 Dear COTI community,
We follow the market and news like everyone else and it is now clear the COVID-19 virus will have a significant negative impact on businesses, economies and society as a whole over the coming months. In the payments world, we have seen giants of the space — VISA, Mastercard and PayPal — all issue warnings about a predicted decline in their businesses during this crisis time and the recession or even depression that may follow.
While this status report will deal with COTI’s business operations, our entire team would like to communicate our thoughts and best wishes to all of our community members and their families during these trying times.
In this status report, we’ll cover:- The status of our operation and network through a global pandemic
- How we’re securing our runway
- Our Roadmap and what we’re building over the coming months
The status of COTI’s operations and networkMaintaining our operations through a global pandemic
From a business perspective, COTI is in a somewhat unique position, as being a technology based business, we can continue to operate at almost maximum capacity by moving our workforce to remote access. In fact, with the COVID-19 lockdown now active in Israel, we have already done exactly that and it is now business as usual, at least as much as it can be, in the midst of a global pandemic.
Our processing volume is based on online merchants and will continue to grow
A majority of our merchants are online merchants and as such, their businesses and processing revenue have declined less as compared to many traditional businesses over the past month, as effects from the COVID-19 start to impact industry across the world. These same businesses are in an advantageous position compared to traditional business, as many consumers and businesses now turn to online purchasing, processing and entertainment to keep themselves occupied or operating while not being able to leave their homes.
These merchants pay their fees as a percentage of the overall transactions they continue to process on the COTI network, denoted in FIAT and paid with COTI.
This means two important things:
1.COTI’s revenue is more sustainable and resilient compared to traditional businesses
2. Merchants now need to buy more COTI to pay the same FIAT fees.
As we continue to onboard new merchants that were in our pipeline before the pandemic, we foresee that our network will continue to grow, even in these challenging times.Securing our runwayCOTI was rapidly growing before COVID-19 and we had already secured our runway via our various revenue streams for at least the next 12 months. However with projections of a global recession as a result of COVID-19 that could last for 18–24 months, our priority over the past two weeks has been to secure COTI’s runway even further into the future, making sure that whatever the circumstance, COTI can continue to operate.
As such, we are happy to announce that we have secured a $3.5M USD follow up investment in COTI from a group of our existing investors.
Being able to secure funds and runway during a time of crisis is a sign of strength and we are grateful to have an opportunity that not all businesses get during these troubled times.
This investment will allow COTI to operate at full capacity, to continue our growth and leverage new opportunities regardless of global market conditions.
The investors will buy tokens both from COTI’s treasury and from the open market.
180M tokens will be bought from COTI’s treasury for $2.5M USD. These tokens will be bought at a premium to market price to the day of agreement (March 18th), demonstrating trust in the future of the COTI coin.
Another $1M USD, completing the $3.5M USD investment, will be used to buy coins from the open market, effective immediately and for a period of no longer than 6 months.
While the $2.5M USD capital injection will be used to fund COTI’s operations, a large portion, 47M out of the 180M tokens is contributed from the team’s future compensation allocation. The team has made this sacrifice to facilitate this deal and to further prove commitment to the company’s goals. The remaining 133M tokens will be sold from the Incentive allocation.
We have not taken this decision lightly, as one of the inevitable outcomes of it is immediately increasing the circulating supply we presented in January. After careful consideration and long conversations with the investors, we are sure that they are as committed as the team to our goals and are long term holders.
In fact, they have allowed us to make their wallet address public. We’ll publish this address via our Telegram ANN channel soon after this announcement.
It’s important to note that their financial commitment of paying premium to the market price and, of course, the immediate injection of $1M USD demand to the open market, speaks louder than words.Roadmap — what’s to comeOur staking 2.0 model ready for release
Our new staking model allows for a much higher staking volume, which enables many more users to participate in the staking program. If you were on one of our waiting lists, you’ll be able to stake soon. If you’re currently staking, you’ll soon be able to stake a much more substantial amount.
With staking 2.0, we have revamped some of our technology stack to support the new model, specifically, we have upgraded our Transaction Distribution Model, the algorithm that selects which node to use for a transaction. This means that this algorithm will now prefer nodes with higher staking volumes, as an addition to the parameters it currently uses (like trust score, fees and more).
Of course, we’ll also be introducing an exchange based staking model as part of staking 2.0 and we expect this new staking model to lock up a much more substantial amount of our supply than the previous model.
The model is now circulating between trusted partners for their feedback and we expect to present it in the first week of April.
Our tech roadmap has undergone a long awaited update and is ready to release
Our ability to process credit cards and crypto with instant settlement has created multiple opportunities with merchants that would be beneficial to the COTI ecosystem as a whole, from token holders, to merchants to the company itself, opportunities like the recently announced Blockchain Dollars and MyFirstWallet merchant case studies.
We’ll be releasing our updated tech road map next week and that will expand upon these merchant opportunities and give COTI the ability to remain reactive during uncertain times.
Continued new listing opportunities for COTI
While we can’t top the Binance listing in terms of volume, new listing opportunities will address certain niches or geographical locations. We obviously won’t be giving dates — but Binance wasn’t our last listing this year.Last thoughtsIn these trying times, we thank all of our community for their continued support and again communicate our thoughts and well wishes to our community and their friends and families.
Our operations continue as strong as ever during challenging times for our world.
Our roadmap is set to leverage growth opportunities and to continue to release groundbreaking technologies.
As with every crisis, there will be opportunities and winners coming out of it. We want to make certain that COTI and our community are those winners.
Stay safe, stay COTI!
COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf      Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Abstract
Staking 2.0 is coming very soon. One key technological upgrade that we have implemented is a new algorithm to pick the nodes that will process a transaction and collect the fees. This document introduces COTI transaction distribution model and outlines how transactions are propagated and spread between the Full Nodes. The new model defines how the probabilistic of transactions are set within the network and introduces the metrics used and taken into account by the node manager to balance and set the fairness factors while choosing the full node that will process transactions and collect the fees.
Introduction
The COTI network uses a transparent and equitable fee model. All fees are collected by Full Nodes (decentralised servers run by users in the COTI network). Each node charges a fee that is in part determined by the node operator itself. Some nodes may set a higher fee if they believe they provide a good service; other nodes may charge less or possibly nothing. The price charged by a node for its services should be equitable, publicly available and compliant with common network rules. The network rules will also be used to define a ceiling for fees (there will be no minimum fee).
The fee collected from each transaction is sent automatically to the Node’s wallet (it is a part of COTI transaction model) and can not be redistributed. For this reason, the only way we can ensure node operators to have fair income, is to send transactions to be processed to nodes in a pseudorandom manner, and shape the probability distribution so all node operators would have fair revenue generated, proportional to their stakes, reliability, trust score and node performance.
COTI Network Transactions
In the COTI network, transactions are created according to several patterns defined by the transaction type. The most common types are payment for goods or services, remittance payments and singular transfers (wallet transfers).
In the first two cases, a transaction originator creates a payment request, and the transaction is created according to it. The transaction originator must input the Full Node address in the payment request in order to pre-select the node (a Full Node is selected by users for any wallet based transfers). COTI provides an automated tool for Full Node selection, enabling a merchant, or any other transaction originator, to choose nodes according to a specific criteria. Full Nodes can also be run on a merchant’s own Full Node, or by using one known to the merchant.
By running a node, the node operator supplies useful resources to the network: CPU, memory, storage and network bandwidth. Usually, these resources are not free, so the node operator should be compensated. The node operator’s investments should generate a reasonable revenue. Therefore, Full Node operators receive Full Node fee collected from transactions received from user wallets. The more transactions Full Node processes, the more it earns.
Full Node operators set fees autonomously, which makes setting competitive fee structures important. If a user knows a Full Node with a better price list, it can be re-selected when sending transactions.
Distribution Model
The new distribution model takes into account several independent factors to ensure fair spread of transactions between the nodes which does not rely solely on one aspect or favor nodes only based on their stake percent.
The distribution model factors which are taking into account consist of:
1.Reliability measurement of the node — this parameter analyzes and takes into account the reliability of the node and its performance. Node Reliability Metrics is a numeric evaluation of the node based on its work history.
2.Amount staked — the amount staked on each node influences the amount of transactions sent to the node and the total fees it will collect. It is important to note that each node will be capped with maximum staking allowed on a given node to make sure that a fair distribution is set for every given node within the network.
3.The TrustScore of the node — the trust score of the node reflects the trustworthiness of the node within the network and it is a measurement which is taken into account to define the weight of transaction sent to it.
4.Transaction amount processed through the node (age) — the age of the node is an important factor as more time in the network defines the node reliability.
5.Load balancing/PoT — Limits the ability of one node controlling the network
6.Node Uptime — As part of defining the reliability of nodes the model measures the uptime and availability of the node.
The node manager is responsible for monitoring the node performance while other parameters are analyzed and monitored by other components in the network.
