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What is Holo (HOT)?
Luis Clark
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Luis Clark
What is HOLO?
Holo is a peer-to-peer distributed hosting platform form Holochain applications. It provides the decentralized apps built on it a connection to the rest of the internet. Holo allows users to use their computing power for running the Holochain ecosystem, effectively acting as the “Airbnb of the blockchain.” Users get Holofuel for their contributions, and they can also decide what apps they want to host and what price they will charge.
This enthusiastic response by the public spurred developers to study the technology more and make their own attempts at using it. This has been a highly fruitful venture, with countless projects with their own decentralized finance and applications popping up all over the world.
Of course, there have been some failures, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. What is important here is that the work done has set an impressive trend of constant improvements and developments in the new and burgeoning blockchain industry.
Mostly, major players in the market focus on staying true to the major principles of blockchain, innovating within limits defined by the technology. Holo breaks those principles by being a system that is a lot faster than the blockchain and more efficient, with no concept of tokens or mining.
How does Holo fit into the big picture of cryptocurrency? Well, let’s delve into its background and core principles to understand why it stands out as a special player in the world of blockchain.
Holo Founders
Holo was founded by two experienced contract coders, Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun. The two met when they started working together at the MetaCurrency Project in December 2016.
The project was aimed at furthering P2P technology and developing tools to help the blockchain world. Holo was the lovechild of the two developers, and it borrows a lot from Ceptr, a framework for dApps that the two worked on.
Both developers had exemplary careers before they founded Holo. Braun has been programming since 1988 and is the founder of a peer-to-peer technology that facilitates communication known as Glass Bead Software. He was also the co-founder of Emerging Leader Labs, along with being the co-founder of Harris-Braun Labs, which is a freelance software development and consulting firm. As if all this wasn’t enough, he also served on the advisory board of the Schumacher Center for New Economics.
Brock is the founder of Geek Gene, a company that has developed more than 100 alternative currency solutions since its inception. He was also the co-founder of Emerging Leader Labs along with Braun. Brock also did a lot of work to promote open-source education by introducing his “starter kit” Agile Learning Centers. He was awarded a fellowship by Edmond Hillary Fellowship in March 2019.
What is Holochain?
As we mentioned before, the Holo network is an open-source framework for building decentralized applications (dApps). What makes the Holo network special is that it deviates from traditional blockchain-based projects by not opting for a token or a mining process.
The ideology behind Holochain is that people should be able to freely communicate and share their data without a third-party observing or tampering with it (Facebook, Google, etc.) The technology enables users to do this, bound by a certain set of rules that they decide for themselves.
The way that giant companies like Facebook and Google work, it makes them the center of the universe where all user data is collected and then used as the corporations see fit. These companies further use technology like AI tools to suggest content in an effort to extract even more data. Holochain breaks away with this tradition and makes the user the focus of the system instead, thus, allowing them to have autonomy over what they choose to do with their data.
Holo dreams of a future where AI would serve the user instead of the corporation. When the technology is centered around the user, the user can customize applications to suit her needs instead of using built-for-all applications. The result is something like a combination of BitTorrent and Github.
To understand how and where the Holo network has succeeded, we have to understand why traditional blockchain technologies failed to do so. Blockchain tried to solve the problem of having a central regulatory authority like Facebook or Google by using a hashing mechanism to randomize which users would be allowed to make the next data entry.
Although the system managed to retain data integrity through this method, it still had a tendency to become more and more centralized over time, regardless of whether the Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake protocol was used.
How did Holochain solve this problem? Before we go into that, let us first take a look at Holo tokens HOT.
What is HOT? Holo Price and Market Cap
Since Holochain itself does not support a native token (more on that later), it made Holo coin HOT on Ethereum as an ERC20 token to represent Holochain. The Holo token HOT is a placeholder token that will be converted into HoloFuel whenever Holochain decides to go live with it. Users will be given six months to convert their tokens to the Holochain network.
The HOT token was launched in 2018 in an initial coin offering. These tokens are of IOU type, which means that they are designed to be redeemed for another token later on (HoloFuel). HoloFuel tokens are mutual-credit currencies backed by assets. They are designed to be earned through lending your computational power to other users.
