Launched in April 2018, Energi describes itself as a Proof of Stake cryptocurrency featuring decentralized governance, masternodes, and a treasury that funds a team of professionals. With a smart contract platform upgrade slated for Q4 2019, Energi 3.0 will leverage existing dApps written for Ethereum. Energi also purportedly features a Defense team of cybersecurity and investigative professionals that work with law enforcement to protect their user base from hackers and scammers. In the coming years, Energi seeks to retain thousands of full-time paid contributors and function as a global organization.
Recent Developments for Energi:
Energi has had a number of developments both technologically and business-wise over the 2019 calendar year. Recently there has been the successful transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake in February. The benefits of the new PoS consensus model include being more energy efficient, a reduction in centralization risks, and a more flexible design allowing incentivized opportunities to a wider group of users – and members with just 1 NRG can begin staking! You can learn more about the transition here.
Currently the yearly ROI is around 67%, however it will decrease over time with more NRG being staked. You can test out the calculator to find out the estimated rewards here and take notice of the PoS reward comparison chart below which shows other projects' ROI.
Roadmap and Vision for the Future:
Energi has a lot planned moving forward. With the aim to expand their team to fill out operational capacity, they are seeking to efficiently retain over 100 active contributors within two years of launch – all funded through their treasury. With the current team sitting at around 30 full-time and part-time contributors, this will be a large growth in the firepower behind the scenes.
With Energi 3.0 planned for Q4 2019, this will include the transition to a more robust smart contract platform blockchain with the existing treasury and governance model, which will allow it to be compatible with dApps written for Ethereum and allow them to simply port over to the new Energi platform.
The Treasury System:
With the robust treasury creating a self-sustainable ecosystem of paid developers and defense workers preventing hacking and scammers, the budget will also be allocated towards helping start-ups looking to develop dApps on Energi and to create an incubator program planned for Q4 2019. Here is an example of the defense team at work.
Energi’s treasury system sets itself as the strongest out of any cryptocurrency in the market. Every month, 1 million new Energi are released, of which 40% goes to the treasury. At the current rate, this equates to over $2,000,000 USD monthly budget. The comparison chart below helps visualize how large the difference in treasury is compared to other even larger market cap projects.
Masternodes:
The masternodes are a special full node that provides a second tier of consensus services and governance for the Energi network. Like stakers, masternodes are incentivized for providing services to the network. While both play a role in blockchain security, a masternode can provide many other services to the network as well. Masternode services include managing the decentralized governance, voting on how to best utilize treasury funding, helping validate the blockchain, providing a faster sync to new clients, and scaling transaction capacity. Anyone with 10,000 NRG can run a masternode.
With the masternodes being rewarded 40% of all new NRG coins, the rewards were delayed until 150 days after the network went live to allow for greater Energi distribution. Currently the ROI is around 80% on NRG; however, rewards will gradually decline over time as more masternodes come online. You can see a comparison of the Energi masternodes ROI against other projects.
Energi will also be supporting start-ups looking to develop on the Energi platform and help provide user protection to dApp users with the defense team, along with providing engineering and marketing support. In Q2 of 2019, Energi Core (which is the primary group working for Energi) begins work on ‘Energi X’ – a zero-fee futures exchange which is aiming to rival BitMEX and now Binance, with its primary trading pair being NRG. The tentative release date for the Energi X platform is Q3 2020.