Model definition
The definition of COTI model distribution assume the following:
1.There is a stable flow of independent transactions based on: merchants transaction, network transaction, bridge transaction and staking transaction (Poisson distribution).
2.In the COTI network there are N Full Nodes which are available and capable of processing transactions.
3.Nodes collect income from transactions they process and set their fees. For simplicity, we assume that the income is proportional to the number of transactions processed in the network.
4.For a transaction originator (sender), there is no difference, which node processes the transaction other than the fees paid for the processing itself.
5.A full node is responsible for propagating and processing transactions by providing his resources to the network.
6.If a user tries to connect to a full node which is down or doing a restart, it can create poor user experience and should affect this node future distributions of transactions.
7.Full nodes set the fee level for transaction, including fee percent, minimum and maximum fee.
8.To be eligible to participate in the transaction fee distribution, full nodes have to stake deposits (either on their own or via delegating the staking to their community members).
9.The fee distribution between full nodes should be fair, taking into account node reliability, node staking and several other factors.
10.The distribution of transactions should be automatic and in a manner which can not be hacked or bypassed in dishonest and cheatable ways.
Distribution Model RulesThe distribution model rules consist of the following:  Due to the decentralized nature of the network, nodes can cheat by giving COTI node manager one fee level and generating fee base transactions for users with another fee. This unfair behaviour is easily detectable by monitoring transactions and leads to punishing nodes in both Reliability Metrics and Trust score.
Node Reliability Metrics is a numeric evaluation of the node based on its work history and performance.
Transaction Distribution Model
When a merchant requests a full node list for the transaction, the Node Manager recommends a node. The merchant is free to change the recommendation, but, if the node uses the standard level of the fee, there is no real motivation to do it. Merchant transactions, COTI Bridge and other automatic transaction generators always use recommended nodes.
 Node Reliability Metrics
The Node Reliability Metrics arenumerical metrics calculated using the weighted formula: where:
1. The node uptime rate
The standard uptime rate for a node is supposed to be 99%. The Reliability Metrics takes this rate as a neutral point. If a node shows less uptime, the Reliability Metrics is decreased in accordance to the following contribution formula: The weight for uptime contribution is set to 10
2. The node downtime events
For node downtime events we use a formula with saturation: The weight for server fails is set to -10
3. The node restarts events
For node restarts we also use a formula with saturation, but using a different weight: The weight for node restarts is set to -1
4. The node incorrect/bad behaviour events
This part of calculation punishes the node for any cheating attempts. There is no saturation and the weight is very negative: The weight for dishonest behavior records is set to -100, so it effectively stops the node from participating in transaction processing, till the record is decayed.
Summary
COTI Staking mechanism ensures fair distribution and operation of Full node within the network and introduces a mechanism which relies on many factors and maintains fairness within the COTI ecosystem. The new distribution mechanism enforces any cheating attempts to collect more fees from the network and verifies that participants (rich and poor) get a fair chance and amount from the network activity and transaction flow. Written by Dr. Nir Haloani, COTI’s CTO. |
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 Following our recent announcement about the Claim option being available for stakers, we are happy to share that we fully completed the Staking v1.0 dashboard, with the Unstake button available as well.
Active stakers in the COTI network will be able to unstake at any moment through their MainNet wallet, starting this week.
Although you may unstake your coins at any given moment, note that the coins will be actually unstaked by the end of each payment cycle, as appears in your wallet.
Important: as a MainNet node operator, of any kind, unstaking makes you ineligible to run a node.
Continue reading to learn how this option works.
To unstake:1. Login to the COTI MainNet wallet.
2. Click Unstake: A message stating that you will be unstaked in the next payment cycle appears: 3. Click Confirm.
4. Once you have unstaked, you can not stake again until the next cycle.
Soon we’ll be releasing COTI’s Staking v2.0. You’ll be able to stake more, through our wallet and from exchanges. Stay tuned for the release and full details.
If you’re interested in joining one of our Community Nodes (Wolf, CryptoDaku, and tehMoonwalkeR), refer to this article.
To find out more about COTI’s Staking model and rewards, check out the following articles:COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 We are pleased to announce that the Claim-Option feature of COTI’s Staking mechanism is finally available.
Active stakers in the COTI network can now claim their rewards through their MainNet wallet.
See the following sections for how this option works.
Receiving Rewards
Rewards are processed once a month.
COTI guarantees a minimum level of income for advanced and community MainNet stakers per annum, on a monthly basis. If the received income from the processed transactions does not meet the ensured return, COTI covers the deficit.
To receive your rewards, you must claim your coins by clicking the CLAIM button. This option will be available in the last week of each month: The specific period you can claim your rewards in will appear in the staking section in your wallet. Please note that if you don’t claim your rewards within the claim window (the last week of the month) your rewards will be reset and you won’t be able to claim them for that month. If you are a part of a community node, the remaining rewards will be split between those who have claimed their rewards.Conditions to receiving your stake rewards:
- Your node’s uptime should be at least 95%. In the case your node doesn’t meet the minimum uptime, you will only be eligible for fees collected during your uptime but not for the guaranteed node return.
- A registered MainNet wallet.
- You have completed the KYC process
- You must stake your coins for the entire payment cycle to be eligible for rewards.
- At this stage, TestNet operators will receive their rewards automatically in the first week of each month, without the need to claim it before.
Stay tuned! The Unstake option will soon be available directly from your MainNet wallet.
In addition, we remind you that we’ll be soon releasing COTI’s Staking v2.0. You’ll be able to stake more, through our wallet but also from exchanges. More to come on that.
For those interested to join one of our Community Node (Wolf, CryptoDaku, and tehMoonwalkeR) please refer to this article.
To find out more about COTI’s Staking model and rewards, please read the following articles:COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Introduction
COTI have been working with merchants since the launch of our MainNet, increasing the utility and organic demand for our native COTI coin.
The monthly volume of merchant processing has already reached over $5M USD and is steadily growing. This week alone we have announced two new merchants (MyFirstWallet, Blockchain Dollars) and have also recently launched credit card processing activities, that allow us to onboard a host of new merchants, significantly increasing our processing volume on the COTI network. This Explorer upgrade is just the first upgrade designed to bring greater transparency to our network and network operations.
All activities, including merchant transactions, can now be tracked on the new Explorer, alongside other activities such as staking, bridge movements, and all other network transactions.
TLDR of COTI network operations on the new Explorer - The Trustchain Data Structure
The Trustchain is COTI’s ledger and holds our entire network activity as a whole Cluster in a DAG data structure.
The transactions on the Trustchain can largely be broken down to: (i) standard wallet-to-wallet transactions; (ii) merchant’s transactions (as explained below); (iii) bridge transactions (interoperability); (iv) staking transactions; and (v) zero-spend transactions (own-initiated transactions for network maintenance in order to help facilitate faster consensus).
Occasionally, the Trustchain undergoes a cluster stamp, an automated process which prevents the growing Cluster from becoming unmanageable in storage size. Following the creation and verification of a Cluster Stamp, the whole cluster is stored in the COTI History Nodes.
COTI’s Explorer (https://explorer.coti.io) is the tool that allows viewing all current and past transactions of each cluster on the Trustchain, as well as other useful information.
New Explorer Tool
We’re proud to announce that a new version of the explorer is now live with new added features. The key feature is the ability to filter the transactions according to their type:
(i) Merchant’s transactions — the latest transaction associated with merchants
(ii) Bridge transactions — the latest transaction associated with the conversion to the interoperability tokens (ERC-20 + BEP2)
(iii) Staking transactions — the latest transaction associated with COTI’s staking
(iv) All transactions (standard transactions) — no change, as it is today Detailed Explanation of The Type of Transactions That Can Be TrackedMerchants’ Transactions
COTI provides technological infrastructure for payment processing operation and adheres to various regulations protecting transactions’ privacy, therefore it is not in a position to make its merchants’ identity public, unless specifically requested to do so by a merchant. Additionally, as a fast growing start-up competing in the highly lucrative payment sphere, it makes a better business practice to protect trade secrets like rates and clients.
That said, we have now made it easier to track merchants’ volume/activity on the Trustchain, by introducing two types of merchant transactions that appear in the block explorer:- Merchant revenue transaction: COTI mirrors a real world fiat or Crypto transaction that it processed between a consumer and a merchant, such as credit card processing for example. Recording the entire transaction on the Trustchain adds transparency to all parties involved, while maintaining necessary privacy. It serves as a proof of transaction and a basis for an instant settlement. Furthermore, the transaction and the data it holds could potentially serve as the basis for an array of financial instruments like working capital loans, saving accounts and more. Thus, if $1,000 were processed through a credit card transaction, the equivalent amount of COTIs will appear on the Trustchain as a merchant transaction. The benefit for coin holders is obvious, of course, as the entire volume of the transaction is processed on the Trustchain, generating fees for node operators and stakers.
