Hidden Gems In The Cryptocurrency Market – Part 1: DeepOnion

This series of articles will take an in-depth look at some of the highly promising newcomers in the cryptocurrency market that are currently still flying somewhat under the radar. First up is the DeepOnion project.

Background information

The DeepOnion project hit the scene on July 6th, 2017. So at the time of this writing the project has been existing for less than half a year. The DeepOnion blockchain is built on top of the highly secure Tor network which allows users to leave no traces when using the DeepOnion network and its features. As of today, the project has already made some amazing progress. There are wallets available for Windows, Linux, MacOs and even a paper wallet is already out there. Additionally, the first big feature is up and running. This feature is called DeepVault and it will be examined in detail later on. One of the things that make this project quite unique is the highly active and dedicated community which seems to be growing at an ever increasing rate. The forum is already zeroing in on 10,000 members, quite an accomplishment for a project that has yet to hit the half-year mark.

The promise of complete anonymity

The DeepOnion network uses Tor as its transportation layer. Therefore a user's IP address cannot be tracked while using DeepOnion. This is certainly great news since nobody really wants to be spied on by hackers or governments. However, Tor can only secure the network, but not the transactions on the blockchain. In other words, nobody else knows who is currently using the DeepOnion network, but transactions stored on the blockchain can still be seen by anyone. If somebody is able to trace a wallet address back to a certain person, this person's transactions are no longer anonymous. By analyzing the blockchain, it would be quite easy to compile a list of all transactions and therefore the current balance would also be known. Since people have to give away their wallet addresses in order to receive payments, all of this is quite a realistic scenario. It is also the reason why Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous, even though many people believe this to be the case.

The good news is that the DeepOnion developers are well aware of this and they will be releasing a great new feature in the not so distant future. This feature goes by the name of DeepSend and according to the website's roadmap, it is about due to be released. So what exactly is DeepSend? DeepSend allows users to make their transactions completely untraceable. The very basic pattern behind this is that onions (the name of DeepOnion's cryptocurrency) are not sent directly to the recipient. Instead, they are sent to a pool and the pool then forwards the onions to the actual recipient. This of course is quite a simplified explanation of what is really going on behind the scenes, but it should be enough to get the picture. The pool has many addresses instead of just one, so it is also impossible for someone else to know that onions were sent from a user's address to the pool. So essentially there is a man in the middle (the pool) who goes by many names (the different addresses). According to technical information provided in DeepOnion's forum, the technology used is an improved version of an already existing one, first introduced by the SuperCoin project. Just like picking Tor as a secure transport layer, this choice should turn out to be an excellent one. Building on top of battle-tested technology is certainly better than wasting a lot of time trying to re-invent the wheel.

DeepSend is not free of charge. A fee needs to be paid if one wants to send a completely untraceable transaction. This may sound like bad news, but it is actually good news. The new name of the game is to run services on top of blockchains. Valuable services that provide something the masses have been waiting for. Since people have to pay with onions for these services, the coins all of the sudden possess intrinsic value. People can actually do useful stuff with them instead of just hoarding and trading their coins. Compare this to Bitcoin where there is no real value at all. With Bitcoin it is all about finding someone else who is willing to pay even more than what the current holder was willing to pay. So while old cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are nothing else but collector's items, onions are for real. The folks at DeepOnion have certainly realized that the blockchain is only the basic foundation for features, not a feature all by itself. Projects such as this one are about to change the game forever. It is no longer about persuading people that a certain cryptocurrency has value. From here on out it will be about delivering useful features and the value of a cryptocurrency will mainly depend on the demand for such features and coin supply. Think about it for a short while! The difference may seem subtile but this actually solves the core problem of older cryptocurrencies, which is that there simply is no intrinsic value whatsoever.

