The Hashcoin protocol is a real-time, decentralised, peer-to-peer, cryptographic software project, maintained by a community network.
What is Hashcoin?
Hashcoin is the world's first digital commodities technology platform with real-time payment confirmations and the first transaction protocol to support decentralised digital rights management and deeds of ownership across multiple media applications.
Hashcoin is a British software protocol built by a collaboration of Theoretical Computer Scientists from around the world to support secure, decentralised digital crypto-currencies, real-time payment systems and tradeable commodities.
Hashcoin is a consensus network that enables advancements in real-time electronic payment systems and completely digital crypto-currencies. It is a completely decentralised peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or governance. Hashcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence and the world's first real-time payment system.
What do we need?
We need funding to finalise and beta test everything we have done so far. We have a great proof of concept and a solid business plan with lots of future application planned after the protocol goes live. We need to take the application designs to an enterprise level and perform UX testing. Money will go towards infrastructure, the final push on development, the appropriate certification and ensuring the foundations that we have already built are extensible and well documented. This is a British product supporting local talent with worldwide aspirations.
Who created Hashcoin?
Hashcoin is an evolutionary implementation of a concept of decentralised, peer-to-peer cryptography using mathematical computations to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first Hashcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2014 in a cryptography mailing list by research organisation called the Theoretix Consortium, a collaborative team of international Theoretical Computer Scientists.
The Hashcoin protocol will remain decentralised across a growing network with no central authority or ownership. As Hashcoin's protocol creators, the Theoretix Consortium continues to innovate with the creation of API's and software services, providing an extra layer of secure middleware products that appends any necessity to regulate the protocol itself.
Instead, Theoretix maintains a moral responsibility to propagate a military grade cryptographic middleware network that can be enabled to support a mediating layer between exchanges from the application and any international currency or any other crypto-currency supported by the trading platform.
This allows the real-time transition and switching into and out-of various currencies, promotes pro-active regulation in regions that require this extra level of conformity, thus, promoting adoption. This external validation-as-a-service layer (VaaS), allows the Hashcoin protocol to remain immune from any country, government, regulatory body or political party attempting to enforce additional regulation to conform to local laws and customs.
This allows Hashcoin to forever remain unregulated as a currency, as a commodity and as a method of payment. Hashcoin has been built upon the world's most advanced cryptographic methods and is the first real-time crypto-currency developed for everyday use, mirroring the fundamental tenants of what the world expects from a next-generation digital currency.
Who controls the Hashcoin network?
Nobody owns the Hashcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Hashcoin is controlled by all Hashcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Hashcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Hashcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.
How does Hashcoin work?
From a user perspective, Hashcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal Hashcoin wallet and allows a user to send and receive hashcoins with them. This is how Hashcoin works for most users. Behind the scenes, the Hashcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user's computer to verify the validity of each transaction.
The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all users to have full control over sending hashcoins from their own Hashcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialised hardware and earn a reward in hashcoins for this service. This is often called "mining" which will supported by the network itself.
What are the advantages of Hashcoin?
• Payment freedom - It is possible to send and receive any amount of money instantly anywhere in the world at any time. No bank holidays. No borders. No imposed limits. Hashcoin allows its users to be in full control of their money.
• Very low fees - Hashcoin payments are currently processed with either no fees or extremely small fees. Users may include fees with transactions to receive priority processing, which results in faster confirmation of transactions by the network. Additionally, merchant processors exist to assist merchants in processing transactions, converting hashcoins to fiat currency and depositing funds directly into merchants' bank accounts daily. As these services are based on Hashcoin, they can be offered for much lower fees than with PayPal or credit card networks.
• Fewer risks for merchants - Hashcoin transactions are secure, irreversible, and do not contain customers' sensitive or personal information. This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks, and there is no need for PCI compliance. Merchants can easily expand to new markets where either credit cards are not available or fraud rates are unacceptably high. The net results are lower fees, larger markets, and fewer administrative costs.
