NeuCoin, “Freemium” Digital Currency Focused on Micropayments, Launches with $2.25M of Funding
The NeuCoin white paper is ready for review!
The NeuCoin Project released its technical white paper: “NeuCoin: the First Secure, Cost-efficient and Decentralized Cryptocurrency”. It is available as a PDF version on this link:
neucoin.org/en/whitepaperWe hope that this white paper will spark the first honest and fact-based debate on the pros and cons of the two main consensus mechanisms used in peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies: proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Bounties will be awarded for constructive feedback,
see here for details.
NeuCoin's Strategic Plan
The NeuCoin Project (
www.neucoin.org) today announced its new digital currency that aims to achieve mainstream adoption by being free to try, easy to use, and by enabling micropayments that are not viable with traditional currencies. NeuCoin’s founding team, which started the NeuCoin Project in March 2014, previously built several successful Internet companies in the music, gaming and shopping sectors, with hundreds of millions of users in total.
NeuCoin also announced that it has closed $2.25 million of initial funding. Strategic angels include the co-founder of King (Candy Crush Saga), head of growth at Facebook, SVP of business at Uber, President of Hotwire, and dozens of other tech and media founders and executives. Strategic advisors include Alex Norstrom, VP of growth for Spotify; Jackson Palmer, creator of Dogecoin; and Brock Pierce, serial entrepreneur and Bitcoin Foundation board member.
Using an innovative proof-of-stake (PoS) design and economic model, NeuCoin is the first digital currency that will be strategically distributed to all participants who help increase its utility, growth and value:
- Some given for free to get consumers started with zero friction - and more awarded for recruiting new users
- Some given to companies that make NeuCoin more useful, such as content providers that accept micropayments in NeuCoin, exchanges, and processors
- Some sold to investors, with proceeds used to fund user acquisition and utility development
Focused on developing tangible consumer utility over traditional currencies, NeuCoin will roll out pilot micropayment platforms with major premium content partners in the music, video and gaming sectors, including MondoMedia, YouTube’s number one animation channel and Jango, a streaming music service with over 8 million monthly listeners.
NeuCoin is supported by three separate non-profit foundations based in the Isle of Man, focusing on code, user growth and utility development. The foundations are controlled by coin holders and share the same mission—to increase the value of NeuCoin.
The NeuCoin currency, along with an easy-to-use online wallet, a gamified consumer onboarding website and seamless consumer mining services, are all expected to launch in the spring of 2015. Prior to launch, NeuCoin will conduct a presale of NeuCoins to the crypto community, with all proceeds distributed among NeuCoin’s foundations.
Starting February 3, NeuCoin is also offering bounties to the crypto-community for feedback, 1,000 NeuCoin for the first 10,000 participants – see details at
www.neucoin.org.
NeuCoin’s view of the digital currency landscapeDigital currencies offer significant potential benefits over traditional currencies, including: lower transaction fees, simpler and faster international transactions, and the ability to make small digital payments of $.01 to $1.00 (“microtransactions”), thus enabling new digital business models and behaviors not feasible with legacy payment methods.
The leading digital currency, Bitcoin (market cap of all coins $3 billion), has mostly attracted computer experts, speculators and niche users who want to keep their transactions out of sight. But it hasn’t been popular with regular consumers, because they don’t find it easy enough, and it doesn’t yet deliver any benefits that they care about. Moreover, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (“PoW”) mining design, in which all Bitcoins ever created are awarded to miners, has several drawbacks, including inherently high costs for electricity and hardware, increasing consolidation and centralization, conflicts of interest between miners and Bitcoin holders, and increasing transaction fees in order to maintain security long term. While Bitcoin does enjoy sizable network effects and momentum, it has left the door open for competitors.
Source: Coinmarketcap.com, blockchain.info, coingecko.
Note: market caps are based on the total supple of coins that currently exist (100B in cases of both Ripple and Stellar), including the coins held by Ripple Labs Inc. and the Stellar Foundation.
The two most valuable “altcoins” Ripple ($1.5 billion market cap) and Stellar ($500 million, just six months after launch) eschewed expensive PoW mining. Opting for a different technology using consensus algorithms based on trusted nodes, these altcoins can keep transaction fees low in the long run and – crucially – distribute coins to participants other than miners. This is a huge competitive advantage over Bitcoin.
Ripple’s founders and early investors opted to keep some of the currency for their own profit and to sell some of it to investors, using the proceeds to develop a platform for international transfers and payments – one of those use cases where digital currencies have the potential to offer more utility than fiat currencies. While Ripple never disclosed how much of the currency would be kept as profit and how much would be sold and used for all coin holders’ benefit, investors still bought the currency because they could see real utility (and hence potential for future demand) being created.
The not-for-profit Stellar is taking the opposite approach. Prior to launch it sold 2% of the entire currency supply for $3 million, kept 3% to cover future expenses, and pledged to give away the remaining 95% to users and charity. This strategy could lead to a large user base if users hold onto their free Stellar instead of simply selling them, but doesn’t answer how utility will be developed. And since consumer demand is ultimately driven by utility, real adoption may never come.