 - Merchant fee transaction: COTI’s merchants pay transaction fees in COTI coin for the service rendered to them, like in the case when COTI processes a cryptocurrency transaction for a merchant in exchange for a small fee. Merchants are required to pay their fees only with COTI’s native coin, which are acquired from the open market. These fees appear on the Trustchain as merchant transactions. Thus, for example, if 1 BTC (at a $10,000 value) was processed for a merchant in exchange for a 1% fee, then a transaction of 100$ worth of COTI (5,000 COTI at a value of $0.02, for example) will be created in the Trustchain. The added value for COTI holders is obvious, as merchants add fresh demand for the native coin in the market.
 Bridge Transactions
COTI’s application is built in a way that provides the flexibility in supporting the core level and ledger layer of today’s most popular and promising infrastructures, such as Ethereum and Binance Chain. In the COTI ecosystem, the core application layer supports more than one infrastructure through a dedicated bridge that can be embedded as an off-the-shelf solution independent of COTI’s core infrastructure and solutions. We have now made it easier to track all our bridge activities on the Trustchain and differentiate the transactions associated with interoperability and cross chain activities. Please refer to the following links for more information on interoperability and COTI bridge:
COTI Interoperability and Universal Payment Solution by Dr. Nir Haloani
COTI ERC-20 Token Interoperability
COTI’s Cross Chain Bridge — TutorialStaking Transactions
COTI’s staking model was designed and built according to a decentralized finance (DeFi) income model by incentivizing network participants such as node operators with a competitive compensation for their contribution to the transaction approval process in the network.
All nodes (Basic/Advance/Community) are required to stake a certain amount of COTI native coins to participate in the network, as per the specific requirements of each type of node. We have now made it easier to monitor the staking-related transactions on the Trustchain by differentiating them from the other transactions. Please refer to the following links for more information on nodes and staking at COTI:
Staking at COTI v1.00 - Guide
Nodes and StakingSummary
Our predicted growth in merchants’ activities and overall usage is a great opportunity to coin holders as it grows demand and staking rewards. We are introducing a new Explorer tool to allow tracking the Trustchain activities to grow our transparency accordingly. The introduction of credit card processing is expected to significantly grow the usage and holds a great opportunity to our community.
Stay COTI!COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Introduction
COTI was contracted as a technology provider to create Blockchain Dollars, a wallet and payment system, using FIAT and stable coins, that allows gaming merchants to accept stable coins as a form of payment based on a white-label version of COTI’s payment infrastructure.
This deal is signed and the product will launch in July, with the first casino already signed up to accept Blockchain Dollars as a form of payment.
The first casino to use Blockchain Dollars is processing more than $10M a month. We’re also already in talks with several other casinos to use Blockchain Dollars and will be aggressively marketing this product to the gaming industry as a whole, once we have a live product in the market.
Our long term goal is for Blockchain Dollars to become both synonymous with, and the payment method of choice, for the online gaming industry.
The casino name will be announced close to launch to keep our competitive edge in this competitive market.
Problem
The online gaming market is a massive global industry, with an annual turnover of over $50B USD. Online casinos are considered high-risk merchants by all of the credit card networks, despite being fully regulated and compliant. Even the bigger names in the industry, publicly listed companies, like 888 and Betway, fall under this high-risk category.
This leads to numerous issues with accepting credit cards, restricting the merchants’ ability to maximize their revenue, while incurring high fees and limiting access both to and for consumers.
Many solutions have been developed over time as, due to the high revenues involved, the gaming industry presents a very lucrative opportunity for payment providers. However, most, if not all solutions are all based on the traditional payment rails, limiting innovation to be on top of old rails. So, whenever a new solution arises, it has to be built on top of the credit card networks, remaining with the same set of problems. It is very difficult so save the processing costs when you are using the same credit card networks or asses risk differently when risk is determined by the credit card processor anyway.
Solution
Using COTI’s white-labelled payment infrastructure, we are creating Blockchain Dollars, a wallet that allows the user to buy, hold and transfer stable coins. We have designed a slick custodian wallet with intuitive UI so that users that have no experience with cryptocurrencies will be able to use it with ease.
We are then integrating our own FIAT on-ramp, which has recently been upgraded to allow the processing of credit cards. The merchant gains access to an off-ramp with 35 fiat currencies, so both the consumer and the merchant can sell stable coins to FIAT. We also have our merchant tools, including our merchant CRM, and have created an API that allows any gaming merchant to integrate their existing technology with Blockchain Dollars easily.
Transactions will be mirrored to the Trustchain allowing the merchant instant settlement and increased transparency.
Advantages for the Merchant
With Blockchain Dollars, merchants can process more transactions from more consumers than they previously could, increasing the merchants’ revenue.
By using stable coins, the merchant no longer has to worry about or carry the cost of chargebacks on legacy payment rails.
The increased transparency, provided by the Trustchain, creates more trust between the merchant and its prospective clients and consumers. Consumers no longer need to fear that a merchant will deny receiving payment.
Lastly, the “instant settlement” feature is wonderful for gaming merchants, as they are accustomed to being paid late due to their high-risk categorisation.
It’s important to note that the solution will not be available where gambling is illegal, of course.
Business Model
Merchants pay a processing fee for each on/off ramp transaction as well as a network fee for using the Trustchain.
Total available processing volume is up to $120M a year with the first client and of course, this volume will be dramatically higher as we onboard further casinos.Benefits for COTI holders
- All fees are paid with COTI coins, growing the demand in the open market for COTI’s native coin.
- All transactions are mirrored to the Trustchain, generating extra fees for stakers and node operators.
- The high risk space is perfectly ripe for cryptocurrencies. We expect more gaming merchants to accept Blockchain Dollars after the initial product launch, greatly growing revenue past through our network.
This type of solution is demonstrative of both the technological and strategic approach we have taken in targeting high risk merchants and the many industries contained within that categorisation. It further validates our overall business model and shows the demand that exists outside of the crypto ecosystem for the type of products and innovations we are able to support and develop by using our blockchain and merchant tools.
Every new use case in the many high risk industries we target has the ability to significantly increase the revenue processed on our network. This benefits merchants, consumers, token holders, node operators, and stakers as well as COTI as a company.
Shahaf Bar-Geffen, COTI’s CEO:
“Blockchain Dollars is a game changer for the revenue driven gaming industry. The first casino to be launched in July will grow our revenue and volume substantially and we expect more and more casinos to integrate with Blockchain Dollars, further validating our white-label strategy.
All fees, paid with COTI coins, will fuel our open market coin purchase program and the
transactions mirrored to the Trustchain will increase the overall network turnover and rewards for node operators and stakers.”
We’ll be posting further updates about Blockchain Dollars in the coming months and will also be revealing the casino name closer to launch.COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 We have the pleasure to announce that a new Advanced node is now live!
The Advanced node will be operated by both Bitcoin Brown and Lucky, two valuable and trusted COTI supporters. They will both operate the node called LLBB under one stake of 250K COTI which will give them a guaranteed 25% return per annum.
You can see the node live here.
Bitcoin brown:
"Firstly, I can’t begin to express how happy I am to be part of the ever growing COTI community.
Secondly, to then have the opportunity to help increase the network growth by being a node runner alongside my brother Lucky, as well as watch the progression in such a short space of time has been overwhelming to say the least.
Not only have they got millions in USD and of course COTI running through the network monthly, they also have an incredible team and one of the best communities around.
I personally think DAG technology is going to be the future, and COTI is inline to be front runners #STAYCOTI."
Lucky:
"Proud and humbled to be selected as one of the MainNet Node operators of COTI. It’s given me great honor to be involved from these infancy stages of the COTI ecosystem. The message is clear. This is more than your typical “theoretical project with an idea”, it’s a fully live DAG MainNet already processing millions of USD in COTI transactions per month — AND it is possible to view via the COTI explorer. In my honest opinion, it is one of the most undervalued in the space and we are huge advocates of COTI. To have been given the opportunity to run a node and contribute to the network growth alongside Bitcoin Brown is the most humbling recognition of our contributions to the COTI community and ecosystem. STAY COTI!"COTI uses a lot of precautions, making sure to keep the network sustainable, taking in mind profitability, circulating supply and transaction demand. We hope to ensure that nodes are quite profitable for the holders and also in line with our long term objectives. We will continue to introduce new nodes into the MainNet every month at a pace of 1–2 nodes per month.
With that said, another Advanced Node will be announced in the coming days.
For those interested to join one of our Community Node (Wolf, CryptoDaku, and tehMoonwalkeR) please refer to this article.COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Introduction
COTI was contracted as a technology partner by MyFirstWallet to develop a payment system, using FIAT and BTC, utilising some of the white-labeled elements of COTI’s payment infrastructure.
The product has recently launched and is already generating revenue.
