COVAL’s approach as a solution provider as well as the circumstances that have lead to this point are fairly unique. We started COVAL with an association of an existing cryptocurrency that already had presence on at least one major public exchange and a community of coin holders. Our efforts to pivot, rebrand and migrate over the last several months has followed our philosophy of working to make a broadly useful cryptocurrency in a sea of useless speculative ones.
We are also choosing to be an expansive platform which could be considered risky in the traditional sense but we see it differently. In fact, if we had a narrow strategy, we do not think COVAL would succeed. Though we do not proclaim COVAL to be the only viable platform and cryptocurrency by having this cross-industry strategy, we are positioning COVAL to be among the most ideal widely adopted solutions. While others focus inward, we move outward and the irony is that this approach together with our overall vision is the more pragmatic choice. Rather than be bound to any market or technology, COVAL can adapt and evolve and avoid getting trapped in corners or be victim to any one technologies shortcomings.
Many projects in the blockchain space are offering tokens through ICO events to support their particular versions of new innovative components for the future of network protocols and utility infrastructure as well as societal concepts such as governance and industry specific proposed solutions. These projects focus on decentralization, p2p, secure cryptography, zero trust, immutability and other potentially disruptive concepts. This is all good and the ideologies of a “democratic” financial backing model fits nicely into these efforts. However, see our Crowdfunding Creed to understand our thinking on ICOs.
Regardless of how projects are raising money, we do understand that the best of these new development efforts will bubble up as winners while others maybe at best can be considered as prior art for future projects or upgrades to the well adopted platforms and at worst as lessons on how not to do things, which also has value (learn from failures). All meaningful contributions and progress towards modernizing the world with “trustless” systems for movable value, identification, governance etc are a positive evolution. These projects and companies build upon each other’s work.
Trust is inherent when technology removes the need to Trust.
We will need to be patient with split efforts resulting in incompatibilities and lack of interoperability. We will need to make it through complex community debates (i.e. Bitcoin block size). Progress and large-scale change takes time. It is apparent that today there seems to be more eagerness to reinvent and compete with a startup attitude. This is in contrast to earlier open source culture and the emphasis on open standards consortiums that advanced slowly and cautiously and mostly in unison. Both have pros and cons and our hope is that we see more of a balance moving forward in the blockchain space. Not every idea or protocol should have an attached multi-million dollar ICO and token as opposed to being simply an open source contribution for the betterment of the community.
COVAL is focused foremost on the peripheral innovations as opposed to the underlying infrastructure of blockchains, consensus algorithms and new smart contract programming languages that are increasingly considered commodities as the industry settles down. Reinventing for the sake of reinventing adds complexity and noise. We are careful with what we choose to create as opposed to adopt and integrate. With this perspective and philosophy to lead us forward, we make decisions and have some insights on how COVAL can have purpose. We have a vision to realistically provide solutions that are relevant now and down the road by being implementers and integrators of what we think are the best and most mature commodity layers and platforms to complement our own. Just as Bitcoin was largely stitched together using various concepts and crypto technologies developed in previous decades as part of the cypherpunk movement, COVAL will also assemble the pieces and create connective modules and designs that achieve desired solutions that are needed for our products to function and likely for other products and services to function more efficiently too. We are as pragmatic as much as we are futurists.
Our first decision as we created COVAL was to scrap an old forked Bitcoin blockchain and put the token on Bitcoin itself via the Counterparty Platform. Now the ₡OVAL cryptocurrency is secure without needing the type of blockchain network maintenance that was needed before. We are able to proceed as innovators around the currency more so than on the currency and it's ledger stack itself. One of the over-arching concepts of COVAL is to be ubiquitous, omnipresent and agnostic whenever possible. COVAL is not a platform or currency for just one industry or one niche market. In order to achieve this, we ourselves need to build example applications and services using the COVAL Platform and that incorporate the ₡OVAL token.
As COVAL is used within various niche crypto markets and liquidity increases, we can be strongly positioned to move further into more mainstream markets where partner redemption paths can be established. When business efforts result in ₡OVAL being accepted as a payment option or integrated as a native and/or custom currency by more companies and projects, the positive trend will continue. First we must build a strong foundation. Our strategy to provide a platform, framework, apps and services will fortify ₡OVAL with utility and value.
With pleasure I read. And completely agree with you
