Coin Report #61: KardiaChain

Welcome to the 61st Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of KardiaChain. This will be comprised of an analysis of a number of significant metrics, an evaluation of the project’s community and development and an overview of its price-history. The report will conclude with a grading out of 10. I hope you enjoy the read!

Introduction

For those that missed the first report on KardiaChain, you can find it here on Provisn. I published that Provisn-exclusive report a few months ago, and subsequently the KardiaChain team got in touch to see if I’d be interested in published an updated report this month. Given that the previous report was published in early June, there has been quite a bit of development since. However, there are also aspects that remain unchanged (but are critical to understanding the project); thus, to render this report viable as a stand-alone, there will be some overlap from the previous report. Nonetheless, there is plenty to be updated and I am intrigued to see how the project has fared over the past three months. In particular, Metric Analysis, the Community sections and Technical Analysis have been updated in their entirety. Moreover, for this report, I will focus on a plethora of recent blog posts that detail developmental progress in the Development section. Conversely, some of the sections within Development have remained on-the-whole identical, due to the unchanged nature of certain documents and resources.

I hope this report will prove objective where it must be and fair on more subjective matters. For those who’d like to learn a little more about KardiaChain prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:

Fundamental Analysis

General:

Name: KardiaChain

Ticker: KAI

Algorithm: ERC-20 (until Mainnet, expected Q4 2020)

Sector: Blockchain Solutions & Interoperability

Exchanges: Kucoin, Bilaxy, Gate.io, MXC, Hoo.com, Hotbit, Uniswap, IDEX, ViteX, Kyber Network and Coinone

Launch Overview

KardiaChain was conceptualised in early 2018 as a blockchain solutions ecosystem, having raised development funding of $1.7mn via private sale in June 2019 for 16.32% of the maximum supply of their native token, KAI (total of ~816mn KAI allocated). This token was later issued on the ERC-20 standard via IEO on April 8th, 2020, with a maximum supply of 5,000,000,000 KAI. 750mn KAI was available in the token sale and it sold out entirely, raising $1.08mn.

The KardiaChain mainnet is scheduled for launch in Q4 2020, where KAI will be swapped to the native chain, which is currently in development. The mainnet will utilise dual Byzantine-Fault Tolerant Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanisms on their Dual Node technology.

The remaining KAI tokens will join circulation via either block rewards for validators post-mainnet or vesting releases from the various allocations (more on this later).

Price-History Overview

KardiaChain has only been trading for a few months at this point and has spent the entirety of its existence in an uptrend. We will cover its price-history at length in the Technical Analysis section, but for now it will suffice to say that the all-time low formed at 5 satoshis in mid-May 2020 and its all-time high formed at 387 satoshis in mid-August. Against the Dollar, its all-time low is $0.0004, whilst its all-time high is $0.047.

Project Overview

As a project, KardiaChain is focused on being the network that combines networks, providing blockchain solutions by facilitating cross-chain interoperability, with early efforts concentrated on the Vietnamese market.

As stated in their whitepaper:

“Blockchain offers an unparalleled level of decentralisation and transparency, with a tradeoff in performance and inter-connectivity. In the foreseeable future, it is believed that blockchain solutions, especially smart contracts, will help people reach a trustless agreement at ease in all aspects of daily situations. However, the current approaches to achieve this either are built to make others obsolete, or requires a significant change on the part of the participating chains.

KardiaChain follows an “integration without assimilation” approach, which focuses on simplicity and ease-to-use from the standpoint of both the end-user and the developer.. The KardiaChain team has developed a non-invasive solution, called Dual master node (or Dual node for short), to facilitate inter-chain operations among both existing and upcoming blockchain platforms.

The ultimate goal of KardiaChain is to create a unified ecosystem where developers can easily create smart contracts that can run on multiple blockchains, in order to to optimise costs, avoid congestion, and allow communication with smart contracts on other chains in a trustless and secure manner.”

