Kyber brags that one of its benefits is that it doesn’t hold the users’ tokens. Therefore, the tokens won’t get hacked or stolen. They are implying that if they hold tokens, the tokens can get hacked or stolen.
Then they say that they guarantee high liquidity by “holding reserves of all tokens in the network” that users may want. They would need to hold TONS of tokens to guarantee high liquidity. By holding tokens, these tokens can get hacked or stolen, according to Kyber.
Their business model is completely flawed.
In regards to CombiCoin, their pitch is that you reduce risk by diversifying. However, they increase risk for you because they have your money and you have to believe that it’s backed by other coins. Tether is doing this already, except they back up Tether with USD. There is already talk that Tether is not backing up their coin with sufficient USD. You’ll never know for sure that CombiCoin’s TRIA is backed up by sufficient coins. Instead, if you went out and bought the other coins on your own, you’ll never need to believe anyone’s claims.
Agreed on Swarm and Combicoin.
But, with Kyber it is a different story. As far as i understood, they don't hold tokens. They have reserve managers (anyone with specified credentials can be one) and Reserve Contributors (could be you or me). The reserve contributors hold the tokens and supply the Reserve Managers. These Reserve Managers trade on the Kyber Network Platform and are paying a fee in KNC to Kyber, which will get burned.
So, if my understanding is right, Kyber told the truth. They don't hold the tokens and they can provide the liquidity.
I do not know if
Kyber is truthful or not. I wrote that their business model is flawed.
They have a MVP (minimum viable product), which is very good news, though I didn’t try it to confirm that it works.
Kyber’s white paper explains the problem of exchanging/converting coins or tokens to other coins or tokens. I agree with this problem and it’s getting worse every month.
Their white paper correctly states:
“…most of the trades happening on centralized exchanges are vulnerable to internal fraud and external hacking. This is an ongoing concern and a number of hacking incidents has been reported at various exchanges affecting thousands of users and loss of hundreds of million of dollars.”
Then their white paper states:
“we maintain a reserve warehouse which holds an appropriate amount of crypto tokens for purposes of maintaining exchange liquidity.”
This means that they are doing exactly what they said is risky about centralized exchanges. They will be creating a honey-pot for hackers, employees or reserve managers to steal. Every reserve created by users will be honey-pots. One might argue that it’s more difficult to steal because the money is in a smart contract. That’s not necessarily true. DAO’s money was in a smart contract and it was stolen.
Also, they didn’t say where the data is stored. They did say that it will be “on-chain”. Will it be on the Ethereum blockchain? If so and if they have a lot of trades, they are going to have significant scaling issues.
They have a comparison to competitors which is good to see and should be in every white paper. However, they say that they are the only one that is secure against attacks. How can they say that? Nothing is guaranteed against attacks, not even Bitcoin. If Chinese miners collude, they can attack Bitcoin. Someone hacked DAO on Ethereum. That’s why they forked into Ethereum Classic. If someone hacks KyberNetwork’s reserve, is Vitalik going to fork Ethereum for KyberNetwork?
In 4.2 of their white paper, they state:
“The entire process occurs within a single transaction, and the KyberNetwork never has a possession on the user tokens (neither token A nor token B).”
But their diagram shows the user sending token A to the KyberNetwork.
I hope that Kyber works. We need decentralized exchanges. But the crypto/blockchain technologies still have vulnerabilities and limitations. Centralizing money is risky. Just be aware of this risk.
Their white paper says that Vitalik Buterin is an advisor. If true, then this shows that stacking a team with lots of people doesn’t mean the ICO is flawless. If untrue, then the ICO put in a famous person without his permission.
I don't know if Kyber is unscrupulous. I don't think they are, but don’t think that unscrupulous people won’t put Vitalik’s name in their team without his knowledge. I’ve seen Vitalik’s name in many ICOs. I cannot see how he would have the time to advise so many ICOs.
Besides, Augur had Vitalik on their team and after 2.5 years, they have a beta that is barely usable.