Phore’s Path Since Genesis

Originally written February 2021.

The ICO era in cryptocurrency began around 2013. The apex was in 2017/2018 and continued with many new projects as they became very popular in the crypto space. With Phore, there were no premine and no ICO stages. The Phore community has supported the developmental roadmap. That support combined with the work of the developers has allowed the ecosystem to reach many milestones. It has also provided more development consultation with several other projects. A short review of some history on ICO’s will show that many were not successful. A Boston College study analyzed 4,003 ICO’s between 2017 and 2018. These were worth a total capital of around $12 Billion. According to the research, abandonment plagued 56% of new crowdfunded tokens. Some of the issues include insufficient funding, low liquidity, and duplicity within four months of their ICO. A study conducted by ICO advisory company Satis Group LLC found that some 81% of ICO’s were scams. Combined with those which failed or went dead, the percentage of ICO’s which failed to list on exchanges was 92%. Out of the 8% that did make it on exchanges, only 1.9% achieved some success. Columbia Law Review published a paper in 2019 which found that among the 50 top-grossing ICOs, many of them didn’t promise to protect their investors. Two of the issues found were insider trading and projects allowing their teams to get centralized control through changes in the code of the governing structures within the cryptocurrency. This would have been particularly troubling for new investors. This diminishes trust in cryptocurrency and even blockchain technology as a whole from interested, yet uninformed parties.

Another issue that plagued early ICO’s was security vulnerabilities. Shortly after its launch in 2016, a hack compromised Ethereum’s DAO. The theft consisted of approximately 3.6m Ether. This is a staggering amount considering today’s Ethereum prices. A 2017 hack targeted Coindash where theft of $7 million in Ethereum occurred. In 2018, a study by accounting firm Ernst and Young found that 372 International ICOs raised about $3.7 billion. Of this amount, 10% was reportedly hacked and stolen, roughly $400 million. Many were the pitfalls experienced by those involved during the height of the ICO trend. Despite not being an ICO, Phore was able to secure funding from the community. This allowed it to continue development. This was not the fate of several other projects hampered by the many vulnerabilities inherent in the ICO model.

🟢 Enter Phore
The Phore project was Kryptcoin before rebranding. It later branched off into projects like Synapse which became the customized blockchain Graphene. The Phore Blockchain team has set and reached several goals throughout the apex of the ICO saga between 2017 to 2018 and beyond. These achievements include:

- Implementation of customized Zerocoin protocol (zPHR) for enhanced privacy.
- Implementation and automation of masternodes.
- The addition of the Phore Android wallet app.
- The launching of the Phore Decentralized Marketplace.
- Partnerships with Reddcoin.
- Segwit integration
- As well as current projects in progress such as a Phore Marketplace phone app, Point of Sale retail systems where PHR can be used, and more.

The Phore Marketplace eliminates fees of more centralized markets and it does not collect user data. This is vital as user information can be sold to third parties as is often the case in today’s information age. This is excellent, as not every cryptocurrency has a decentralized marketplace with which to use its coin. The developers are working on adding support for Ethereum based assets due to the explosion in popularity of DeFi. Users can also trade anonymously with crypto pairings peer to peer in the market. Coins supported include Ethereum, Bitcoin, ReddCoin, Binance Coin, and of course Phore. The introduction of decentralized marketplaces into the field of cryptocurrency fits with the philosophy behind Blockchain technology. Improved privacy and peer-to-peer transactions without a middle party. A decentralized marketplace allows users to place their trust in the integrity of the code behind the platform. The issue of decentralization gets to the core of the current problems we have in the world. Too much control is centralized in many different industries. Several examples exist in crypto where compromised platforms enabled hackers to steal user information and funds. Exchanges such as Mt.Gox in the earlier years of crypto and Quadriga in more recent years have exposed the issues with centralization of control. This is especially important in platforms dealing with decentralized cryptocurrencies. Tech entrepreneur and former CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan argues that a decentralized response when a centralized response is not working can impede progress. The latest Coronavirus pandemic has restricted individuals to get together and do commerce. Some things were not available through the regular online channels. This includes N95 masks which have at times been very difficult to find. Individuals depending on centralized solutions could benefit from a decentralized market. This solution allows users to provide products that may be out of reach of individuals depending on centralized services. Balaji also speaks about the “blogchain”, a natural evolution of blockchain technology into social media. This would give us a decentralized platform to revolutionize the social media applications plagued with scandals from hacks and information leaks. The Phore project finds itself at an opportune time. The future of Blockchain technology and decentralization has the potential to completely change many areas of modern life. These include renewable energy, supply chain management, economic growth, healthcare, and more.

Phore has also worked in the development of blockchain solutions for other projects and helped with the upkeep of their code. The initial Bitcoin Core code was open source and given to the community. The Phore team follows that tradition as it assists others in the space through collaboration which in turn helps the team improve Phore.

🟢 Phore, Graphene and Coexistence
Along with the team’s latest development Graphene, Phore and its ecosystem continue to exist as a project with a focus on e-commerce. Graphene will allow users to have very fast transaction speeds from 100k up to a theoretical 29.4 Million. Phore’s focus is to provide a privacy solution for the exchange of goods through their PHR coin and the Phore Marketplace. The Marketplace had around 2,000 users at the height of its popularity when it was first released in March of 2018 as an open-beta. Development continues, with the latest update being V2.4.1, introduced in September of last year. Graphene’s focus will be industries that need data scalability, speed of transaction, security, and many other applications.

Users also gain rewards from staking at least 10,000 PHR on the PHR blockchain with gains of 1.62 PHR per block to Masternodes and 1.08 PHR per block to Stakers. This entails a yearly ROI of about 20%. Approximately 3,888 PHR are minted daily with a block time of sixty seconds.

The talented team at Phore has extended their expertise to the development of Graphene. Sharding technology and Turing complete smart contracts will allow the project to enable fast, secure data solutions in a wide range of applications. The future for Phore and Graphene looks promising.

A reminder that anyone that is holding Phore (PHR) will get Graphene (GFN) at the blockchain snapshot times when the project is complete.