Ontology (ONT)
Ontology is a diverse, integrated, distributed trust network and the infrastructure for building a trust ecosystem. Ontology encourages trust cooperation and allows projects of all shapes, sizes, and technologies with different business scenarios and compliance requirements to pass through Ontology’s chain networks and take advantage of the distributed trust network how they see fit.
Unlike all other coins I have discussed in the past (with the exception of VeChain Thor), Ontology is still very much a work in progress but one with huge potential and this can be seen by how well it’s performing even in this bear market. Just to give you an idea, it was launched on Binance at ~1.30$ and at the time of writing stands at ~7.42$ (a ~570% increase) as a time where the total cryptocurrency market cap has dropped by more than 13%.
Ontology will use a consensus mechanism called Verified Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT).
VBFT is a new consensus algorithm that combines PoS, VRF (Verifiable Random Function), and BFT. With VBFT, Ontology nodes first apply for participation in network consensus through placing stake. Then, by using a verifiable random number, several nodes are selected from among all the consensus nodes. The selected nodes take the responsibility to propose, verify, and vote for new block(s).
The consensus mechanism is central to the passive income “piece” of Ontology. You can find more information about VBFT, here.
The Ontology network will feature a dual token mechanism that are bound together — ONT (the cryptocurrency coin of main chain services) & ONG (the utility token of main chain operations). By owning and holding ONT; you will passively earn ONG.
The Ontology Governance Model, which allows the ‘passive income’, is compromised by the “Triones Economic Model which uses ONT/ONG and combines the VBFT consensus algorithm and a consensus management smart contract”. You can find more information about the “Triones Consensus System Economic Model”, here.
In order to earn ONG, you will simply need to hold ONT in your wallet and ONG will accumulate over time. There is very little effort involved on your part. To get an idea on how much ONG you will generate, you can check this calculator.
Decred (DCR)
Decred is a cryptocurrency that solves blockchain governance. It allows users to seamlessly transition from one set of consensus rules to another. This is a complex problem, as demonstrated by the difficulties experienced in Bitcoin governance. Decred uses an innovative hybrid proof-of-work (PoW)/proof-of-stake (PoS) system similar to proof-of-activity (PoA) to solve this problem and gives users of the currency decision-making power about the set of consensus rules to activate.
Decred has implemented a hybrid consensus mechanism, combining Proof-Of-Work (PoW) and Proof-Of-Stake (PoS) thus eliminating one of the biggest issues with PoW — miner centralization (Jimmy Song has an excellent piece on this).
This hybrid designs allows each block to be mined just like Bitcoin (PoW), as well as, allow stakeholders to vote (PoS) on a couple of things; the validity of the freshly mined block and any proposed features or changes to the network. Voting is enabled by purchasing voting tickets, which temporarily locks voters’ DCR. The voter’s reward received, currently stands at 30% of the total reward; check here for the latest reward figures. You can also find more information about this hybrid design, here.
Very briefly, to earn passive income with Decred you must follow these steps:
Set-up and fund a Decred wallet
Pick a voting pool (also known as a stake pool) and sign up on the pool’s website. More information on stake pools can be found here.
Purchase voting tickets
Storj ( STORJ)
Storj is a protocol, cryptocurrency, and suite of decentralized applications that allows users to store data in a secure and decentralized manner. It uses Bitcoin-inspired features like a transaction ledger, public/private key encryption, and cryptographic hash functions for security.
Storj nodes, or average computers running the software, sell resources to store and transfer information and earn STORJ (or other cryptocurrencies) in exchange for their services.
Essentially, Storj is the open-source, decentralized, blockchain-based counterpart of Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. Traditional centralized solutions have a number of drawbacks (privacy, security, outages, etc.) which Storj solves using the blockchain and peer-to-peer networks.
Unlike all other coins part of this post (and previous posts in this series), with Storj, you need to contribute resources for something in return. Contribution to the Storj network comes in the form of storage space and bandwidth. Given how easy it is to set-up and get started with Storj, if you have unused storage space and/or bandwidth, this essentially becomes passive income.
A tutorial on how to setup and start contributing your unused resources on the Storj network, can be found here.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to calculate the Storj payout as there are numerous factors that affect the payout, such as:
How many people will upload to the network in the future (and how much)
How many people and how much will they download the files again
Quality of the node contributing resources
Having said that, there are details on how the calculation works and how payments are made, here.
If you would like to see a blog post discussing coins similar to Storj (i.e. contributing unused resources for something in return), please feel free to drop me a message or a comment below.