanism ensures that counterparties get the collateral without passing through an (on-chain) price feed. Buy UMA with Our Top Broker
Token Distribution of UMA Protocol
The Risk Lab Foundation created the UMA token. The tokens were 100mm with 2mm which they sent to the UniSwap market. Out of the remaining tokens, they kept 14.5mm for future sales. But 35mm went to users and developers of the network. The pattern of sharing is not yet final for the UMA community’s criticisms and approval.
Relatively 48.5mm tokens went to the founders of Risk Lab, those who contributed early, and other investors. These tokens came with a transfer restriction until 2021.
UMA network gives good rewards to users holding their tokens. This is for users who actively participate in decision making (governance) and accurately responds to request (token cost). Holders who are dormant when making decisions in the platform get penalties as they are in the reward scheme. All user tokens grants have a 4-year programmed vesting schedule.
What is Data Verification Mechanism (DVM)
UMA is a derivative platform that doesn’t depend on the regular price feed. They see oracle’s current usage in DeFi protocol to be fragile and challenging. Unlike the rest of the Defi protocols, UMA doesn’t require a frequent price feed for effective protocol operation.
Other DeFi protocols like Aave uses oracles to liquidate undercollateralized borrower’s through constant checks of their collateral price value. Instead, UMA equips its token holders to frequently do it by checking the collateral amount in the “smart contract.”
This is a no difficult task. Everything on the platform is visible to the public on Etherscan. Simple calculations take place to ascertain if the users met the requirement for collateral. Otherwise, a call for liquidation will follow to liquidate a percentage from the issuer’s total collateral.
This liquidation call is a claim and the “Toke Facility Owner” can dispute it. At this point, a bond can be staked using UMA tokens to be the Disputer. The ‘DVM’ oracle is then called in to fix the dispute. It does this by confirming the actual price of that collateral.
The system penalizes the liquidator if DVM information proves him wrong and rewards the Disputer(the issuer). But if the liquidator is correct, the disputer loses all their bond while the former is given every collateral associated with that token.
Introducing the UMA Token
The token is part of what the market knows as ERC-20 tokens. It is the governance rights that users get to participate in the protocol development. They can also vote on any asset prices if there’s a dispute concerning the liquidation of collateral.
The first supply of the UMA crypto was 100 million. But there’s no had cap to it, meaning that the supply can be deflationary or even inflationary. Some conditions that can influence both conditions include the current value and the amount of the token that users are using for votes.
Price Analysis
UMA is not so different from other DeFi tokens. After the release of the token, the price rose to $1.5 and remained so after 3 months. Some days after, the protocol released the “yield dollar,” and it led to a price spike to $5.
From there, the price kept rising until it got to $28, although it later went down by $8. But at press time, UMA is lower in price than what it was during the first few months of launching. It is currently trading at $16.77.
Where to Buy UMA Token?
Anyone searching for UMA tokens to buy, check some decentralized exchanges such as Balancer and Uniswap. But check the price of gas fees before using any DEX to buy UMA. It may cost more when the gas fee price is high.
Another place to buy UMA tokens is a centralized exchange such as Coinbase. You can also navigate to Poloniex and OKEx to grab some of the tokens. But check the liquidity on OKEx and Poloniex to see if you may incur more costs buying from the platforms.
What to Do With UMA tokens?
If you’ve managed to grab some UMA tokens, there are lots of benefits for you. The first place to use your acquisition is in the governance of UMA protocol. Also, it enables users to operate UMA DVM.
Holding the tokens qualifies you to earn some rewards. There are two options for you hers. You can vote on a “price request” from the financial contract. Also, support the system upgrades on the protocol, even for parameter changes.
After voting for the financial contract price requests, you can make inflationary rewards. The rewards will be based on how much you used to vote or stake.
UMA Cryptocurrency Wallet
UMA wallet is a mono wallet used to store, send, receive, and generally manage all UMA tokens. It is one of the ERC-20 Defi tokens designed on Ethereum. So, storing it is easy and simple.
UMA’s easy storage feature enables it to be stored almost in all wallets with Ethereum assets support. Examples of such wallets include Metamask, the commonly used web wallet for easy interaction with (DeFi) protocols.
Other UMA crypto wallets are; Exodus (mobile & desktop), Trezor and ledger(hardware), and Atomi Wallet (mobile & desktop.
UMA tokens can be bought from normal exchanges. The major exchanges where UMA are traded currently include; Coinbase Exchange, OKEx, Huobi Global, ZG.com, and Binance exchange. Others are listed on the cryptocurrency exchange page.
UMA Development Timeline
The beginnings of this protocol weren’t so interesting. People did not mind it much until the release of its token, which they could trade. UMA token was representing the largest stocks in the United States.
After launching the protocol in 2019, the project gained more credence. But in 2020, the project became popular when it created the first “Priceless Synthetic” token. UMA called the token ETHBTC, and it was to track the ETH vs. BTC performance. After the synthetic token, the protocol developed its yield token, which they called yUSD.
All these have been the movement of the UMA protocol, as we’ve uncovered in this UMA review. But the first roadmap they targeted last year was to appear on Coinbase. As of press time, Coinbase is supporting UMA. Anyone can buy, trade, sell or hold it on the exchange.
What products support UMA?
Send/Receive
Trading
Coinbase
✔
✔
Pro
✔
✔
Wallet
✔
✖️
What regions support UMA?
US
NY
CAN
EU
UK
DE
SG
JP
Coinbase
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✖️
Pro
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✖️
Wallet
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✖️
Crypto to fiat trading pairs
US
UK
EU
USD
✔
✖️
✖️
GBP
✖️
✔
✖️
EUR
✖️
✔
✔
Note: Coinbase Wallet does not support direct bank transactions. You’ll need to transfer your crypto to Coinbase.com or send it to an external address in order to cash out.
Note: Only assets hosted on the Ethereum blockchain can be converted through the Coinbase Wallet mobile app at this time. Learn more about trading on Coinbase Wallet.