Problem
The merchant wanted to accept Bitcoin, but found that their users became very confused with opening an account on exchanges, or handling a BTC wallet and safeguarding their own keys.
The merchant was looking to develop a solution to allow its user base to buy, hold, send and sell Bitcoin. They also additionally required a FIAT on ramp to accept credit cards in order to buy the BTC.
Solution
Using COTI’s white-labeled payment infrastructure we were able to quickly launch a BTC wallet for the merchant. We have designed the wallet to be very easy to understand for non savvy users and have made it a custodian wallet so the users won’t need to handle their keys. We then integrated a FIAT on-ramp, using VISA and Mastercard networks, through our partnership with Simplex and a FIAT off-ramp for 35 fiat currencies. We have also integrated our Merchant tools, including our Merchant CRM, so that the merchant can better manage their incoming revenue. MyFirstWallet overview page
 MyFirstWallet activity page
One cool feature that we have added is PayPal-like “payment requests”, where the merchant can send a customer a request for payment in BTC, which is then executed with one click by the consumer. MyFirstWallet payment request popup
Finally, we have put the entire process on the Trustchain so that the merchant will have access both for instant settlement and for Defi products, like working capital loans.
Advantages For the Merchant
The merchant was pleased to learn that the adoption for the wallet was better than expected and that the wallet is doing what its name applies: being the first cryptocurrency wallet for users.
For COTI, as cryptocurrencies advocates, it’s always exciting to be able to introduce new people to cryptocurrencies.
The processing revenue is in constant growth, allowing the merchant to grow their business.
A great advantage for the merchant, that came to them as a surprise, was the introduction of “instant settlement” — being paid right away and not after a few days/weeks. The opportunity that positive cash flows brings to businesses is huge.
As the merchant gradually grows their processing volume, all the financial data is stored on the Trustchain and analyzed via COTI’s Trustscore algorithm. When enough data is accumulated, the merchant will have access to Defi based loans, allowing them to grow their business even more.
Business Model
MyFirstWallet is paying a processing fee for each transaction with COTI coins.
Current processing run rate is hundreds of thousand USD per month, with double digit growth.Benefits For COTI Holders- All fees are paid with COTI coins, growing the demand in the open market for COTI’s native coin.
- All transactions are mirrored to the Trustchain, generating extra fees for stakers and node operators.
- Greater adoption to COTI’s technology and greater exposure grows our business and user base.
This type of technology integration is indicative of our whitelabel strategy approach for merchants. Past simply using the COTI network and our existing merchant toolset, because of the depth and flexibility of our payment infrastructure, we’re able to build bespoke payment solutions for enterprises that require branded solutions for distinct use cases.
This further extends the benefits described above for the network, network participants and the COTI coin as a whole, as COTI is paid directly in fiat to develop these bespoke solutions. This separates COTI from the majority of crypto projects as this means we are not reliant on selling our own token to fund our runway and we have multiple revenue streams that compliment the COTI ecosystem, including token holders, and COTI as a company.Shahaf Bar-Geffen, COTI’s CEO:
“We are pushing forward with our white-label strategy, allowing more merchants and development groups to have access to our core infrastructure. With a single signed deal, we can have access to a huge user base, rapidly growing our adoption rate.
MyFirstWallet is generating processing fees, paid with COTI coins through our recently announced coin purchase program.
All transactions on MyFirstWallet are mirrored to the Trustchain, increasing the overall network turnover and usage, hence the increased rewards for node operators and stakers.
You can rely on our sales team to sign more deals in the foreseeable future”.MyFirstWallet is now available on https://myfirstwallet.io/
See you soon with our next Merchant case study.COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 They say in crypto you haven’t made it until you’ve been “FUDDED”…While we prefer to stay “above the FUD” at COTI, there are occasions in which FUD must be addressed directly. Some of our community members have brought to our attention a recent “review” of COTI with several misconceptions, misconstructions and general lack of understanding of how our blockchain and distributed tech actually works.
We take any constructive criticism seriously and aspire to learn everyday. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with this “review” and probably and the intention of the “reviewer” isn’t to seek truth, but to raise FUD. The claims made in this review are ridiculous at best however as they deal with accusations regarding our network security, how we secure our network and your funds, it’s important they are addressed.
Feel free to use all or parts of this document so spread the truth and stop the FUD.   To begin with, the review was made on an outdated version of our code. The two repositories that the reviewer are referring to are not the latest ones (a simple question to the dev team could have cleared that up). The latest branch is “dev” which includes all of the latest source code and progress.
This is a link to latest code -
https://github.com/coti-io/coti-node (branch dev)
We clearly communicated our coding approach and how to read our Github in the following article, however it looks like the author of the “review” missed reading this as part of his “research” — https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-development-best-practices-how-to-read-our-code-and-github-69bce3da41e3
On COTI, the seed phrase is not generated on the server side, it is not sent anywhere and only used locally together with the private key to encrypt all the messages sent from the wallet to the network. The seed phrase is generated on the client’s side. Each CPS user gets a one time use server side secret key after they are authenticated, and they concatenate their client secret key to the server side secret key to generate a seed phrase locally.
Again, unfortunately the author of this review also didn’t read the below article, released in May of 2019, which clearly states how seed phrases are generated on our network —
https://medium.com/cotinetwork/how-coti-is-securing-our-blockchain-and-non-blockchain-infrastructure-2980af2226dd
As stated above, the seed phrase is not generated on the server side and the way it is generated fully defines it as a random variable. Each address gets a private key that is generated by concatenating the seed phase and addressIndex. It is only then run through the keccak256 hash algorithm in order to get keys with 32 bytes (longer keys means more protection). As such the keccak256 hash algorithm has NOTHING to do with the randomisation of the seed phrase, it simply reduces the already, and correctly generated, seed phrase and addressIndex combo into a 32 byte private key.
Randomisation occurs, as it does on Bitcoin and Ethereum by using elliptic curve algorithm to generate the user private keys. As the user chooses a phrase which is then concatenated and combined with 32 bytes of keccak256 it is generated in a random manner, as shown in the code below - “In essence, the means $COTI uses to generate wallet addresses in their code is nowhere near safe or standardized…”All communication with the COTI network is encrypted using the private key of the user and signed using both the private key and the seed phrase, so all messages sent from the wallet are validated and no spoofing or manipulation is possible. In addition, all communication between all parties on the COTI network is secured with SSL.
It is important to note that our way of generating addresses is almost the same as both Bitcoin and Ethereum are using to generate addresses and it is a mean standard.
You can refer to the following to see how Ethereum address and key generation works — https://kobl.one/blog/create-full-ethereum-keypair-and-address/
Again, if the reviewer had bothered communicating with the dev team it would have saved them the embarrassment of calling Bitcoin and Ethereum non standard…
As you can see, addresses on the COTI network are generated using the same method as both Bitcoin and Ethererum. Ethereum standard is to use the secp256k1 curve. The same curve is used by Bitcoin. There are three main steps to get from private -> address in Ethereum/Bitcoin/COTI:
1. Create a random private key (64 (hex) characters / 256 bits / 32 bytes)
2. Derive the public key from this private key (128 (hex) characters / 512 bits / 64 bytes)
3. Derive the address from this public key. (40 (hex) characters / 160 bits / 20 bytes)
And the process for generating addresses from public key is also the same:
1. Start with the public key (128 characters / 64 bytes)
2. Take the Keccak-256 hash of the public key. You should now have a string that is 64 characters / 32 bytes. (note: SHA3–256 eventually became the standard, but Ethereum uses Keccak)
3. Take the last 40 characters / 20 bytes of this public key (Keccak-256). Or, in other words, drop the first 24 characters / 12 bytes. These 40 characters / 20 bytes are the address. When prefixed with 0x it becomes 42 characters long. Is it real life? Or is it just fantasy?
Regarding the above statement, isn’t it the concept of a decentralized network to be public and open meaning all users transaction and chain info are stored transparently? Addresses and transaction data are all publicly queryable on the COTI network, without authentication, by design, in almost the exact same manner as they are on both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
In all public ledger networks anyone can view address balances, transactions and all history data related to it, but that obviously does not mean in any way that they have access to your wallet or can execute operations and transactions on one’s behalf as all operations are protected using the user seed and public/private keys. Again, this is the standard way for all cryptocurrencies projects which offer transparency of the network.
The wallet uses the users seed phrase to login to crypto-wallet.coti.io and locally generates the addresses contained within the wallet. It then asks for information from a decentralized network of full nodes to enquire about the users locally generated addresses and their status. This status includes…
Since requests to nodes on the network are created by combining the server side key (held by nodes, financial servers etc) and the users seed phrase and private key, it is IMPOSSIBLE to carry out a man in the middle attack. As was clarified above, the server side keys are used only to generate the user local key combined with private key (generated locally). Once the seed is generated and stored locally the server side key is not required anymore. In addition, for all validity of addresses balances there are further checks and balances from our DSP nodes (double spend protection nodes) that users CANNOT directly connect to.