In summary, Bitcoin has network effects and a growing ecosystem, Ripple is developing real utility for international transfers and Stellar has the potential to attract a large number of users. However, none of them, let alone the hundreds of other altcoins out there, are (a) easy, (b) free to try out, and (c) useful for mainstream consumers. As a result, consumer adoption of digital currency is still flat. NeuCoin believes its “freemium” distribution, ease-of-use and micropayment platforms will enable it to achieve adoption on scale of other popular consumer-facing services.
NeuCoin’s strategy- NeuCoin is the first digital currency that is easy and free to get started, and useful from day one for regular consumers. NeuCoin will launch with a number of fun, consumer-friendly services making it easy for mainstream consumers to discover, earn and start using NeuCoin.
- Onboarding websites such as GetNeuCoin a game-like tutorial designed to convert mainstream users in a fun and educational way
- An online wallet – MyNeuCoin - that is as user-friendly as any leading Bitcoin wallet (Circle, Coinbase) with lots of ways to earn and use NeuCoins
- A consumer-friendly mining service that lets users earn PoS awards through “growth accounts” without any tech skills whatsoever
- Auctions for gift cards for NeuCoin - giving users a useful way to shop at brand name merchants like Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and Zynga from day one.
Shortly after launch, NeuCoin will roll out freemium micropayment platforms for tipping and paid content through pilot partnerships with RadioAirplay.com, an artist promotion company with over 250,000 independent musicians as customers; Jango.com, an online music service with over 8 million monthly listeners; and video content producer MondoMedia, the number one animation channel on YouTube with over 2 billion show-views.
- Platforms will be tested and optimized with pilot partners and then rolled out for use by any content provider looking for tipping or micropayment solutions
- Platforms will be powered by freemium distribution of NeuCoin to users, who will be able to try premium content for free - a significant advantage over micropayment platforms using Bitcoin (because 99.9% of consumers don’t have Bitcoin, and it’s not easy to get)
- Participating content providers will receive user acquisition bounties for every new user converting to NeuCoin
Technology – secure, efficient, decentralizedNeuCoin chose a Proof of Stake (“PoS”) technology design instead of a high cost Bitcoin-style PoW design or a centralized consensus algorithm protocol like that of Ripple and Stellar. This choice was made in order to distribute the currency strategically, keep transaction fees low and security high in the long term, and still maintain decentralization. Prior to launch, NeuCoin will publish a comprehensive technical whitepaper.
Economics – rewards early adopters, enhances securityNeuCoin’s economic model uses very high PoS awards, starting at 100% per year in year one and gradually declining to 6% by year ten. The total coin supply begins with a 3 billion pre-mine and will grow to an estimated 100 billion over ten years, with the actual number dependent on the percentage of coins that are mined over time. A limited number of coins in year one are also awarded to PoW miners, to engage the community that will most likely become active PoS miners long-term. 5 million coins per month during year 1 will be awarded through PoW scrypt mining.
NeuCoin’s high-mining-awards model offers several benefits:
- Rewards early NeuCoin investors and adopters for holding onto their NeuCoins (coin holdings will multiply by 50X over 10 years with non-stop PoS mining)
- Coin prices should be less volatile and remain intuitive for consumers from launch ($0.01 per NeuCoin) and into the future
- Incentivizes PoS miners to stake many coins and operate many nodes, solving a critical security issue with previous PoS coins
Allocation of 3 Billion Pre-Mine
Three billion pre-mine allocation:
- 2.4 billion held by the three non-profit foundations: 0.4 billion - Code foundation / 1.0 billion - Growth foundation / 1.0 billion - Utility foundation
- 0.2 billion retained by founders for $1 million of work invested
- 0.1 billion sold to initial seed investors for $250,000
- 0.2 billion sold to strategic angel investors for $1 million cash invested
- 0.1 billion to be sold in presale to crypto-community
In contrast to virtually all previous digital currencies with pre-mines, all NeuCoins held by the founding team, seed and angel investors are subject to strict re-sale provisions for five years (each of these holders may only sell 2% of their holdings per month in the first year, 3% per month in the second year, 4% per month in the third year, 5% per month in year 4, 6% in year 5).
NeuCoin Foundations – decentralized and accountableNeuCoin’s core code development, user growth programs, and projects to increase utility will be supported by three non-profit foundations based in the Isle of Man. The three foundations are independent of each other but share the same single mission – to increase the value of NeuCoin. The foundations are overseen by independent Council Members and Strategic Advisors, but are ultimately controlled by coin holders (1 coin = 1 vote). This structure makes NeuCoin more decentralized and accountable than Bitcoin, Ripple or Stellar.
Give feedback on the NeuCoin Project and earn 1,000 free NeuCoins, please visit http://www.neucoin.org/en/Also, don't hesitate to have a look at our forum: http://forum.neucoin.org/
