Have you ever imagined your life without privacy? It will be like having someone around you, looking and recording what you do, and even what you think. 24/7... Sound familiar? What you do on the streets, in public places, your activity on social media platforms, the transactions you perform through your bank- these are all recorded by central authorities. When Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 it was known as the private internet currency, but that is no longer the case as exchanges now are able to link your identity to your IP. Furthermore, Bitcoin utilizes a transparent public ledger and with the public wallet address, anyone can have information about the balance and how much money has been received and sent out.
What is Loki?
Loki is a fork of Monero, one of the most secure and most anonymous coins in the market now. Loki aims to create a completely-private network where users can trade and communicate. What is the difference between Loki and Monero then? Actually, there are a few differences.
Loki is even more private than Monero because Loki will be using some improved cryptographic methods of Monero (which I will detail below). For instance, Loki will enforce a minimum ring size of 10, compared to the minimum ring size of 5 for Monero.
The consensus algorithm of Loki is a hybrid PoW/PoS system (like Dash). On average, 50% of the block reward will go to the miners that perform PoW operations. In order to incentivize Service Nodes for providing network resilience and for carrying out additional network services, Service Nodes will receive 45% of the block reward. The rest of the 5% will be awarded to the governance pool.
The biggest difference is that apps can be built on top of Loki, and will be called SNApps. Loki messenger, a decentralized private messaging tool, will be the first SNApp. The incentivization of Service Nodes will make • sure that SNApps run continuously and cannot be stopped.
How does it work?
First of all, Loki will adopt the proven technology of Monero to protect the privacy of its users, such as ring signatures, RingCT and stealth addresses.
Ring signatures are a type of digital signature in which a group of signers are brought together to sign a transaction- the origin of the money is hidden and the identity of the sender is protected.
Ring CT means “ring confidential transactions”. It hides the actual amount of the transaction.
Stealth addresses hide the destination of the money. Instead of sending the money to the address of the receiver, a new one-time destination address is created, and the money is sent to this address. The receiver can calculate a one-time private spend key to this stealth address using their wallet private view key. The money is received without revealing their true public address.
Loki Messenger will use public-private key cryptography. If I want to send a message to you, I will put your public key as the receiving address. The message is then signed by my public address and broadcasted to three randomly selected Service Nodes. Each Service Nodes can store the message for up to 24 hours. To receive the message, you will have to send a query signed with your private key to the Loki network. The Service Nodes will try to find messages that are destined for your public key. When it is found, the message is released to you.
Team
On the Loki website, 7 team members and 8 advisors are listed.
The most remarkable team member is the Head Developer, Tom Winget. He is the third largest Monero contributor and has written around 120,000 lines of code for Monero in 2014 and 2015, when Monero was still in the early stage.
The Founder, Simon Harman has a background in project management and web development. He is also an influential member in Blockchain Center in Melbourne, Australia. Blockchain Center is Australia’s largest community of blockchain technology entrepreneurs, experts, mentors and investors.
The advisors of Loki are all pretty impressive, with strong background in business and blockchain.
Ismail Malik – the Founder and CEO of BlockchainLab, the first global Dev Lab for blockchain. He is also the Editor in Chief at ICO Crowd.
JP Thor – the CEO of CanYa, a blockchain-based services marketplace. He also co-founded MasterNode Ventures.
Tom Graham – the co-founder of CODEC, named by TechCrunch as one of the “Hottest Artificial Intelligence Startup in Europe”. He previously was the CEO of MapD, the fastest database platform in the world.
Competition
I think that it is obvious that there are two types of projects that will compete with Loki. The first one is Monero and other privacy coins. Loki is like a better version of Monero now and it will solve some of the problems of Monero, but Monero might undergo an update in the future and Loki could lose its advantages. The second types are other blockchain-based messaging platforms, like Mainframe and Mercury Protocol. However, both Mainframe and Mercury Protocol are built on Ethereum, which is not a privacy-focused blockchain. In term of privacy, Loki Messenger will surely be a front runner.
Token metrics
The official information about Loki token (LOK) has not been disclosed yet as the private sale has just finished. However, we can have a rough idea based on the information found on ICODrops.
Price: 0.68 USD
Hardcap: 9M
Total supply: 150M
Available for token sale: 22.5M (15%)
The only way to get LOK now is through the airdrop. They will not have a public sale.
Summary
Loki is open-sourced protocol built based on the most private blockchain, Monero. Users will be able to trade and communicate with absolute freedom and privacy. The idea of SNApps is also very attractive. Developers will now be able to built privacy-focused applications on top of a private blockchain. Some people say “You can’t get rich with Airdrops”, but maybe we can with Loki! I will definitely keep a close eye at this project! + Fork of Monero + Low hardcap (9M) + Experienced core team members + Backed by reputable advisors + SNApps can be developed on top of Loki + 1 year vesting period for team members and advisors - Competition existed from privacy coins and decentralized messaging projects - Lack of information about the use of LOK tokens by SNApps