I look forward to evaluating the progress made since inception and, in particular, over the prior three months.

Let’s begin with some Metric Analysis:

Metric Analysis:

Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 10th September 2020. For anyone reading this who has yet to read a Coin Report, it might be worth reading this section of the first report, where any potentially unfamiliar terms are explained. For any terms or metrics specific to this post, I will provide explanations besides the figures.

Metrics:

General:

Price: $0.022 (213 satoshis)

Circulating Supply: 1,750,000,000 KAI

Total Supply: 5,000,000,000 KAI

Maximum Supply: 5,000,000,000 KAI

% of Max. Supply Minted: 100%

Network Value: $38.437mn (3727.50 BTC)

Network Value at Max. Supply: $109.822mn

Exchange Volume: $2.028mn ($1.343mn excluding wash)

Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 5.28% (3.5% excluding wash)

Category: Midcap

Average Price (30-Day): $0.0267

Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $3,026,426 (excluding wash)

Average Network Value (30-Day): $46.747mn

Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 6.47%

Volatility* (30-Day): -0.1893

Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): N/A

Average Daily Transactional Value** (30-Day): N/A

NVT*** (30-Day): N/A

% Price Change USD (30-Day): -8.5%

% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A

USD All-Time High: $0.047

% From USD All-Time High: -54.6%

Premine % of Max. Supply: 0

Premine Location: N/A

Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 11.69 BTC

Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.31%

Supply Available on Exchanges: 27,838,970 KAI

% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 1.59%

*Volatility is calculated by taking the average price over the given time-period, calculating the difference between it and the highest price and it and the lowest price over that same time-period, and multiplying those figures together. The closer to 0, the less volatility during that period, and vice-versa. Read this for more on volatility.

Supply Emission & Inflation:

Block Reward Schedule: No block rewards until mainnet launch in Q4 2020, but tokens are vesting over the preceding period as per: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C5zLWyL0gUNIEyppcCC3GbxuozXQGpMqYrZxaOBrn7Y/edit#gid=1063160282

Average Block Time: N/A

Current Block Height: N/A

Annual Supply Emission: 1,484,300,000 KAI (3161.56 BTC at current prices)

Annual Inflation Rate: 84.82%

Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 3,234,300,000 KAI

IEO:

The following details were taken from this source.

IEO Period: 8th April 2020

Total Tokens: 5,000,000,000 KAI

Total Tokens Available for Sale: 750,000,000 KAI

Total Raised: $1.08mn

Average ICO Price Per Token: $0.00144

Total Tokens Sold: 750,000,000 KAI

Further Details: 15% of maximum supply allocated to IEO; 20% to ecosystem; 5% to community; 16.32% (816m) in private sale that raised $1.7mn; 10% miners over 5 years; 12% to team; 3% to advisors; 18.68% (934m) to Foundation. Various vesting periods for allocations – see token emission spreadsheet in previous section.

Distribution:

Address Count: 4,308

Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 13.3% (~664mn KAI)*

Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 14.79% (~739mn KAI)*

Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 18.95% (~947mn KAI)

Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 10**

*Addresses 1-6 are excluded as these are locked smart contracts (and Kucoin 2), as well as addresses 9, 11, 13, 14 and 20, which are a smart contract, Kucoin 1, IDEX, Hotbit and Gate.io, respectively. In place of these exchange and contract addresses, I have included private addresses from further down the rich-list.

**Excluding exchange addresses and smart contracts, and including the subsequent private addresses in the rich-list.

Analysis:

There is plenty here to work through, particularly as I will be drawing comparisons with some important metrics from the previous report.

Once again, there was no data available for on-chain transactions for KAI, but given that it remains an ERC-20 token and that the mainnet is not scheduled for launch until Q4 2020, this is not much of an issue as the vast majority of transactions will currently be speculative. Once the mainnet is launched, it will be helpful to take a look at this data, however.