The financial rules within this architecture are comparable to the Libra concept, in which the network is built in a sharding structure that consists of trusted nodes (higher trust score nodes) on the network. which allow full nodes operators to join the network and they are easily able verify and sync their data with the network.
The data that the financial node stores is similar to all the network operators and it is important to note that none of the nodes can generate or send transactions or change the transaction bundle as it requires users signature that anyone can verify but no-one other then the user wallet can generate. The financial node is also responsible for collecting network fees (not full node fees) and distributing them between the network
This is a totally safe and standard way of storing and sending information in the crypto world. The wallet itself is anonymous to the full node and no user information is kept on one entity which can reveal or risk the user information.
There are many nodes on the COTI network, Full nodes, DSP nodes, Trust Score nodes, History nodes and Financial nodes. By only looking at the role the Financial node plays in the overall network, this shows a distinct lack of understanding as how the COTI network works as a whole. Like Bitcoin’s ledger, all the information and data (addresses, transactions, balances) are stored on COTI DAG and it is stored on all the network nodes. Full nodes obviously communicate information via a websocket to COTI wallet that listen to their addresses (using SSL). So to get any address information does not require any authentication as the ledger is public.
For all transaction based operations in the network, a signature of the wallet is required to sign all messages and only the wallet can sign it correctly using the wallets private key, which each network entity checks and validates. Also all communication is sent via SSL.“We found out that they were hosting their site on Amazon and looked into the DNS records to figure out that more than likely they have their ‘financialserver’ that holds all of their users’ information on this very same server. Any attacker with a remedial amount of knowledge could probably attack the $COTI website and take it hostage.”[ b]Once again, no one entity holds or stores all information.[/b] Information is stored across all entities on the network, not only by financial nodes. The financial node is responsible for disputes, processing network fees and rolling reserves. There is no private information on the databases and no manipulation on the network can be done by gaining access to the financial server.
In addition, our Amazon hosting is secured by the highest Amazon secure management tools and our servers are distributed and clustered on their cloud.
Our website and other blockchain infrastructure DO NOT sit on the same server.
Regarding the vulnerabilities that would supposedly allow -
“any attacker with a remedial amount of knowledge could probably attack the $COTI website and take it hostage…From there, they could impersonate the site and take possession of the domain.”
These are the actual CVE’s being referred to - As you can see, the worst an attacker could possibly do with these, at the very worst, is crash the website. These are not vulnerabilities that would allow an attacker to take over, control or impersonate the website or web server. To say so demonstrates a lack of understanding as to how such exploits work and is disingenuous at best.
Ironically, the author’s old website shares the SAME CVE’s as the ones found on COTI’s website. It also shares the same hosting as the author’s new website (both sit on the IP address of 216.24.57.1 with a reverse DNS result of 216–24–57–1.ip.win.net). Using the author’s logic, this would leave their new site open to exploitation based by being able to access and exploit the old website that resides on the same server…As an aside, no data on the COTI network is stored as plaintext.
 We took the time to both write and READ our whitepaper…
The analogy between COTI and Bitcoin is a false analogy as we’re certainly not trying to be Bitcoin. Instead of a traditional blockchain ledger, we are building a DAG based network that unlike Bitcoin, allows for almost instantaneous, low cost transactions to be sent across our network, designed specifically for the use of enterprise and exposes COTI to a much wider audience and application than just crypto. Many of the challenges and problems in other blockchain protocols such as: scalability and fraudulent behavior are directly related to the “trustless” behavior of the network.
The bespoke Trustchain protocol we have created allows for the creation of a network in which trust is built, not assumed. Positive actions on the network increase an entity’s trust and this benefits the entity by lowering their cost of transaction and increasing the speed of confirmation on the network. This trustscore is used across other aspects of the network too, in time it will allow for greater and cheaper access to other financial products, like low interest loans or working capital for merchants,
While trustlessness works in some regards for crypto payments, in the world of merchants and consumers, where payment is just a small part of the relationship, trustlessness brings up another set of challenges. What happens when a consumer pays a merchant and doesn’t receive their goods, or the goods they receive are damaged? On COTI, each merchant has a “rolling reserve” of COTI coins in their account, which is directly impacted by their trustscore, a higher trustscore = less rolling reserve. If a transaction is disputed on our Network, it is sent to a decentralised arbitration panel where the dispute is resolved and funds are either released or returned, based on the panel’s finding. This is not possible on a network like Bitcoin, where transactions are final and there is no avenue for disputed transactions for consumers and merchants alike.
In this sense, we assign a functional level of trust to all participants on our network that is designed specifically for our use case. It is because of innovations such as these, that COTI is able to walk the line between both crypto and traditional payment solutions and appeal to both worlds, something that is already being demonstrated in our merchant acquisition strategy and the merchant transaction volume now running across our network
We most certainly DO have consensus in our code, in fact this is a core aspect of both our network and protocol, something that is incredibly hard to achieve on a DAG based network and something we’re incredibly proud of.
As with most aspects of COTI that this “review” has touched upon, past our whitepaper, we have a multitude of published resources that highlight what Trustchain and trust scores are and how they work in combination with other aspects of our network to achieve consensus.
A great example of this and how the Trustchain works on COTI can be viewed in the following video —
https://youtu.be/4q6_O5TZrgM   COTI is registered in Gibraltar and headquartered in Israel.
What’s the news here? This is exactly what we’ve always said. We have sent numerous videos from our Tel-Aviv office and have invited people here to visit us, some of whom have accepted and can be seen in our Telegram group. We even extend an invitation to the “review” author to visit us. We are at Alon tower in Tel-Aviv…Drop by.
We are registered in Gibraltar because COTI group, in an effort to meet the strictest industry standards, chose Gibraltar as it’s place of incorporation given the local Distributed Ledger Technology regulatory framework introduced there in 2018. The address mentioned in the post is the registered office where the company books are held. Doing so serves our prudent corporate governance and responsible standing in front of the relevant stakeholders.
We are headquartered in Israel because of the access to R&D talent. Israel is well known as a startup nation and by making amazing technology based dreams come true.
And we ask again, what’s the issue? There is a huge office building in an address on Gibraltar and some companies completely unrelated to COTI, were put on a list sometime in the past. What does that have to do with COTI anyway? We are not even on this list and we invite you to search the website for COTI and bring us the results. We’re simply not there…
The author also forgot to mention that when you click the link that they posted you are actually forced to read and approve the below disclaimer stating the obvious truth about companies incorporating in a certain jurisdiction and having its headquarters in another jurisdiction (probably most of the tech companies you know).
Regarding Dan Gertler, COTI categorically has no connection to this individual or were aware of his existence before this “review”. The Line Trust Corporation also referenced in the “review” is not the “ownership” entity of COTI, and 5 minutes at the COTI’s ownership registrar would have shown that. “Line” is simply an entity used by the registering entity, Hassans, to establish the corporate paperwork in Gibraltar. We share this registering entity with thousands of other companies, all distinct and distinctly owned by different individuals, almost all of whom have no connection or relation to Dan Gertler.
Hassans is a tier 1 law firm and the Line Group manages over $10b in assets worldwide. We believe that our corporate structure and business conduct are to be among the most responsible in the crypto space.Summary:This “review” was amateur at best. The author obviously doesn’t have access to serious programming talent, like the ones we have in COTI, led by Dr. Nir Haloai — IBM’s former Head of Research and author of 14 patents, and has shown a distinct lack of understanding of how some basic web technology, and some slightly more complicated blockchain technology, works.
If they had — they wouldn’t have wasted everybody’s time with this “review”.COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 “When Binance?”…NOW!
We are both humbled and proud to announce that Binance will list COTI as of February 26th, 2020 at 2:00 PM UTC.
A Binance listing has long been one of our goals to enable as many people as possible, around the world, to buy and hold COTI, while also adding liquidity to our coin and network.
We have been in contact with Binance’s executives for quite some time and went through a very thorough due diligence process prior to this listing. Being a part of such a process and receiving such validation makes us very proud knowing that Binance sets such a high standard of professionalism.
To top all of this excitement, we are happy to say that our listing is FREE. Thank you, Binance!We owe a lot of gratitude to our community. You have definitely put us on the radar of decision makers in Binance, all the way from the community vote (you rocked!) to the final decision to list COTI only a few weeks later. We are forever thankful.
2020 has already been a very fruitful year for COTI:Listing on Binance is a huge milestone but you can expect more from us in 2020. This is going to be an amazing year for COTI!STAY COTI!
How will the listing work?
The deposit campaign with a set bonus is live, and 24 hours later, trading will start.
Binance will list both our ERC20 and BEP2 tokens.
You can easily swap COTI native coins for ERC20/BEP2 tokens through the COTI bridge.
