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 @heiditravels on the subject of MasterNodes (https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@heiditravels/how-to-find-affordable-masternodes). Although I'm by no means a crypto expert or veteran, I've invested in a number of coins and tokens over the last couple of years. Although some have gained and some have lost, I've only really been drawn to Crown as a project and community that I actually believe in, so I wanted to talk about it here. Having spent almost a year getting to know the Crown project and dev team, though, I just wanted to follow up Heidi’s post with a little more detail of my own, to clear up a couple of missing things for anyone thinking of investing in a node of their own.

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).

What is Crown?

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):

1. Blockchain and cloud-computing platform
2. Fast cryptocurrency (working towards instant verification, rather than several, or even tens of minutes, as can often be the case with other tokens)
3. Payment API infrastructure (to allow easy payments to/from sites and applications - such as supporting charity Friends of Cite Soleil in Haiti over Christmas)
4. Identity registration (to allow developers to build their own blockchain registries on the Crown network)
5. Legal contracts (can be signed and verified using the Crown blockchain)
6. Community governance (using MasterNode votes)
7. Distributed consensus mechanism (to allow rapid verification of transactions)
8. Application hosting on a shared cloud (using SystemNode and MasterNode clusters to host actual applications, using the Crown API)

Who runs Crown?

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.

What are MasterNodes and Systemnodes?

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:

  • 35% to the miner
  • 45% to a MasterNode
  • 10% to a SystemNode
  • 10% to the development fund (see below)

What’s the difference between MasterNodes and SystemNodes?

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.

A quick note: Why did Crown just go into Maintenance on Bittrex for a couple of days?

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:

1. The community picked up on it immediately by spotting some issues of block heights not matching on different chains and raised it in the community chatrooms (on MatterMost and Discord).
2. The devs, who are actively on these forums, picked this up and investigated the mismatching block heights to determine the source of the problem.
3. Discussions were held between the devs and the community to discuss the best course of action.
4. Conversations were had with miners and exchanges to establish the impact of the various courses of action and a temporary freeze put in place until the chain was stabilised.
5. Decisions were made to merge and re-sync the chains across the network and compensate anyone whose transactions would be affected.
6. Going forward, nodes will be ‘ranked’ by age, so that new nodes no longer run the risk of accidentally overruling the established chain if several of them simultaneously come online.

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)

In conclusion

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

Links

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!).