Firstly, I’d like to highlight KardiaChain’s 30-day Volatility of -0.1893, which is almost half that found in the previous report. This places it somewhere in the middle of prior reports, indicating that it is not quite in a tight accumulation range but it is certainly in some form of consolidation against the Dollar. We will look more closely at this later in the report.

Now, let’s take a look at the remaining General metrics before moving on to Supply Emission and concluding with Distribution:

I found KardiaChain to have buy-side Liquidity of 11.69 BTC (vs ~8 BTC in the previous report) within 10% of spot price across all listed exchanges, equating to 0.31% of its Network Value (a significant decline from the 2.05% figure found previously). Whilst the previous figure was the then-highest relative liquidity figure found in these reports, a decline of this magnitude is a little worrisome, particularly given that KAI is now traded on more exchanges than back in June.

Concerning sell-side Liquidity, KardiaChain was found to have 27.8mn KAI available for purchase (vs 30.7mn in the previous report) in the orderbooks across all listed exchanges, equating to 1.59% of its Circulating Supply (as opposed to 2.46%); this places just about in the bottom third of prior reports, indicating a decline in desire to sell KAI at any price, which is good to see given that relative buy-side liquidity has fallen. In short, there is simply less speculative interest in KAI at present than there was in June.

Now, let’s take a look at the volume-related metrics:

KardiaChain was reported to have traded $2.028mn of Exchange Volume in the past 24 hours, equating to 5.28% of its Network Value. However, some of this appears to be wash-trading, so, having discounted this, we find that 24-hour volume is actually $1.34mn. This equates to a still-impressive 3.5% of network value (although again a decline from above 5% in the previous report). More importantly, its Average Daily Volume for the past month was $3.026mn (accounting for wash), equating to 6.47% of its Average Network Value for the same period; a decline of ~50% vs the prior reading of ~12.3%. Nonetheless, this is still a solid figure for sustained speculative interest, but the relative figures have certainly dropped off.

Moving onto Supply Emission, as KAI is technically already minted to its full extent, the emission is derived from vested tokens coming into circulation and the small allocation of block rewards that will be available to validators post-mainnet launch at the end of the year. I have referred to the spreadsheet linked here for my calculations, and worked out that 1,484,300,000 KAI will be joining circulation over the next 365 days (3161.56 BTC-worth at current prices). This gives KardiaChain a fairly high annual inflation rate of 84.82%, though this will decrease significantly the following year. It is also less than the annual inflation rate of ~140% from the previous report. Circulating supply is expected to be 3,234,300,000 KAI in one year’s time.

Most significant, however, is the relationship between this Supply Emission and the Volume metrics mentioned above:

Given that we are expecting 1.484bn KAI to be added to circulation over the following year, we can work out that the average daily supply emission is 4.066mn KAI, or 8.66 BTC-worth at current prices. This equates to $89,320 of daily supply emission. As KardiaChain traded ~$1.343m of volume over the past 24 hours, and an average of $3.026mn of volume daily for the past month, we find that KAI’s average daily supply emission is covered 15x by its 24-hour volume and 33.8x by its Average Exchange Volume (both higher than previous figures, which is a plus). Further, Liquidity of 11.69 BTC covers the average daily supply emission by 1.35x, which, though decent, is significantly lower than the 5.4x of the previous report, though somewhat expected given the dramatic rise in valuation of KardiaChain.

Finally, let’s take a look at Distribution:

There are currently 4,308 holders (up from 604 holders in the previous report) of KAI on the ERC-20 standard, which is a modest address count. As mentioned in the previous account, there are far more users of the KardiaChain than the ERC-20 explorer suggests, as there is significant activity occurring on the testnet and with private institutions.

Nonetheless, the top 10 addresses control 13.3% of total supply of 5bn KAI; the top 20 control 14.79%; and the top 100 control 18.95%. Of the circulating supply of 1.75bn KAI, the top 10 control 38%, the top 20 control 42.26% and the top 100 control 54.14%. This top 10 and top 20 is excluding the exchange addresses and smart contracts mentioned in the corresponding section above, but include the subsequent addresses in the rich-list.