Please note: If you have COTI native coins, it is better to swap to your own ETH wallet first, and then deposit to Binance, rather than deposit to Binance from the swap bridge directly.
Read Binance announcement here: https://www.binance.com/en/support/articles/360039754952COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve recently processed our first credit card transaction on the COTI network. This is the culmination of over a year’s behind the scenes work to build out the technical infrastructure, banking networks, licenses and expansion of our payment network to support this functionality, marking a seminal moment in COTI’s progression towards becoming a truly universal payment solution.
As a payment network, COTI already has several distinct competitive advantages compared to traditional payment networks: Instant settlement via digital rails vs slow settlement through traditional rails, no foreign exchange conversion costs vs high fees on both the merchant and the consumer, access to DeFi based lending and savings, inclusion of the unbanked and a fully white-labeled mode of operation. By adding in support for credit card processing we’re now able to apply these advantages to a much wider range of merchants than we’ve previously been able to target. Our strategy for payments from the start has not been to replace an industry, as so many crypto projects try (and fail) to do, but instead to bridge the gap between the old and new, and credit card processing in the next big leap for COTI in doing so. Credit card processing also acts as a customer acquisition and growth hack strategy for other elements of the business. This allows us to quickly and easily onboard businesses with a product they are used to using, while being able to expose them and “upsell” them to the other many features of the COTI network.
There are several advantages for merchants to process credit cards on the COTI network as opposed to traditional networks like PayPal, Square or even bitpay. Firstly, COTI offers significantly lower fees for processed transactions on credit cards which obviously makes it cheaper for merchants, with the difference in fees being anywhere between 2–8% per transaction on other networks and 1–2% per transaction on COTI. For merchants processing significant volume, these savings can amount to hundreds of thousands a year.
Secondly, many merchants can’t access traditional payment networks as they are deemed to be “high risk” and those that can, carry the burden of significantly increased fees and charges due to their high risk status. “High risk” merchants are those who operate in industries with high instances of chargebacks (over 1% of all transactions in high risk industries result in a chargeback), with a few examples of these being, anything related to cryptocurrency, subscription or recurring payments, software as a service, drugs or pharmaceuticals, electronics, furniture, financial services, gaming or gambling and travel and ticketing agencies, to name a few. A chargeback is a reversal of an already credited payment, usually a disputed or fraudulent transaction. This is not only an issue for the payment processor, but for the issuer bank, the acquirer bank, the credit card network and also for the merchant, as too many chargebacks lead to higher fees or to exclusion from the network. Even worse, a merchant can be categorized as high risk, even if they aren’t, just because they belong to a certain industry or because their consumers come from a certain country.
For high risk merchants who have the ability to access traditional payment networks, fees on these networks can be anywhere from the range of 5% to 15%, not accounting for any chargeback fees (that can be up to $250 per chargeback). This is a significant cost to merchants operating in these industries and one COTI can greatly, if not totally, reduce.
This places COTI in a unique position in which we can capitalise on merchants in all industries and offer significant cost savings, without increasing overhead or processes. High risk merchants who operate in lucrative industries and process massive volumes of transactions at an extremely high cost can move to COTI and be treated like a “normal” merchant, as on COTI we assess merchants by their individual Trustscore and not by the industry they are part of.
Money saved as a result of using the COTI network is all money that merchants can use to buy more products or stock, hire more employees, to advertise and grow their business…or simply add to their take home profit. This makes our pitch to businesses a simple and compelling one. Some might even describe it as a “no brainer”.
Of course, the additional benefit of adding credit card processing to the COTI network and the additional transactions that come with it is that our network actually gets faster! As COTI is based on DAG architecture (the Trustchain is a bespoke DAG) and not limited to a fixed amount of TPS per second, and with transaction confirmation time being based off the numbers of previously confirmed transactions on the DAG, this means more transactions equal faster confirmations, greatly increasing the TPS on the network as a whole.
As we have been building out and bootstrapping the network, along with completing the rollout of our merchant payment tools, we have already been processing over $5m USD per month in transactions for merchants. With credit cards now added into the mix and we the increased reach and ease of implementation we have over merchants in, but of course, not limited to, the industries mentioned above, who cannot access a low cost credit card processing payment network like COTI, we expect this volume to now significantly grow, with a projection of $15m USD, per month, in processed transactions over the next quarter, with this only set to grow in the very near future as we aggressively onboard new merchants for credit card processing.
As we recently announced, the added revenue from credit card processing will be used by merchants to grow demand for COTI’s native coin, as like any transaction on the COTI network, COTI coin is used as the fee mechanism. COTI will also purchase coins required for merchant fees from the open market on a periodic basis.
Stay tuned over the next few days as we’ll be releasing an update to our TrustchainExplorer that will enable increased transparency over transactions that pass through our network, including credit card transactions.
COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Introduction
A good token metrics model takes into account predicted demand for a token, based on utility and usage, and matches it with the right supply to preserve and grow network value.
Our token metrics were first designed back in 2017 and then later updated in June 2019 to comply with IEO prerequisites on KuCoin Spotlight.
The COTI network has since grown and matured and coupled with increased demand and community feedback, we believe now is the ideal time to update our token metrics model.COTI’s Network has GrownWe have seen growth on all three factors that drive COTI’s utility and organic demand:- Growth in the volume of transactions on COTI’s network, driven by more processing volume by merchants and consumers. Since the launch of our mainnet in June 2019, more merchants have discovered the advantages that COTI adds to their payment processing via the introduction of low fee credit card processing and with partnerships like Cardano — ADA Pay, Fantom — Fantom Pay…and many more.
- Growth in the volume of staking, driven by the increased demand to run Nodes. The recent introduction of COTI’s decentralized nodes, staking model and staking as a service were accepted with overwhelming support and demand to run a node and stake. This demand is coupled with the growth in processing volume, making it very lucrative to run a node and allows more operators and delegated stakers to participate.
- Issuance of new tokens on COTI’s MultiDAG is now possible and any new token issued on COTI’s Trustchain creates more demand to COTI’s native coin, in the same way each new ERC20 token brings more demand to ETH.
COTI Token Metrics Update
Firstly, we would like to thank our community and stakeholders for their patience while awaiting these changes to our token metrics. Making changes of this magnitude to our token metrics has been no small undertaking and we understand the responsibility we have to our current coins holders, our future coin holders, our listing partners and our company in making sure these changes are fair and balanced for all parties.
With that in mind, we are happy to announce the following changes to our token metrics:1. We have created a new distribution plan for our seed, private and advisor coin allocations that are currently part of a monthly release cycle. One of the overwhelming pieces of feedback we received from our community was the impact monthly releases have upon our coin and our community as a whole. Unfortunately, this monthly schedule was a legacy cost of having done an IEO and one that we feel we have carried for long enough.
These monthly releases will now be moved to a semi-annual release schedule, with distribution taking place twice a year, in February and August, instead of every month. We have also prolonged the lockups for seed, private and advisor allocations by another 6–18 months for seed and private and in 30–42 months for advisers, however, in the interest of fairness, we have also granted some additional liquidity to these allocations in the short term, on a distribution this Sunday. It was important to us to not be one of “those” ICO projects who enforced longer lockups on our original supporters for the direct benefit of the COTI, forgetting it was these original supporters that made COTI viable in the first place…and we trust the community will understand and respect this fact.
However, past that release, we move to a semi-annual release schedule which is significantly reduced as demonstrated in the tables below.
Note — The semi-annual release schedule will fully sync in August 2020. There may be an insignificant amount of tokens released, between March to August, in order to not extend locks on our smaller private sale contributors and to support some marketing events. Again, this was another pragmatic decision that was necessary from our end that took the best interest of our coins holders to heart. In the interest of transparency, this amount of tokens released in this entire period (March, April, May, June, July) is anywhere from a minimum of 1m tokens to a maximum of 10m tokens, with the variable being based off the need for tokens to facilitate listings, and associated marketing events.2. There has been some debate about coins held directly by COTI as part of the ecosystem allocation, with the major cause for concern was uncertainty about their release schedule.
The ecosystem allocation’s purpose is to incentivize partners, developers, merchants, and consumers to support COTI’s and encourage adoption. We understand that coin holders would like to have more clarity on release schedules and so we have taken the step of locking 400m of these coins for 12 years, with a 3-year cliff before any of these coins can be accessed and with a much slowed release schedule at this 3-year mark. These coins will be converted to ERC20 COTI tokens and locked behind a trustless smart contract, effectively lowering the total supply and ensuring these coins cannot be accessed outside of the set schedule.
Of the 400m coins, 100m coins will come from the team’s allocation and 300m coins will come from the ecosystem allocation (of which 200m are unsold or unallocated advisers coins). This matches our recent commitment to lock up team coins for an additional 4 years, further demonstrating our commitment to our coin while not destroying long term value.
