Hi guys it is Cryptoguru1 back with another exciting blockchain project. As most of my readers are aware I am bullish on this decentralised space. Time and time again I reiterate that even though this space is the cutting edge of innovation it still faces many problems. The biggest being security issues, scalability issues and other inefficiencies. This is the reason I keep my eye out for projects trying to combat these problems.

This is where Usechain comes in, they are a “Mirror Identity Blockchain Ecosystem”. I urge you to continue reading to understand this concept. As always, the format of this article will comprise of an in-debt review of their whitepaper. I have spent days researching and I appreciate your support. All I ask is for my work to be shared and appreciated. I also urge you to do your own research and not following someone blindly when it comes to investment.

It is getting harder and harder to filter through the useless projects out there due to the increase in ICOs. Usechain however really excite me, I believe I have just found an all encompassing blockchain, that will combine decentralisation, security and scalability with user identity to ensure KYC/AML is prioritised and thus appeal to the masses. I feel this ecosystem is huge for the space. I will not be getting too technical in this review, however I have linked their technical whitepaper below for those of you who wish to dig deeper into this.

Introduction to Usechain

As per their whitepaper Usechain are a non-profit organisation established in Singapore, they are building an open source ecosystem for the masses. Usechain.net, (2018) claim that their Mirror Identity Protocol (MIP) will be combined with multi-level innovations in technology to provide a blockchain which people can adopt into their daily lives (commercial value like various transaction capabilities); unlike every other blockchain which to date have not appealed to the masses. I am so excited about this project as I believe it will smash the bottlenecks blockchain faces today:

1. Low Performance- they claim Even though BTC and ETH are successful they have not appealed to the masses in term of use case, they also have tiny TPS capabilities (See chart below)-This hinders mass adoption, we all see this everyday with BTC & ETH, Remember the Ethereum backlogs in January?
2. Anonymous environment- They claim in their whitepaper that on blockchains the address holds no Identity of users thus supporting criminal activity- To appeal to the masses KYC and AML is essential to attract business. This is true as most businesses would not condone the use of traceless platforms to conduct business.
3. High technical difficulties- To build chains is difficult and requires a huge scope of professionals. user chain sees this space as the early stage of the internet (Small crowd of enthusiasts), they will provide such an ecosystem tearing down barrier to entry. It is indeed true that we are at these early stages, the technical blockchain savvy personnel simply just do not exist in any great capacity as of yet, as it is still considered a small niche area, this is why I see the benefit of Usechain.

They envisage that their platform will be needed in the future as tech becomes more integrated to blockchain, their identity blockchain in my view will provide a platform which will capture a far wider scope of DApp creators. They also state they will provide underlying tech support in terms of finance, consumption, entertainment, social media, IT, Games, supply chain management and asset management, this will be essentially to the success of this ecosystem.

They will provide an ecosystem of customers Identity which will allow them to be easily connected to wall street in an easy, instant and convenient way (As KYC and AML issues are solved). What is better still is that all of these benefits will be offered via blockchain, thus making it more secure, decentralised and scalable. Usechain suggest their protocol can solve the “impossible trinity “with their protocol. Trinity refers to scalability, security and decentralisation as seen below. I have written about this before as some of you may know.

Source: (Usechain.net, 2018)

This is amazing to see, as can be seen from the chart above they see themselves as in a league of their own. This is such a huge problem in blockchain today, because as these new blockchains scale they often leave behind security and decentralisation. They will offer higher security, performance and decentralisation that both BTC & ETH. Even in the traditional system we can achieve high scalability on main networks simply only because servers are centralised. Here in lies the problem that blockchain faces, how to entice mass adoption?

The Usechain MIP protocol adds value to identity and will facilitate this new commercial blockchain, they will utilise mulita-level reorganisations in their underlying levels to achieve this (Expanded on later). They also claim they will support decentralised DApps in the future including financial services (Wallstreet on blockchain for the masses). They further claim they are supported by academia and the top business schools and hope to roll this out with leading commercial and application platforms.

Vision

In their whitepaper they tell us their sole goal is to develop a “real-name” credit ecosystem, which will allow users to enjoy products/services based on credit. Simply put they aim to provide a platform for large scale transactions (scalability) without effecting decentralisation and security in the process, unlike most other blockchains and drive blockchain 3.0 to the masses. This is what has caught my attention, I have written about many blockchain products over the last few months and most cannot do this.

How they will achieve their vision

Usechain.net, (2018) state they will appeal to billions of users and so will scale to meet this challenge, they will match up on-chain addresses with off-chain identities (KYC/AML) to attract financial interests and they also aim to optimise smart contracts to lower the technical boundaries. Essentially, they aim to create an ecosystem to appeal to the masses that has high performance, is reliable and secure.

