I have heard/read the announcement and various posts for the mining of KOINOS $Koins before it started. I was reluctant to join, because I still couldn't make sense of why ex-Steemit devs chose to abandon Hive and not finish almost finished work of deploying SMTs. I have great respect for these folks and believe they are brilliant minds, and them leaving Steemit Inc when realizing decentralized vision was being destroyed is admirable and deserves huge amount of respect. The stood with community when it mattered most. So, kudos to them!
SMTs project was almost done as it was demonstrated during SteemFest 2019 and was about to be launched in Spring of 2020. It still bothered me when split happened and we create Hive that ex-Steemit devs didn't plunge into this work to deliver it for the community. Initially, I thought they probably have some non-compete clause in their employment contracts. I don't think that anymore since they are building something new - KOINOS.
Nevertheless, they are part of the Hive community and are not obligated to anybody to do anything. I still hope though Hive community can benefit from their expertise and brilliant minds in building the future of the Web3. Now that HF24 has been a success and things are stabilizing, the next focus for us all should be SMTs or whatever we choose to name it.
Anyway, initially I didn't pay too much of attention to KOINOS and getting involved in mining $KOIN until I saw the initial mining supply of 100 million. That caught my attention. I am used to seeing projects going greedy and minting billions of coins. For example, EOS ICO was an initial supply of billions coins, if I am not wrong. 100 million supply, in my opinion, is not too high for a project like this. That made me look further.
This post is not a financial advice or an expert opinion. If you would like to mine $KOIN please read Havey's Guide To Mining Koinos by @nickyhavey. That is what I used to get started. If you would like to get more official information please ready posts by @andrarchy. If you would like to read some entertaining and informative posts on KOINOS please consider reading posts by @edicted.
I am fond of decentralization and decentralized systems. Upon looking further into KOINOS, I realized quickly how the team is for decentralization. They could have gone ICO route like EOS and made ton of money as they develop their product. They chose to make it as decentralized as possible with creating a fair playground for everybody to participate. Initial mining coin supply is 100 million $KOINS and mining is done using CPU. This allow any individual with a computer to participate. The KOINOS team themselves will have to mine their coins as well along with other participants.
Moreover, we already know most of the team members for years and their knowledge of blockchain tech and vision for decentralization is unquestionable. I have not read the KOINOS whitepaper yet, but knowing these people makes me think they about the create something amazing. In my opinion, any individual in this team is ten times smarter than Dan Larimer, and million times smarter than Ned Scott of course.
A couple of days ago I started mining $KOINs. They have built a beautiful GUI that is super easy to use. I use Mac. They even thought of creating GUI for Mac as well. Initially I was getting few errors once in a while, but thanks to the the guide by @nickihavey I shared above I was able to set up a stable mining on my desktop and a laptop. They are not too powerful, yet were able to mine about 800 $Koins within 2 and a half days. I have heard/read some were lucky enough to get much more in the first days of mining.
The mining of the initial supply of $KOINs is going to last 180 days. The team have chosen the Ethereum network for the miners to post the proof of work. This causes miners to spend gas/transaction fees every time they are rewarded $KOINs. For me the these fees have been somewhere between just under a $1 and $1.5 Overall mining fees were around 3 cents. I guess this differs for everybody based on how they set their miners and the power of their computer.
I was able to mine about 800 $KOINs within two days and a half and that cost be about 0.07 $Eth. This made me wonder what the prices are for $KOIN in Uniswap and try out Uniswap. I haven't used Uniswap before. This was the time. It seemed to me that cost of mining and buying $KOINs were similar. So, I decided to buy some as well. I just bought 11K $KOINs for 1 Eth. I am planning to buy more. However I have set cap for my investment in this project to be $1000 at this time. I would like to learn more before I can commit more.
Mining has been fun so far. It puts in the perspective how decentralized systems work, where anybody can participate by simply joining the network. My long term price target, even without knowing what the team will deliver, at this time is $1, just because I know these brilliant minds are capable of amazing things.
Lastly, as I mentioned above these folks are Hive family and I think Hive and KOINOS can be beneficial to each other and be a a force in advancing decentralization forward.