This also counters the next distribution by more than 4:1 ratio, so for every 1 coin released, 4 coins will be locked for up to 12 years. It’s important to note that 400m coins represent 20% of the COTI coin supply, a significant portion of the overall supply and the maximum amount of coins we felt comfortable with locking for an extended period with running the risk of crippling the overall ecosystem.
3. We are excited to announce a regular Coin Purchase (buy back) program in which COTI will periodically buy coins from the market. On the COTI network, all transactions are carried out using the COTI coin to pay fees for services rendered to merchants. This means merchants must maintain a supply of COTI to be able to participate and transact on the network. While many of our merchants understand the benefits of using a blockchain based system like COTI, they don’t necessarily want to have to interact with and manage a coin themselves. As such, COTI will purchase these coins for them on their behalf, using their revenue. In this sense, revenue on the network is directly attributable to increased use and demand of the COTI token, and the need for COTI to purchase these tokens from the open market.
An important point to note here is that ALL COTI coins required by merchants will come from the open market. The ecosystem fund will not be used to sell coins directly from COTI to merchants on the network. Instead ecosystem coins will be used as communicated in our Token Economy whitepaper, as a way to incentivise and grow the network as part of our incentivisation plan to onboard more merchants, consumers and partners onto the network. These will NOT be used as a revenue source for COTI and with the creation of this coin purchase plan, there is now a fixed system in place in which more merchants and more revenue will equal more COTI coins being bought back from the open market.
As such a program leaves itself open for exploitation by token speculators, we will NOT announce coin purchases ahead of time.A Summary Table of Changes  The release sheet with all the details:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XpR4OL2PZZPo_GfEyNdlstJ6P8atp1gk2Q1p5H9DdlE/edit?usp=sharingSummary
The COTI network is rapidly growing and so is the utility and demand for COTI’s native coin. These revised token metrics aim to match such growth and are designed to benefit the ecosystem.
Our new token metrics lowers the monthly sell pressure while adding more confidence on team’s commitment, major holders long term commitment and overall distribution schedule.
Merchant’s usage of COTI allows us a unique opportunity to turn their revenue to demand for COTI’s coin to further benefit all holders. We remain committed to our community and ecosystem, and remain focused on shipping technology and products.Stay COTI!
Oh, and one last thing…
We have a Korean listing coming in due time (approximately 10 days) with a KRW pair!COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 We would like to share with our community that January’s staking rewards have been successfully distributed and were higher than expected for COTI’s stakers!
COTI will soon be added to a platform that reviews and updates about rewards, exposing COTI to a wider audience, and allowing our community easy access to information.
After launching the first Decentralized MainNet Node operated by a community member (Rufys’ Node) at the end of December, January was marked by the release of the first Community Delegated Node to run on MainNet, operated by Winston Wolf (Wolf Node).
The community node is operated by a community leader (Winston Wolfe) and staked by both the leader (100K COTI) and the community members (5K/10K COTI). Community nodes run with 500K COTI staked, to begin with, and with a guaranteed return of at least 30% per annum, paid monthly (the highest of either fees generated by the node or 30% per year). We are happy to see that it was a lucrative month for COTI’s stakers and node operators, as they reached around 50% annual run rate collected from fees!
Nodes stakers have received their staking rewards on February 1st.
Stakers in the Community Node received approximately 200–400 COTI each, depending on the amount staked, and our Advanced Full Node staker received approximately 10,500 COTI.
The first staking month paid off and we expect it to grow even more as the network grows.
We have created a solid foundation for our transactions as they stand for payments, a real use case. If you’re not a staker yet and you want to join in, you can still register to the waiting list of one of the following community nodes:
*We remind you that as we want to give a fair chance to everyone to participate, at the moment we allow each user to stake in only one community node until further notice.For more details on the stakes and guaranties please refer to Nodes and staking article and the Annually Staking Rewards document, which demonstrates all possible staking scenarios. |
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We are very proud to announce that we have completed and launched the build of our MultiDAG! The MultiDAG code has already been pushed to our MainNet nodes, the code can be viewed on GitHub and we have also launched the first MultiDAG token (TestToken) on it for internal testing. TestToken is a token that is representative of how our clients can issue their own tokens on our MultiDAG and fully demonstrates the extended capabilities we now have as a result of this technology.
The MultiDAG is a tremendous achievement, being the first-ever DAG structure that allows token issuance on top of our DAG based Trustchain protocol. This achievement was made possible by combining independent DAG clusters into the overall COTI network. The COTI MultiDAG ecosystem is similar to Ethereum, in the sense that both are common decentralized infrastructure acting as the basis for a multitude of different tokens and smart contracts while utilising one main coin for all fees and staking within their respective ecosystems.
However, unlike Ethereum, the MultiDAG is a series of permissioned instances that allows the token issuer and owner of the individual MultiDAG instance to set their own rules specific to their needs and/or use case. Token issuers on Ethereum are limited by the overall rules and performance of the Ethereum network as a whole, while on the COTI MultiDAG token issuers retain control of their own rules and instances are not limited by the overall performance of the network, allowing for almost limitless instances and tokens to exist without any network degradation. MultiDAG instances still retain the ability to access all the overall COTI network features such as high scalability, low transaction costs, privacy and dispute resolution and whenever a transaction happens on any of the MultiDAG instances, fees are automatically converted between the issued token to COTI’s native coin, increasing the overall demand for the COTI coin and overall network utility.
MultiDAG transactions can also be “multi-currency”, meaning a transaction bundle can contain base transactions nominated in different tokens. Since our DAG as a data structure is agnostic to the transaction payload, this means the flow of attaching transactions to the DAG and TrustChain consensus stays the same for MultiDAG.
The COTI MultiDAG is yet another competitive advantage that allows the COTI network to focus on our primary target of adoption, enterprise clients. Enterprises by their very nature demand a controlled environment that delivers certainty of network availability combined with sufficient flexibility and scalability. This creates the confidence that enterprises need to have a long-term corporate approach using COTI. With the COTI MultiDAG, enterprises can now build upon a network they can truly trust. Remember, one enterprise = many users! The process of issuing a new token:
1. The token Originator ( = Token Owner) will be able to use a special “COTI token-app” application to create a new token.
2. The token Originator fills the token data and signs it.
3. The “COTI token-app” calculates the fee for issuing a new token, and sends a transfer transaction for this amount in COTI native coin to the network fee address. This is a special transfer transaction having IBT and NFBT only.
4. After the fee transaction is created and confirmed, “COTI token-app” forms the token creating request — FinancialServer/createToken API call. The request includes the new token parameters and the hash of the fee transaction.
5. Upon receiving the createToken request, the Financial Server checks data and signature, creates CurrencyData record for the new token and propagates it.
6. The Financial server requests the primary (ZeroSpend Server) to create and propagate the new token creation Clusterstamp file.
7. FinancialServer/createToken API call returns the new currency hash.
8. After full nodes get the propagated data, the originator can start to mint and transfer tokens. The code behind the MultiDAG can now be viewed on our GitHub.
In about two weeks, we will share a workable demonstration of token issuance, and we will also show how you can transact with tokens using API commands.
In the following weeks, we will also add a token generation interface, which will be for widespread issuance of tokens. Until then, partners who wish to issue their own token on top of our MultiDAG can send us an email to contact@coti.io.
Read more about COTI’s MultiDAG here, or review COTI’s whitepaper here.COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group
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 In order to scale full node operations, COTI requires a good testing ground for its nodes on its TestNet. The benefit for COTI in such testing is immense and in order to compensate TestNet node operators for their time and effort and for their contribution to our research and development, COTI will allow such node operators to stake 100K MainNet COTI coins for a 10% per annum return.
We thank you for participating in our plan to change the digital payment industry!Requirements and Incentives:To be eligible for 10% annum return, TestNet Node operators are required to:- Fork the coti-node repository — this is required only if you plan to change the code or participate in our bug bounty program.
- Set the user hash and domain name in the node property to verify and monitor node operator activity
- Insure 95% uptime of the server for the preceding month
- Connect with COTI TestNet wallet to your Full node and make at least 20 transactions per month
- Be attentive to any version changes and upgrades required for the node
- Be available for deployment of new patches and fixes as soon as such are available
Following some of our community members’ requests, we have decided to allow running a TestNet node from restricted countries as well. Those located in one of COTI’s restricted countries will be able to run a TestNet node and thus be a part of the COTI ecosystem and test the technology. However, such participants will not be able to stake and earn rewards.Extra incentives:- Report bugs and deploy issues in the GitHub
 - Offer improvements and changes in the code base through GitHub
 - Build unsupported test units for the code base (coti-node/crypto-library/coti-wallet) through GitHub
 - Guides and code review for the code base (coti-node/crypto-library/coti-wallet)
 Program Rules- For all extra incentive please provide detailed reports with reproducible steps. If the report is not detailed enough to reproduce the issue, the issue will not be eligible for a reward.