• Security and control - Hashcoin users are in full control of their transactions; it is impossible for merchants to force unwanted or unnoticed charges as can happen with other payment methods. Hashcoin payments can be made without personal information tied to the transaction. This offers strong protection against identity theft. Hashcoin users can also protect their money with backup and encryption.
• Transparent and neutral - All information concerning the Hashcoin money supply itself is readily available on the block chain for anybody to verify and use in real-time. No individual or organisation can control or manipulate the Hashcoin protocol because it is cryptographically secure. This allows the core of Hashcoin to be trusted for being completely neutral, transparent and predictable.
What are the disadvantages of Hashcoin?
• Degree of acceptance - Many people will remain unaware of Hashcoin. Every day, more businesses will accept hashcoins because they want the advantages of doing so, but the list will remain small at the outset and will need to grow in order to benefit from network effects.
• Ongoing development - Hashcoin software is still in beta with many incomplete features in active development. New tools, features, and services are being developed to make Hashcoin more secure and accessible to the masses. Some of these are still not ready for everyone. Hashcoin driven businesses will all be new and still offer no insurance. In general, Hashcoin will be in the still in the process of maturing in the early days after it's initial launch.
How are Hashcoins created?
New hashcoins are generated by a competitive and decentralised process called "mining". This process involves that individuals are rewarded by the network for their services. Hashcoin miners are processing transactions and securing the network using specialised hardware and are collecting new hashcoins in exchange.
The Hashcoin protocol is designed in such a way that new hashcoins are created at a fixed rate. This makes Hashcoin mining a very competitive business. When more miners join the network, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a profit and miners must seek efficiency to cut their operating costs.
No central authority or developer has any power to control or manipulate the system to increase their profits. Every Hashcoin node in the world will reject anything that does not comply with the rules it expects the system to follow.
Hashcoins are created at a decreasing and predictable rate. The number of new hashcoins created each year is automatically halved over time until hashcoin issuance halts completely with a total of 28,401,840,000 hashcoins in existence. At this point, Hashcoin miners will probably be supported exclusively by numerous small transaction fees.
Why do Hashcoins have value?
Hashcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. Hashcoins have the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognisability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies).
In short, Hashcoin is backed by mathematics. With these attributes, all that is required for a form of money to hold value is trust and adoption. In the case of Hashcoin, this can be measured by its growing base of users, merchants, and startups. As with all currency, hashcoin's value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment.
What is unique about Hashcoin?
Hashcoin is designed to create a wave of innovation by allowing companies and individuals around the world to extend the protocol by designing hardware, software, middleware, API's and services based upon the power of the network, thus, redefining the ways we pay for goods and services worldwide.
Hashcoin can be seen as a mathematical protocol, a virtual currency with real value, a real-time payment service and a tradeable commodity. All in all, Hashcoin is a platform for changing the way we see money, send and receive payments, make transaction, invest, save and make investments.
Risks & Challenges
With a software development project like this, the biggest risk and challenge is shipping on time. To combat delays, we’ll share our scheduled milestones with our backers. We plan to release in modules and allow beta testers time to real world test each module to make sure its functionality is solid before we build on top of it.
There’s always a struggle between shipping on time and features, and while our aim is to hit all of our scheduled milestones, our higher goal is to ship software that is sturdy, secure, and extensible; to inspire, to excite and to breed innovation.
We will release with full cross-platform compatibility. We have recently added a dedicated C++ developer to our team, and we’re hiring an Enterprise Architect to stress test the system, prevent DDoS attacks and test the security of the network for forensic system reporting.
With Crowdfunder backing we’ll be able to deepen our bench even more. We’re certain that we’ll be able to navigate any issues that arise, but we'll keep you informed if our schedule slips. We've navigated these waters before, and have already tested the proof of concept at an enterprise level, so we are comfortable that we can chart a fairly accurate course.
We have a world renowned Computer Scientist steering this project from the start, so we feel in very capable hands to deliver a world class product that will scale beyond our wildest hopes and dreams.
This project closed unsuccessfully on 5th March 2014