DeepVault

DeepVault is a major feature of DeepOnion and the best news is it is already up and running. The current fee to use this feature is 0.1 onions which seems to be a bit high. I suppose this is more or less for testing purposes and the fee will most likely be lower once DeepOnion hits the mainstream big time. It is probably reasonable to assume that usage fees for all features will eventually change dynamically, depending on the current market situation. So what is DeepVault anyway? DeepVault allows for the verification of a document's original state. A digital fingerprint of the document is created and uploaded to the blockchain. The more technical term for such a fingerprint is a hash value. If the document was altered even just the slightest bit, this hash value would change dramatically and therefore would be a sure indication that the document has been messed with in some way. It does not matter whether someone alters it on purpose or the document is changed by malicious software or the storage device simply stops working correctly. In either one of those cases the DeepVault verification would detect that the document is no longer the original version. On the other hand, if the verification is successful, one can be absolutely sure the document has remained unchanged. There should be an almost infinite number of potential use cases for DeepVault. Whenever the law requires proof of originality for a document, DeepVault immediately comes into play. Of course, services like this first have to become a legal option for safe document delivery, but this should only be a matter of time. It is easy to imagine how this could save all sorts of companies and people a lot of time and money. A great feature all around and a fine example of what new cryptocurrency projects need to deliver if they eventually want to rise to the top of the market.

A new and creative way of promoting a cryptocurrency project

No matter how many great ideas a project starts out with, the challenge to let people know is a massive one. Of course, there is always the option to simply let things grow and develop on their own, but this might take years or never happen at all. Spreading the word is expensive and initial coin offerings (ICOs) have pretty much become the most popular way to do this. Coins are pre-sold to interested investors and part of the money raised is then used later on for promotion purposes. This is certainly one way to get things done but there is a serious drawbacks to this approach. Once the investors have bought the coins in the pre-sale, they are pretty much done. There simply is not anything else they will ever contribute to the project's success ever again. The investors will only check the charts in order to see if a profit has already been made.

So the founders of DeepOnion took a different approach. They pre-mined the majority of all available coins. According to the website, 18,000,000 out of 25,000,000 total coins have been pre-mined. At first glance, this looks a lot more like a big scam than a revolutionary approach. People are quite good at recognizing patterns and they have seen such a pattern before. Quite a few projects have had a lot of pre-mining with all the coins being put into the pockets of the founders. So it is quite understandable that people are quick to call such action a scam. The truth is that most of these coins will not end up in the founders' pockets. Instead, they are given away via free airdrops. The lion's share of those free coins goes to active members of the community who strongly believe in the project and help promoting it in various ways. Another chunk has been reserved for developing, so certain tasks can be outsourced in order to speed things up. Sure, the founders took a decent share as well but this seems to be more than justified. After all, these people created DeepOnion in the first place and they work their tails off to turns all of these great ideas into a success story.

So what exactly is the huge advantage compared to simply doing it via an ICO? Those who end up with the coins are actually involved in the project! This is a massive difference! They are active community members who believe in the project just as much as the developers do and they are willing to go the extra mile when it comes to promoting it. Try to accomplish this by hiring a bunch of marketing people. Such people are professionals for sure but they don't really know anything about the project and they would never put in the same amount of effort as community members would. After all, these professionals only do their job but they do not really believe in the project. The results of the unique DeepOnion approach can already be seen. Just take a look at the forum at https://deeponion.org/community and check it out. Even though the project is not even half a year old at the time of this writing, the level of activity is just flat out amazing. These members generate some serious buzz and the project will continue to benefit from such an ever-growing and highly active community.

Summary

DeepOnion is a project I really like a lot. Great ideas combined with a great way of promoting them and developers who have already delivered the first highly useful feature with DeepVault have me all excited about this project's future. It is really hard to find any serious drawbacks or flaws of any kind here. The only thing I could possibly come up with is that nobody really knows who the developers actually are. There are no names or pictures on the website which might be some kind of a red flag for some people. Being a software developer myself, I have to admit I would not really be all that interested in having my name and picture posted if I was part of the team. Most developers simply do not like the spotlight all that much and I guess the folks at DeepOnion may feel just the same. Way more important than knowing names and seeing pictures are progress and results and the developers have this part covered nicely. After all, we still do not really know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, do we? It most certainly has not prevented Bitcoin from becoming a massive success and it should not be an issue for the DeepOnion project either. I strongly believe this project will hit the mainstream on quite a massive scale at some point in 2018. If the developers manage to release DeepSend halfway on schedule and if it works as expected, then watch out! Do not forget to check out the project's website at https://deeponion.org for further and up-to-the-minute information.

Disclaimer: This article only represents my personal opinion. I am not a financial advisor, so please do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions.

About the author: I am a software developer who lives in Berlin, Germany.