In the ICO, HOT was launched at the price of USD 0.00015. Out of the total token supply of 177,619,433,541 tokens, 75% were up for sale. About $20,649,000 were raised, while the countries that were restricted from the sale were China, South Korea, and the USA. The sale ended on 28th April 2018 and succeeded in meeting its targeted ICO.
The market cap of HOT is currently $355,126,046. It has a circulating supply of 177.34B HOT. According to HOT price statistics, it is currently trading at about $0.00205. A lot of people clamor to buy Holo after seeing its impressive performance in terms of market capitalization.
How and Where to Buy and Store Holo Tokens
You need two things to buy and store Holo tokens; an exchange where you buy the tokens, and a wallet where you can store them. You can buy Holo (currently HOT) on most major exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, Coinbase, ByBit, etc.
The next step is to get a free wallet. You can use any free wallet provider like TrustWallet or MetaMask. After you’re done with your purchase, all you have to do is send your tokens to your wallet, and voila! You’re the proud owner of Holo Tokens that are safe inside your wallet.
It is generally a good idea to store your tokens on a wallet instead of an exchange since it is much safer and will protect you in case the exchange goes through some downtime or experiences a hack.
Holo Network and Shared Data
The Holochain platform attempted to solve this intrinsic problem in the blockchain by being entirely user-centric. Each user has his own local chains on their user devices that enter data within the confines of the decentralized application that they are using. Since each user now keeps track of his own data, it reduces data redundancy and makes the entire process vastly more efficient.
At its most basic level, Holochain works like BitTorrent by building just one additional layer above it. It allows users to share peer-to-peer data just like any normal way you would engage in torrenting, but it also adds the blockchain’s validation ability on top of it. As a denizen of the internet, you’re probably aware that whenever you’re downloading Torrents, you’re running the risk of receiving corrupt files if things go south, and even worse, you’re risking installing malicious malware or ransomware on your device.
Before data is propagated through the network in Holochain, it has a stringent set of rules that need to be met. You can only write data to a shared space if you follow these terms and conditions, and that is where the magic of blockchain ensures the safety of all users and secure networks.
Holochain uses what is called a “Monotonic Validating Distributed Hash Table”, which keeps the Holo network secured. This means that once data is on the chain, it cannot be deleted. It can be filtered as deleted by using UI, but the data is still there and can be accessed by all users.
Functionally, treating data this way means that every user is responsible for a very small amount of the total volume of data on the network, allowing you to participate in the network regardless of how powerful your device is, thanks to the distributed hash table.
But enough with the data. How do decentralized applications work on Holochain?
Holochain and Decentralized Applications
The way decentralized applications work on the Holochain is very different from the way they work on a traditional blockchain technology, say, Ethereum. While traditional systems put data in the center and set users around it, Holochain does it the other way around, with each user acting as a central node for his own processes as a network participant.
What does this imply?
First of all, this removes the need for the entire blockchain to come to a consensus whenever a transaction is made between two people. The users instead host their own chains and networks for this purpose, allowing them to draw on the distributed resources of the system to run hundreds of decentralized applications.
This also means that Holochain is about 10,000 times faster than Ethereum, a difference that is too enormous not to be considered revolutionary. This unreal speed means that only imagination is the limit when we consider the use cases of Holo. Sadly, though, Holochain isn’t perfect for everything. As the developers themselves mentioned, the technology doesn’t have tokens or mining. This also translates into it not being good for token-based applications.
Unlike blockchain, Holochain isn’t suitable for handling large volumes of data. However, it excels in applications such as supply chains, cooperatives, peer-to-peer platforms, mutual credit cryptocurrencies, collaborative applications, and social networks.
Let’s now take a look at some of the decentralized applications that are operating on the Holochain.
Peer-to-Peer Applications on Holochain
Some great dApps currently operate on Holochain, each with its own unique features and real-world applications. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular Holochain apps found today:
- Junto/Flux is a social media technology that aims to be more realistic and human-like than the social media apps that we see today. It takes away the layer of falsehood that Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms have and put more meaning into human relationships. A non-profit social media network organization based out of the hub of the modern world, New York, Junto aims to become the bane of censorship, data storage, and advertising. It plans to revolutionize how we look at social media and how we use it. It was recently rebranded as Flux.
