What is prism and how does it work?

What is prism?

The new project prism, made by Erik Voorhees and his guys from ShapeShift is now available. As in the case of the original service, it's all about crypto (exchange) - especially altcoins.

A prism consists of a self-assembled mix of cryptocurrencies, which gain or lose value depending on their current market price. The service is one of the first "big ones" that is build on an ethereum smart contrat, which secures its decentralized integrity.

It's important to understand, that shares of the different currencies are not really bought with your investment. Only the corresponding market value is used. For each dollar, which is paid by the users, shapeshift puts another one in "the pot". As a result, only a maximum profit of 100% can be acquired per prism. If your able to achieve this, the prism gets paid out automatically.

How do I create a prism?

A registered user can create a prism by composing a certain amount of percents to different coins in step one. For example, 30% Dash, 40% Litecoin and 30% zCash. Subsequently, the user determines an amount which he wishes to use as a basic investion.

In the second step, the ETH address has to be entered, with wich the prism is paid in, but also paid out. A cold wallet should be used urgently!

The last step is about paying the prism. This is done by sending the defined amount as an ETH transaction to the provided address.

Once the prism is created, it can be viewed through the dashboard. Depending on whether the value of the currencies increases or decreases, the general value of the prism changes.

If you want to pay out your prism now, you can do that by simply clicking on the button at the top right. To do so, an "empty" transaction must be sent to the specified address. This has to be done with the wallet-address defined in step two. Thats how they ensure that your the actual owner of the prism.

Fees

Nothing is free in life, except the death. ShapeShift is a company that wants to make money like everyone else. This is why certain fees are charged, which finance both the spent "gas" and the company itself.

Since there were loud (justified) screams shortly after the publication of the project, which said that the fees are clearly to high, they changend their paying model:

Original Prism Fee Structure

1% per month capital fee
0.05 ETH +2.4% closing fee (waived during beta)
0.5% rebalance fee

New Prism Fee Structure

0% per month capital fee (to become market-based post-beta)
0.05 ETH +2.4% closing fee (waived during beta)
0.5% rebalance fee

How can i sign up?

Prism is currently in private beta. To be placed on the waiting list for an invitation, you can simply register at prism.exchange.

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*This is a translation of my original german post.

Have a wonderful day everyone! 🙌🏼