What I really enjoyed learning in their whitepaper is that this will be a continuously improving blockchain by gathering behavioural data within their identity-based ecosystem – This will be fully transparent open and irreversible. This will create value for users via their consensus, thus making the world’s first true decentralised virtual society.

Use Chain will devote resources to govern this ecosystem. They will listen to the community and take their considerations into account. They will oversee the UST reserve (Token spoken about later). They will also fund research and the development of the ecosystem itself which is amazing to see.

Technicalities of the ecosystem

This section will cover some technical aspects covered in the whitepaper, I urge my more tech savvy readers to check out the technical whitepaper (linked below). Usechain’s whitepaper suggests that in order to create their Mirror Identity Blockchain they will have to innovate. They will use virtual machines to simplify the process which will reduce resources and lower barriers to entry.

In their own words “It is designed to handle large-scale transactions to meet demands from millions of users at the same time and to manage the huge range of commercial & social applications on the platform”. (Usechain.net, 2018). This requires a very complex structure.

In their whitepaper they say the structure is broken into:

1. Network layer
2. Data layer
3. Consensus layer
4. Incentive layer
5. Smart contract layer

Each of these layers, according to Usechain.net, (2018) will serve the needs of different application creators at low costs. As per their whitepaper the innovations Usechain will apply to achieve this are:

Multi- level authentication mechanism

They will provide a link between the on-chain address and off-chain identities. Authenticated users have their relationship mapped on the chain- private information is never exposed and is fully secured. This is vital for trust on a platform such as this.

Randomized Proof of Work (RPOW) Consensus mechanism

Source: (Usechain.net, 2018)

This consensus amazes me- I wrote an article on consensus this week- so maybe it might be a good idea to read this to understand how they work.

Utilising RPOW Usechain can achieve higher transaction frequency with lower energy consumption making it fairer for mining., thus promoting more decentralisation. It is a mixture of all the advantages of existing blockchains- it uses Identity mapping to carry out its consensus. In their whitepaper they suggest that it will lower risks as no individuals will be able to gain a lot of control with anonymous addresses. It is highly secure as based on POW with a combination of intellectual rights, has high performance (Every block has different difficulty/hash power) and has lower energy requirements (reduced dependence on hash power and so mining can be done via mobile). As we all know now that POW is becoming hugely energy intensive, it is refreshing to see projects like this tackling this problem head on.

They essentially plan to build a more secure, high performing, hardware based and attack resistant Trusted Execution Environment (TEEs) for this RPOW consensus. This will be part of people’s daily lives (housed on phones/personal items). This is perhaps the icing on the cake for me on this project, this consensus seems like it well designed and capable of making some real change in this space.

Network Sharding technology

They use KaZaA P2P protocol, Identity Network Sharding (INS) & Identity Transaction Sharding (ITS) based off the addresses of users here, this has the effect of not requiring all nodes to verify, thus creating shorter transaction times and increasing bearing capacity. Please consult the technical whitepaper for more information on these, just remember, in short, they will aid faster transactions and allow scaling on the ecosystem.

Identity Virtual Machine (IVM)

This is their standard for new Smart contract architecture. This will be like a “sandbox” for developers. It will be able to communicate with the blockchain, external API’s and sub chains. This will lower barriers to entry for users. This is badly needed in the space as we don’t need software experts running this space, blockchain needs to appeal to the average man or woman if mass adoption is ever going happen.

Light Node Client

The is used to achieve transaction and status verification, it reduces synchronization time for light node clients and will verify accuracy of transactions. Again, just another part of the ecosystem that is required for scalability and covered in detail in their technical paper.

Online Fault tolerance

This is a security feature that if a conflict or fork occurs it will freeze the impacted accounts and blocks via “sole identity mapping”. Usechain.net. (2018) further claim that other nodes will continue to work if this occurs whilst the “impacted” blocks /accounts are judged by their committee board. Now we can be confident we have a fully secure platform.

A closer look at their ecosystem

Source: Usechain.net. (2018)

In their whitepaper Usechain.net. (2018) state they are working with their partners and global tech communities to create this service. They claim to have a large pool of resources to begin creating applications and appeal to the masses. I believe them as their whitepaper provides us with a strong use case for this ecosystem. Their ecosystem will comprise of:

• Users- The individuals, assets etc… that will use the verification mechanism & service apps in the ecosystem to map addresses and carry out identity verification. This gives user rights via adding value to their identity via data gathering.
• Application participants- individuals/organisations can endorse identity verification for others based on their own identity certification, according to the whitepaper. Service providers will be able to develop their own apps to expand their business on the ecosystem. This is all to entice mass adoption.
• Technology participants- This refers to the coordination work with their partners to continue to optimise the network and look after all of its elements. This is essential.