- Sacred Capital is a startup based in Singapore. It recognizes the fact that the internet is tearing itself apart at the seams because there is no single way to connect all the networks together. Sacred Capital wants to create a reputation porting method to solve this problem so that users can easily control and update their online presence across the internet, may it be social media, articles, or comments on other websites and reviews.
- Core Nexus aims to change the way that you look at your social media. It is a dashboard that unifies all your social media accounts into a single visual dashboard. It allows you to control your content, media, and privacy and help you to decide what you want to do with your data. You can organize your experience of the internet any way that you see fit and even monetize your data as future opportunities come up.
- Fairbnb.coop is Holochain’s answer to Airbnb. Fairbnb has a unique business model in which, although it charges a fee the same way as Airbnb does, it uses 50% of the money to fund a project of the user’s choice in the area that they are visiting. They aim to revolutionize tourism by making it more people-centered instead of simply profit-centered. The project is led by a not-for-profit organization that uses most of its proceeds to maintain and further develop the project.
- Nitro League is probably our favorite project on the list since it focuses on the gamification of the Holochain technology. It is a car racing game based on the concept of NFTs. The game aims at solving issues like ensuring that gaming isn’t Pay to Win, the cars and characters are properly balanced, and that the barrier for entry is as low as possible. It sets out to become a pinnacle of gaming on the blockchain as well as being a highly addictive game overall, so that it brings more acclaim to the Holochain technology and HOT tokens.
- Ulex is trying to build an open-source legal system based on Holochain’s technology. As the world loses its trust in centralized and government-run systems, there is a need for a legal deity to pull humanity out of this mess. Ulex brings together all the legal data and wisdom of the world together on its platform in an attempt to replace governmental legal structures. The project is highly ambitious, and we cannot wait to see what it does with its vision.
Developmental Challenges of Holochain
A developer can run into all sorts of problems when trying to develop an application on the Holochain, especially if they’re used to developing projects on traditional blockchain technologies. It gets hard to work with data when every user is making his own entries. Hence, consolidation becomes a real challenge, especially in the cloud hosting market.
Distributed hash tables are essentially non-searchable; thus, users have to enter data in a way that it can be traced back to something easy to remember and record, like a username. There is also the issue of competition since users generate data locally and then choose whether they want to share it or not, i.e. all data is not public data. If your application doesn’t present good enough reasons for users to stay on it, your community will evaporate faster than ice on a sunny day.
Furthermore, every user will experience the system in a different way since no one has access to all the data on the system. Thus, it is harder to curate expectations. Traditional blockchains treat time in a very stringent manner since data is at the center of the system. In Holochain, a lot of things happen asynchronously because it is a distributed database.
Lastly, the interfaces in Holochains are tricky to navigate because of a feature called pluggable UI. Users can choose to use whichever UI they want, which means that your application should be programmed in such a way that it can run with all of those UIs.
If you’re not a developer, you might be curious about why you’re being presented with problems that concern them. However, it’s beneficial for the end-user to have a better understanding of the process and be able to relate to the challenges developers face.
The Future of Holochain
Now for the real question; would we put our money where our mouths are and actually invest in Holochain and Holo HOT tokens?
The answer is yes!
Holochain is a promising project that is doing something unique in the blockchain industry. Unlike its competitors, who are constantly trying to innovate within the confines of the system, Holochain has tried to go above and beyond and truly revolutionize the way that we use blockchain technologies.
The way that Holochain treats decentralized applications has enabled it to carve a niche in the blockchain industry. With its user-centric vision, it has gained massive support from developers as well as end-users who want to make its vision true.
This is a truly difficult feat to achieve since there is so much competition in the blockchain space, with white papers and tokens popping up left and right. Holochain has a bright future ahead of it as the “Airbnb of the blockchain,” trying to bring different technologies and bind them together into a user-friendly experience.
Holochain is able to compete with giants like Ethereum due to its innovative capabilities. Launched in 2016, it has been in the market long enough to become a major player. We strongly believe that we will see great things from the project in the future.
As with any investment advice it is recommended to do your own research and never risk more money than you can afford to lose.
Our extensive analysis of the different Cryptocurrencies doesn’t stop here. You can also check out our “What is Audius?” guide to know more about this Meme Coin that Skyrocketed in 2021.
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