- Submit one vulnerability per report, unless you need to chain vulnerabilities to provide impact.
- When duplicates occur, we only award the first report that was received (provided that it can be fully reproduced).
- Multiple vulnerabilities caused by one underlying issue will be awarded only once.
- Make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of our service. Only interact with accounts you own or with the explicit permission of the account holder.
- COTI may change the incentive plan every now and then, please remain up to date with this document
Important notice!If you are already running a TestNet node and wish to participate in a Community node staking pool as well, please open a new CPS account for the Community node staking. Staking for TestNet and for a Community node from the same account is not possible.Once again, thank you for participating!
To learn more about how to run a Full node on COTI’s TestNet network, please refer to the guide below:How to Setup a COTI Testnet node on VultrCOTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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 Introduction
COTI’s staking model is built to be competitive to DeFi income models and provides a means to generate a steady income from the process of transaction approval in the COTI network.
The economic model of COTI nodes is designed to be fair, efficient and flexible and is based on finely tuned fee distribution mechanisms and staking requirements.
COTI’s staking model allows users to run Full Nodes, which are decentralized servers processing wallet requests, receiving transactions, and performing the required Proof of Trust work (PoT).
When running nodes, operators provide the network with useful resources, including CPU, memory, storage and network bandwidth. These resources are not free of charge, which is why the node operator is compensated and has the opportunity to earn a reasonable ROI.
Full Node operators receive fees collected from transactions. The more transactions a Full Node processes, the more it earns.Staking Plans *- all return guarantees should be treated by valid for the current month only and can be extended or ceased without prior notice.
In order to better understand our staking reward model, make sure to read the Annually Staking Rewards document, which demonstrating all possible staking scenarios.How does it work? How to stake?
1. Placing the staking deposit with COTI
a. Connect to your MainNet wallet at https://crypto-wallet.coti.io/connect with your credentials. b. Under the staking section, Click on the “Stake” button. Important: if you don’t have the “stake” option in your wallet, this means that you weren’t approved as a staker for COTI. If you would like to join the COTI network as a staker for a community node, please approach the community operator as they are the one who choose and approve community stakers. Potential candidates can register in the community node dedicated Google form, published by the community operator.
c. A popup with your staking amount and a unique staking address will appear. Press “confirm” to approve the staking and the amount will be automatically transferred to this address. 2. Confirmation of staking
Your staking deposit is placed with COTI and is associated to you according to the unique staking address generated specifically for you. Once completed, you’ll be able to see, in your MainNet wallet, the staked coins under as “staking section”. 3. Receiving Rewards
Rewards are processed once a month.
COTI guarantees a minimum level of income for advanced and community MainNet stakers per annum, on a monthly basis. If the income received from the processed transactions does not meet the ensured return, COTI covers the deficit.
In order to receive your rewards, you must claim your coins by clicking the “claim” button. This option will be available to you in the last week of each month. The specific period you can claim your rewards in will appear in the staking section in your wallet. Please note that if you don’t claim your rewards within the claim window (the last week of the month) your rewards will be reset and you won’t be able to claim them for that month. If you are a part of a community node, the remaining rewards will be split between those who have claimed their rewards.
Conditions to receiving your stake rewards:- Your node’s uptime should be at least 95%. In the case your node doesn’t meet the minimum uptime, you will only be eligible for fees collected during your uptime but not for the guaranteed node return.
- A registered MainNet wallet.
- You have completed the KYC process
- You must stake your coins for the entire payment cycle to be eligible for rewards.
- You must not be from a restricted country.
- If you are a TestNet node operator, you are required to comply with the TestNet operators’ rules which will be published soon.
4. UnstakingYou may unstake your coins at any given moment. Note that the coins will be actually unstaked by the end of each payment cycle, as appears in your wallet.
Note that as a MainNet node operator, of any kind, unstaking makes you ineligible to run a node.
In order to unstake you should:
1.Login to COTI MainNet wallet
2.Click “Unstake”
 3. You will see a message stating that you will be unstaked in the next payment cycle - For the annually staking rewards document, visit here
- For more details on the stakes and guaranties please refer to Nodes and staking article
COTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group |
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COTI’s Full NodesFull Nodes are the main client-facing servers of the system. Each transaction sent from a wallet is received by a Full Node and propagated to the entire system. Full Nodes perform Trustchain Consensus by receiving new transactions from wallets, validating them, doing Proof of Trust and attaching them to the DAG. Full Nodes also execute COTI smart contracts in a decentralized manner. On the COTI network, Full Nodes can define their own price list for users and compete for them. The range of the fees defines in the network is between 0.01% to 25 COTI coins max, per transaction. Consequently, COTI Full Nodes are responsible for collecting fees on all protocol usage and transferring the network fee to the network pool.
As a rule, Full Node fees are collected in the same token as the main payment. Full Nodes are free to define which tokens they process and accept for fees and which they do not.
In the article below, we demonstrated several situations for a Full node operator or staker in the COTI ecosystem.TestNet Node Jon is running a node on COTI’s TestNet and he’s staking 100,000 COTI.
Jon will earn 833.333 COTI coins per month, only from the guaranteed rewards, as no real fees are being collected in TestNet. After one year he will earn a total of 10,000 COTI.
Unstaking can be done on each calendar month. If Jon will decide to unstake his coins in the middle of the year, he will earn a relative amount for the staking period. For example, if Jon started to stake on January 1st, 2020, then decided to unstake on April 23rd, 2020, he will earn a total of 3,333.333 COTI (4 full months) and he will receive his staking amount of 100K COTI on May 1st, 2020.MainNet Basic Node Samantha and Rob are running advanced nodes on COTI’s MainNet. Each one of them has staked 250,000 COTI from January 1st, 2020.
Samantha has set a fee of 0.1% and the transaction volume she processed in January was worth 2,000,000 COTI. Rob has decreased the fee to 0.05% and the transaction volume he processed in January was worth 15,000,000 COTI. Therefore, in January 2020, Samantha earned 2,000 COTI, while Rob earned 7,500 COTI.
Since the income received from the fees does not provide the guaranteed reward of 62,500 annually (5,208 per month), COTI will cover the difference and will pay Samantha another 3,208 COTI in January.Community Node Operator Winston Wolfe is running a community node on COTI’s MainNet. He has staked 100,000 COTI out of a total staking of 500,000 COTI, from January 1st, 2020.
Winston Wolfe has set a fee of 0.1% and the transaction volume he processed in January was worth 2,000,000 COTI. The total fees are being divided between the community node operator, and the community members, according to their staking amounts. Therefore, in January 2020, Winston Wolfe earned 400 COTI. Since the income received from the fees does not provide the guaranteed reward of 30,000 COTI annually (2,500 monthly), COTI will cover the difference and will pay Winston Wolfe another 2,100 COTI.
On February 1st, 2020 Winston Wolfe has set the same fee to 0.1% and the transaction volume he processed in February was worth 40,000,000 COTI. Therefore, in February 2020, Winston Wolfe earned 8,000 COTI. Since the income received from the fees was higher than the guaranteed reward of 30,000 COTI annually (2,500 monthly), Winston Wolfe will earn the amount collected from the fees.Community Node Member Jane and Mary are Winston Wolfe’s community members and they’ve been chosen to participate in his community node staking. Jane has staked 10,000 COTI, out of a total staking of 500,000 COTI, while Mary has staked 5,000 COTI.
On January 1st, 2020 Winston Wolfe has set a fee of 0.1% and the transaction volume he processed in January was worth 2,000,000 COTI. The total fees are being divided between the community node operator, and the community members, according to their staking amounts. Therefore, in January 2020, Jane earned 40 COTI, while Mary earned 20 COTI. Since the income received from the fees does not provide the guaranteed reward of 3,000 COTI annually (250 monthly), COTI will cover the difference and will pay Jane another 210 COTI. Same with Mary, since the income received from the fees does not provide the guaranteed reward of 1,500 COTI annually (125 monthly), COTI will cover the difference and will pay Jane another 105 COTI.
On February 1st, 2020 Winston Wolfe has set the same fee to 0.1% and the transaction volume he processed in February was worth 40,000,000 COTI. Therefore, in January 2020, Jane earned 800 COTI, and Mary earned 400 COTI. Since the income received from the fees was higher than the guaranteed reward of 3,000 or 1,500 COTI annually (250 or 125 monthly), Jane and Mary will earn the amount collected from the fees.
For the full Staking guide at COTI v1.00, visit here
For more details on the stakes and guaranties please refer Nodes and stakingCOTI ResourcesWebsite: https://coti.ioTelegram group: https://t.me/COTInetworkGithub: https://github.com/coti-ioTechnical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf Talk with us on Telegram Official Facebook Official Twitter Official Reddit Official Youtube Channel COTI Group
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