According to Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of the privacy-centric Layer 2 network COTI, enterprises and mainstream organizations are not yet fully convinced of the benefits of complete privacy or true anonymity in any system. Bar-Geffen said the primary reason for this is that such systems often get exploited by individuals with dishonest intentions. Regulators’ Perceptions of […]
Bitcoin News
COTI Expands Staking Opportunities With Launch Of Its COTI Treasury
The COTI Treasury is finally up and running, giving community members with an appetite for greater risk more options to capitalize on their ecosystem investments.
Described as an “algorithmic and decentralized $COTI pool”, the COTI Treasury will grow over time as it collects fees on all COTI ecosystem transactions, and users will have the opportunity to earn some of those rewards by staking their tokens in it.
While staking has previously been available with COTI it has up until now had fairly limited functionality. With the COTI Treasury, users can set their own risk tolerance and benefit from much higher APYs, so long as they’re willing to accept a higher possibility of their deposits being liquidated.
“The Treasury binds everything that we do at COTI into one coherent system,” said COTI Shahaf Bar Geffen. “Our commitment is to continue to grow the ecosystem in terms of services, volume, and partnerships to enable lucrative rewards for our users”.
The way it works is this: First, the user decides how much $COTI they’re willing to deposit into the Treasury (any amount) and the duration they want to lock up their coins for. Then, they select the multiplier, which has a direct impact on the APY they’ll earn. A 1X multiplier comes with the lowest risk and, consequently, lowest APY, while a 4X multiplier can offer an extremely generous APY of 80% or more, depending on other factors, though such a high potential reward comes with a high level of risk.
The value of the user’s deposit at the time it was staked and their multiplier, along with the current value of the deposit, will be used to calculate a constantly-changing “Health Score”. With a much higher APY comes a much greater possibility that this health score will fall to 1.0, meaning the deposit faces liquidation (meaning, the user loses it unless they add to their deposit to increase the score). However, so long as their health score remains above this threshold, they’ll continue earning rewards (which will be theirs even if the deposit is liquidated).
Any liquidated deposits will be returned to the Treasury and redistributed in the form of rewards between all active deposits.
For those who chose the lowest 1X multiplier, the Health Score is not applicable, meaning there’s no risk of losing their original deposit.
Once the initial lock period has expired, users can withdraw their original deposit or alternatively extend the lock period for an additional cycle. So if the original lock period was 30 days, they can lock their $COTI again for an additional 30 days and continue earning rewards. Whatever rewards participants earn are not locked, and can be withdrawn at any time. Whenever the original deposit is withdrawn, users will be charged a 0.5% fee, plus a 0.2% transaction fee. Deposits withdrawn before the lock period expires are subject to a further early withdrawal fee.
Users have further options available, including the ability to top up their deposits at any time.
COTI said the launch of the COTI Treasury marks a brand new era for the ecosystem and that more features are planned. These include a cross-chain fee mechanism that will ensure fees from COTI’s cross-chain products will be funneled into the Treasury.
COTI Network Strikes Deal with Gaming Giant Dafabet
One of the world’s largest gaming groups, Dafabet, has revealed that it is working with COTI to facilitate digital currency processing. The deal is a coup for COTI, which is on a mission to become the industry’s go-to network for digital payments, and is indicative of where the gaming industry is heading: the same place as all other online industries are heading – crypto.
The deal between COTI and Dafabet is much more than an LOI or exploratory pilot: COTI has constructed a dedicated wallet and payment system for Dafabet, which will be integrated into several of the gaming platforms under Dafabet’s control. The goal is to deliver a crypto payment experience that, from the customer’s perspective, is as frictionless as paying with fiat.
COTI Levels Up
The deal with Dafabet is COTI’s largest to date, certainly on the basis of Dafabet’s turnover, which stands at around billion per year. With 1.5 million unique visitors a month alighting on the company’s string of gaming sites, it has the potential to drive a lot of eyeballs in the direction of crypto, albeit obliquely; COTI’s value proposition hinges around making payments as seamless as possible. That means no interminable waiting for mempools to clear and bitcoin transactions to be confirmed.
COTI’s Trustchain will be instrumental in routing digital payments, complemented by its Payment Gateway tech stack. The product that will be integrated into Dafabet’s gaming sites is a branded version of COTI’s Ultra eWallet. It includes fiat currency and stablecoin support, enabling users to enjoy the benefits of crypto without the issue of price volatility. The speed of COTI’s Trustchain network, meanwhile, will ensure that transactions settle almost instantly.
COTI has stated that it expects the volume of transactions taking place on Trustchain to increase significantly as a result of the Dafabet deal. This in turn will benefit COTI holders, stakers, and node operators, who will see a lot more traffic flowing through the high-speed crypto network.
Big in Britain, Asia, and Elsewhere
In the UK, Dafabet is a well-known gaming operator, whose logo clings to the shirts of top-flight teams such as Celtic in Scotland and Aston Villa in England. The company also sponsors another half dozen football clubs in the English leagues and several cricket clubs too. On a global basis, Dafabet enjoys strong brand recognition in Asia, whose love of gambling requires no explanation, and the company is headquartered in the Philippines.