I find this fascinating, this Ecosystem will provide a seamless connection between the real and digital world via their identity verification process. They have so much to offer their users also such as:

• Full peer-peer payment platform
• The combination of identity mapping to create an open and transparent identity value and trust system and use of a ledger will allow for credit ratings to be stored thus giving users access to financial services (Loans, crowd funding). The identity token and decentralised nature ensure safe and efficient transfers of value across the ecosystem.
• Also, as per their whitepaper, there will be a trust system as one can search a user’s behavioural data on the chain to ensure they are happy with any transactions. You can essentially carry out an audit of their trust before any business is done. I love this concept, this is what will give trust to this market and drive mass adoption. They further claim any misbehaviour will be subject to transparent investigation so we can be assured of security as they police it.
• This would be a perfect use for hire centres or insurance companies, who could establish trust before contracts are signed.
• Further-more they even have a feeless passive investment portfolio index.
• They will have a decentralised insurance platform with guaranteed pay-outs.
• They will have a decentralised exchange. As we all know decentralised exchanges are predicted to become huge this year and into 2019.
• They even have tuition funds to provide no interest loans to students.
• Another aspect of this platform that really caught my interest is that content creators like myself can perform copyright registrations of our works and broadcast it to the Usechain ecosystem for consensus; Timestamps will give validity to copyright claims and breaches will be investigated (voted on), if somebody steals your work this is broadcast to the network, thus showing another reason why Identity on blockchain is required in today’s society.
• Other features include games (Identity trusted teams) and market forecasts (renowned schools).

As can be seen this is the all-encompassing financial ecosystem that would drive mass adoption, it seems as if they are planning to create a one stop solution to the worlds needs, one thing is for sure is that this will be a very exciting ecosystem.

Token use (UST)

In their whitepaper they claim that their token (UST) is used to reward the community developers and supporters and it allows users to use apps on the ecosystem. It is currently an ERC-20 token but there will be a token swap once their main net goes live. It is essentially the utility token for the platform.

There are 20 billion tokens in circulation with a finite amount, the below chart shows the distribution:

Source: Source: Usechain.net. (2018)

I find this a fair breakdown for the use of funds. I like that they have allocated a huge percentage to community rewards (35% total).

Token sale

Total supply: 20, 000, 000, 000 UST
Softcat: 1350 BTC
Hard cap: 4500 BTC
Trading pairs: Ethereum & Bitcoin

Source: Usechain.net. (2018)

In my opinion they are using funds wisely, they are committed to hiring experts in blockchain development and are focusing a lot on marketing. They are also being smart and have a risk fund to mitigate unforeseen risk. They also have some very impressive Investors and partners on board such as Milestone capital.

Team & Advisors

Source: ICO Drops, (2018)

I personally find that this is an all-star team. The CEO is a finance professor at Cheung Kong Graduate school of business and is head of the finance department, according to the whitepaper he is also the founder of the first finance MBA program in china. The rest of the team are equally as impressive. There is a lot of expertise in their advisor’s team also.

Roadmap

Source: ICO drops, (2018)

As can be seen by the charts above they have a very impressive road map for roll out of this ecosystem. Some key dates from this are listing of UST is expected in Q3 of this year whilst development of RPOW is being done and the launch is earmarked for 2019.

Conclusion

I am fascinated by this project, I was glued to this whitepaper as I was reading it, I have been on the look out for such an ecosystem for a long time. I personally feel that more needs to be done to drive mass adoption to blockchain, I feel I may have found the project. Usechain is amazing, I feel they will attract a lot of attention from industries who require KYC and AML. Their Mirror Identity Protocol and use of RPOW consensus is a game changer in my opinion as it seems to solve the most fundamental problems that all blockchains face today (how to keep decentralisation, security and scalability all equal and to complement each other).

I will be investing in this project for sure; I urge you all to read more about this amazing project with the links below, and again I thank you all for your continued support.

Additional reading

• Website: https://www.usechain.net/

• Link to whitepaper: https://www.usechain.net/usechain_en.pdf

• Link to technical whitepaper: https://www.usechain.net/usechain_tech_en.pdf

• Link to GitHub: https://github.com/usechain

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/usechain

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UsechainFoundation/

• Telegram: https://t.me/usechaingroup

• Medium: https://medium.com/@usechain/

• Bounty thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3609821.0

• My Bitcoin talk Name: CryptoGuro1

• My bitcoin talk Url: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2093060;sa=account

References

• ICO Drops. (2018). Usechain (UST) - All information about Usechain ICO (Token Sale) - ICO Drops. [online] Available at: https://icodrops.com/usechain/ [Accessed 22 Jun. 2018].
• Usechain.net. (2018). Usechain.net | The First Mirror Identity Blockchain | 全球首个身份镜像区块链. [online] Available at: https://www.usechain.net/ [Accessed 22 Jun. 2018].
• Usechain.net. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.usechain.net/usechain_en.pdf [Accessed 22 Jun. 2018].