Crrrypto...!!! What's that?

I live in a small city. When I got interested in the field of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, I couldn’t find anyone in my city, who had even heard these words before. So internet was my only friend that could educate me about it.

It was not an easy task to learn the tight ropes with no knowledge of where to start from, in this field. When I started googling about it, I realized that this is a vast field with lots of entry barriers for non-techies like me. Grasping the basics of a blockchain technology, understanding the functioning of cryptocurrencies and what various crypto tokens represented, and then trading them over several crypto exchanges, or investing in an ICO …every step was damn hard to get by.

When we don’t know how to save those long strings of randomly generated passwords securely; which software or hardware wallet we need to buy; what exchange is good; how to interpret several technical indicators to make the best of our trades...; we like to rely on suggestions from our successful friends in this arena.

Learning crypto made easy

To make wide-spread adoption of cryptocurrency possible, we need to ease or remove the entry barrier to it and present this seemingly complicated field in simplistic terms so that even a non-techie can feel at ease with it. Fortunately, I came across a wonderful idea mooted by a new startup in this sphere called Hilo.io (pronounced Hi-Lo).

Hilo.io, a project by Tela Network Foundation, has conceptualized a social network dedicated to crypto enthusiasts. By creating a network of people with a common interest i.e. crypto; it would be easy to connect and make friends to share everything related to crypto. Won’t it be an amazing place to hang out and learn together? Wait... there are many more things for us in this project. Let me share some more details about it.

Hilo.io - a community that socially aggregates crypto knowledge

For beginners, Hilo.io is developing interesting games under its “Fantasy Crypto” section where users can have fun while learning crypto-trading without investing any real money. Hilo.io platform will offer users to create virtual portfolio to track its performance by incurring zero cost and no risk. Fantasy trading games like football-inspired trading etc. are on the anvil too.

To give a complete experience from a single platform, Hilo.io has integrated all its features in its User Dashboard. From the Dashboard, any user can track the activities of his/her friends, manage his/her own portfolio, check the current market prices and movements of coins, discover new coins, monitor crypto news, customize his/her Watchlist and many more things. You can also see all your assets across wallets and exchanges under “My Coin” tab with details of their current value, net cost and all your transaction history.

An interesting feature of this platform is that you can point on any cryptocurrency’s price chart and you can see “Buy” & “Sell” recommendations from all your friends or people you follow along with their logic behind their stand. It’s up to you to follow and act on their tips or not. You too can give your own recommendation for Buy & Sell every day. Based on these successful calls and some other indicators of influence like no. of followers, upvotes etc.; users are listed on the “Leaderboard”.

Another very effective social tool this app provides is that you can also share your actual portfolio publicly or with your friends as per your preference. When you see the actual portfolio of your friends live, you know where exactly they are putting their money. Hilo.io platform also gives you notifications and alerts on price movements of cryptocurrencies, ICO updates and other crypto related news.

Hilo.io is developing Android as well as iOS mobile versions for its app. There will be facility of one on one chats with your friends as well as group chats. Several groups or sub-communities can be developed with this feature.

Hilo Token

Hilo Token will be the native currency for Hilo.io platform’s tokenized economy. Hilo tokens have several utilities like subscribing to group chats or following the trades or tips of any successful and experienced trader (Influencer). You also have an option to put some price tag (in Hilo tokens) if you wish to charge actions like someone Direct Messaging you.

Earn while you socialize

Just like Steem, Hilo.io too is an inflationary token with an inflation of 2% p.a. These tokens are contributed to UGP (User Growth Pool) and rewarded to users. You can accrue XP (Experience Points) through successfully completing various gamified actions throughout the platform. There would be several Challenges, Badges and Levels. On Levelling up, you earn some Hilo tokens from UGP. You also earn Hilo tokens by bringing in a new friend on this platform.

Aside UGP, Hilo tokens can be earned by charging other users for sharing your Portfolio with them or giving tips in Direct Messages and other such activities. UGP also gets some contribution by charging a share of direct messaging fee, one-time fee or access fee associated with some activities. This is in addition to the tokens accumulated through 2% annual inflation.

Tokenized Governance

Hilo Labs Inc. acknowledges the important role its users play to keep the community growing. So to listen to their needs and interests, it has formulated a tokenized voting system to enable its users to participate in Platform governance.

Users can cast a stake-weighted vote (in proportion to the number of Hilo tokens they hold) to decide on the new features and their priority order for development and implementation.

Can it become a success?

Hilo.io looks to be a much needed project with a lot of promises. It is trying to fill a large gap in the market by bringing together crypto professionals and noobs on a single platform and trying to create a strong bond between them by taking care of everyone’s needs.

However, the success of the project depends not only in delivering a perfectly working platform with all the promised features but it also depends heavily on its wide-spread acceptance by the crypto community. Once the platform attains a critical mass, it will soon become a huge success. But attaining a large number of users in a short span of time would be the key. To attract beginners, there needs to be some very successful influencers who are willing to help and share their strategies on this platform. I feel the platform lacks some features for advanced users. But these are the early days for Hilo.io and I hope, that will be taken care of in the future because it will be in the platform’s interest to retain professional traders too.

I’ve seen projects like Crypto Ping and 3 Comma offering their services for free in their initial days but now they charge users to avail their advanced features. 3 comma too has a social element to follow other’s portfolio. But Hilo.io is integrating all social networking features into one platform. And more importantly, their Tokenized economy through 2% inflation seems very sustainable. What’s more, instead of charging users, it will be rewarding users!

With the rapidly rising crypto-community around the world, this project is well in time, if it delivers quickly.

"Entrepreneur" listed Hilo.io in its Top 15 ICO list

With the uniqueness, novelty and accomplishments thus far, it’s no surprise that Entrepreneur has recently listed Hilo.io among the top-15 ICOs to watch for. Hilo.io has an impressive list of partners like CIVIC (for ID verifications), Ledger (Wallet compatibility), Bounty0x (for their bounty programme), etc. You can check their website for whole list of their team, advisors and partners.

However, Hilo.io ICO is still over a month away ...I guess, it starts on 30th July. If this project interests you, you can find out more about it by going through its Whitepaper. Better still, you can join its Telegram chat and interact with their team members directly.

And if you want to accumulate some free Hilo tokens, you can do so right away. Click here for a quick bounty of 100 Hilo tokens. If you are looking for more Hilo tokens, check this bounty website (search for Hilo), where they are hosting their several bounty programmes.

So it's time to ask your opinion on it now 😊:

• What do you feel about this project? Is it unique?
• Do you know about any other social networking project exclusively targetting crypto community?
• Do you think there would be many more social networking projects targeting crypto community soon?

Do let me know about what you think on this subject. Would you really prefer socializing over cryptos?

_{Disclaimer:
This is not a sponsored post, nor a bounty post. No payment in any kind was received or is expected from Hilo.io project in lieu of this post. The post reflects my personal opinions and should not be taken as financial advice.}