Hi everyone, this is my first post on Steemit, so please excuse any rookie errors or mistakes in my markdown syntax!
Yesterday I read an excellent and really informative post by 
For the real detail, please have a look for yourselves at the official site, which contains all of the papers relating to everything I’m going to talk about and a whole lot more (more than I’ve ever got through) but here’s my little TL:DR summary:
Crown has MasterNodes and new, more affordable, SystemNodes, both with a great ROI. Beyond that, though, it's a project with strong, clear goals, dedicated (and communicative) devs and a passionate community. It's this that makes be believe that it has a great potential future, which I want to be a part of, and this is the most exciting time to be a part of the community.
Bit vague? No problem. Read on (or watch this video, which summarises it).
Crown is a digital token that can be used as a currency (like BitCoin) but also as the backbone for applications and other online projects, much as Ethereum and other projects aim to do. It has been going as a project since 2014 and has been built ‘from the ground up’ (gradually building the chain through mining), rather than by launching with an ICO (a big injection and sale of coins/tokens in one go on launch). The aim of Crown is to build a system on which developers can in turn build a new generation of applications, information systems and contracts. The project is still very much developing (see the Roadmap), but already has a strong community and a working system of MasterNodes (formerly known as Trons) and SystemNodes on which the network is being constructed.
The project’s vision is to develop the following key areas (see here for a full explanation):
Although Crown has a central dev team with many years of experience in cryptocurrency development, the growth and development of Crown is governed by the community. 10% of the block reward each month is ringfenced for community projects and anybody is allowed to create a proposal for how it is spent (at a cost of 25 CRW to submit it). Anyone with a MasterNode is entitled to vote for or against any of the proposals each month (one vote per MasterNode) and those that pass receive funding. In this way, the community actively shapes the direction and priorities of the Crown project.
MasterNodes and SystemNodes are both involved in processing transactions and running the network.
Both types of node require a certain number of Crown (CRW) tokens to be held and locked.
Both receive a fee when they process a block as part of a transaction. Whenever a new block is mined, 9 CRW are generated and then distributed as follows:
| Node type | MasterNode | SystemNode |
|---|---|---|
| What do they do? | Transaction confirmation nodes / Voting rights on any proposals for Crown development funding | Timekeepers of the CRW blockchain / Service nodes for Crown Atomic (on which businesses can be built/run) |
| What’s the collateral? | 10,000 CRW | 500 CRW |
| What are the rewards? | 4.5 CRW transaction fee (approx 1/day)* | 0.9 CRW transaction fee (approx 1/day)* |
| What’s the current ROI?* | 22.72% a year* | 35.51%* a year |
*Please note that ROI will change depending on the number of active nodes and as more SystemNodes come online the ROI will eventually end up similar to that for MasterNodes. For a live calculation of ROI, see Crown Central.
SystemNodes in particular, are in many way the most exciting part of the project in terms of where cryptocurrencies/tokens are going to be developing over the next several years. As well as functioning as thousands of ‘timekeepers’ to allow transactions to be checked vastly more quickly than on BitCoin (or most other networks), they aim to function effectively as ‘shop units’ that can host businesses or other data on the Crown blockchain in return for hosting fees. One early example of this is the G-ME personal global tracker project, just launched on IndieGoGo, which aims to use the Crown blockchain as the backbone for a secure GPS tracker and safety dongle, which can link to personal emergency contact data such as contact numbers and allergy information quickly and securely.
Where BitCoin opened the way for crypto tokens as a store of value, this next generation of tokens allows them to be stores of un-tamperable information as well, from emergency contact details to financial and legal ledgers.
In some ways, this is a great example of what an active community and dev team that Crown has, and is a sign of how the project is gaining momentum. With the recent launch of the SystemNode level, large numbers of new nodes have been coming online. Just before Christmas, a couple of hundred nodes were started and synced simultaneously, at the same point as a technical fault knocked one of the larger CRW mining groups offline. The effect of this was to allow numerous alternative chains to form and propagate at the same time, without one clear majority chain to pull them all into line. In effect, it was an unplanned ‘hard fork’, but one with a whole bunch of prongs (a hard comb, perhaps?). This could have been a disaster for some tokens, but in this case the response was impressive:
All of this took place over the course of just a day or two, with the community kept informed (and often involved) every step of the way. Rather than being a worry, this felt to me (and those I spoke to) as more confirmation that this is a community, dev team and project that is growing with passion and care to be the best system and environment that it can be and making sure that it does things right, rather than throwing things together in a knee-jerk fashion.
By the time this post hits my stream, there’s a good chance that the chain will have been reintegrated and that trading will have resumed after the little hiatus. (EDIT: It was and it did. Nobody lost out. The devs compensated anyone who was inconvenienced out of their own personal funds and then numerous members of the community chipped in to at least partially repay the devs; another reason why I love this project)
For anyone looking at investing in MasterNodes (or SystemNodes), Crown is an excellent community to join, not just for the Return On Investment, but for the community that goes along with it and for the project that is being built, which sets its goals far higher than spitting out mining fees for early investors.
As one guy commented on the forum a few weeks ago: "A year down the line, if the 0.9 CRW transaction fee is all your SystemNode is doing, or earning for you, you’ll be doing something wrong".
If you’re interested in Crown, or any of the other similar projects around, feel free to ask me, although your best bet will be to check out some of the links below, which should get you closer to people with the technical knowledge (I’d especially recommend coming along to the MatterMost chatroom and just asking some questions). Me, I’ve mainly got the enthusiasm and a few nodes to my name. But I’m learning a little more every day.
Lex
Official site (including set-up guides): https://crown.tech/
Crown statistics and information: http://crown.today/ / https://crowncentral.net/
Crown MatterMost chatroom: https://mm.crownlab.eu/crown/
Official Crown forum: [https://forum.crown.tech/] / (https://forum.crown.tech/)
Disclosure: I’m not a part of the Crown team, although I am active in their MatterMost chatrooms and have some SystemNodes of my own (and a couple of MasterNodes, which I picked up when they were a lot cheaper than they are now!).