Since its inception in 2004, Dafabet has grown into one of the world’s top 20 e-gaming operators, with a presence on every major continent. As for COTI, it is no stranger to the world of gaming either. The blockchain company is headquartered in Gibraltar, where many of the UK’s gaming operators are domiciled. On November 24, COTI announced the release of Blockchain Dollars, a stablecoin product designed for the gaming industry. Its partnership with Dafabet further strengthens that offering, and leaves no doubt as to where COTI’s loyalties lie.
How COTI Is Using Trust to Transform Crypto Payments
Crypto naysayers have been pointing out that calling tokens “currency” is a misnomer. Sadly for crypto advocates, the naysayers do have a point. Cryptocurrencies do lack certain attributes of fiat currencies. They are yet to be generally accepted and their values are far from stable. Even with the emergence of Bitcoin ATMs and Bitcoin-backed debit cards, the cryptocurrencies still have to reach the level of ubiquity that fiat currencies enjoy.
This is partly the reason why crypto payments seem to struggle gaining momentum despite the current frenzy in the payments space. The boom of retail and digital commerce has triggered an arms race that prompted various entities like card companies, payment processors, phone manufacturers, and mobile service providers to make plays in digital payments.
Many of the currently available crypto payments projects focus on making Bitcoin and similar tokens usable. Crytopay and Uquid, for instance, offer wallets and physical cards that make cryptocurrencies spendable in existing checkout systems. Other projects like Ripple focus on grander things like replacing the infrastructure for transactions of banks and financial institutions. These projects have met varying levels of success but there still appears to be space for improvements and fresh takes.
COTI, an upcoming crypto token and payments platform, aims to transform the segment and push crypto payments to the mainstream. Instead of simply enabling the use of crypto assets to pay for purchases, it also plans to establish a healthy payments ecosystem that is based on trust.
Trustchain Protocol
Trust has become a vital factor in payments especially with the rise of peer-to-peer commerce and the gig economy. In such transactions, it can be impractical to use cryptocurrencies for payments. Blockchain payments are irreversible so it is quite risky to use when there are no mechanisms available to ensure that the other party will deliver once payment has been sent. For merchants, supporting even established methods like credit cards also entails risk due to the increasing cases of stolen card use and chargeback fraud. Chargeback fraud is expected to cost businesses billion by 2020.
At COTI’s core is its Trustchain Protocol which aims to incentivize positive user behavior on the platform. The protocol keeps track of each transaction and creates a trust score for each user. Users (whether buyer or seller) who engage in smooth deals and issue-free trade would get positive scores. They are then incentivized with lower fees when using the platform. Those with spotless records will not be charged by the system. With such an incentive system in place, users are encouraged to be trustful and trustworthy when conducting business.
Cost Effective
A key advantage that crypto payments have over conventional mechanisms is cost. Traditional payments typically involve several intermediaries. A simple retail sale would often include a payment processor, a card company, clearinghouse, and a bank. Oftentimes, each of these entities would impose fees such as transaction fees, processing fees, and currency conversion fees – all of which affect pricing and the seller’s margins.
COTI helps users save on fees by linking the transacting parties directly thus eliminating the need for intermediaries. Through the Trustchain protocol, there is also little need to engage an entity to perform escrow services since parties are compelled to honor the agreements. COTI also features exchange integration allowing the platform to support multiple crypto and fiat currencies.
Dispute Resolution
The modern payments experience also demands other mechanisms that provide protection for users in cases where transactions get bumpy. Even with features like Trustchain, disputes can happen. In traditional payments, disputes are often handled by case agents who decide on the matter. Most of the time, the process isn’t transparent leaving users with little choice but to accept whatever verdict is handed. Card companies typically favor the customer in cases of chargebacks or fraud putting merchants at a disadvantage.
COTI decentralizes the dispute resolution process. Disputes are crowdsourced to mediators on the platform. So, rather than having cases be decided upon by some secretive process, disputes are resolved through a real jury of peers aided by the platform’s transparency. As a reward for participating in the processes, mediators get to earn COTI tokens.
DAG Architecture
Other crypto payment platforms rely on other blockchains like Ethereum to work. COTI runs on its own network which isn’t a conventional blockchain. Instead, COTI uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) architecture that gives the platform speed and scalability. With DAG, transactions confirm each other so the network scales as usage ramps up.
This helps COTI avoid network bottlenecks that are common to conventional blockchains. COTI is expected to be able to handle 10,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin can only do about 2 transactions a second on average. Many crypto transactions also take time to get confirmed depending on the blockchain’s consensus algorithm. This makes most crypto tokens unusable for scenarios where speedy checkout processes are ideal. This wouldn’t be an issue for COTI.
Frictionless Experience
The modern business environment requires a frictionless experience. This is why retail and e-commerce demand dependable and feature-rich payments solutions. Unfortunately for crypto payments, simply providing means for crypto asset holders to spend their coins isn’t enough. Speed and performance also matter. Crypto payment services should perform quickly enough so that the experience isn’t a step back to what is currently available today.
Payments solutions must also be able to provide trustworthy mechanisms for parties to transact and resolve issues. COTI ticks all of these requirements by putting trust at the core of the service. Hopefully, the trust-based experience that the project aims to provide could help encourage more users to adopt crypto payments.
The post How COTI Is Using Trust to Transform Crypto Payments appeared first on NewsBTC.