For our purposes, as I often stress, we want to look at the activity of large, private holders. Within the top 20 non-exchange or smart contract addresses, I found that 10 were inactive for the past 30 days, with 6 addresses in distribution (net outflows during that period) vs 4 addresses in active accumulation (vs 18 addresses accumulating in the previous report). There is a net outflow among these addresses of 2.186mn KAI over the past 30 days, equating to an insignificant 0.12% of circulating supply.

And that concludes this section on Metric Analysis. Onto the KardiaChain Community:

Community:

There are two primary aspects of community analysis: social media presence and Bitcointalk threads. I’ll begin with the former before moving on to the latter.

Social Media:

Concerning social media presence, there are four main platforms to examine: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Discord.

KardiaChain is present on all platforms except Discord. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the KardiaChain Twitter and Facebook accounts:

Twitter Followers: 12,435 (vs 4,566 in June 2020)

Tweets: 415 (vs 295 in June 2020)

Average Twitter Engagement: 1.42% (vs 1.46% in June 2020)

Facebook Likes: 3,799 (vs 1,134 in June 2020)

Facebook Posts (30-Day): 27 (vs 34 in June 2020)

Average Facebook Engagement: 0.6% (vs 1.25% in June 2020)

As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.

Twitter:

The KardiaChain Twitter account has grown to a mid-sized audience at 12,435 followers, but its engagement is where it shines, with a 30-day average engagement rate of 1.42% (not far off the previous degree of engagement despite the three-fold increase in following). This is impressive. In RivalIQ’s report, we find that the average Twitter engagement rate across all industries is 0.045%, which means that KardiaChain’s engagement rate is currently 31.5x greater. Further, the average engagement rate for the Tech and Software industry (the most relevant in the report) is 0.027%, thus KardiaChain’s is 52.5 greater. Relative to other coins, KardiaChain’s engagement is in the top third of previous reports. I am most impressed by the commitment to posting quality content and fostering engagement with their growing community.

Facebook:

Now, with regards to Facebook, KardiaChain has again grown its audience three-fold, with 3,799 Likes vs 1,134 Likes in June. That said, its average engagement rate for the past 30 days was 0.6%, which is half that found in the previous report. It is, however, 6.6x greater than the average across all industries of 0.09% and 30x greater than the average of the Tech and Software industry (0.02%). More importantly, I noticed a sustained effort to maintain the page, with 27 posts in the past 30 days in multiple languages.

Discord:

There is no Discord group for KardiaChain.

Telegram:

There are 5,672 members of the KardiaChain Telegram group.

Below are my takeaways from the recent activity in the group:

There is significant daily activity in the group, with near-constant discussion.
The team are active in the group and respond to queries and questions, providing support where required.
The community is very much excited about the continued development of KardiaChain over recent months and moving forward, with a clear sense of commitment to the project palpable.
KardiaChain announced the launch of a mobile top-up service in partnership with Viettel, whereby Viettel subscribers holding KAI can recharge their mobile plan balance and internet data. Viettel is the largest telecom group in Vietnam.
The mainnet is still planned for launch in Q4 2020.
KardiaChain recently partnered with FLETA for the exploration of interoperability, where FLETA currently receives endorsement from the South Korean government for blockchain integration in healthcare and medical industries.
The team, in the future, will be using a portion of revenues generate to buy back KAI on secondary markets.
KardiaChain has integrated FinNexus’ DeFi solutions.
The team are expecting 1 million active users of KAI by the end of 2020 via their products and services.

BitcoinTalk:

There is no active BitcoinTalk thread available for KardiaChain.

And that concludes my evaluation of the community. Let’s now take a look at development.

Development:

For the following Development analysis, I will be evaluating project leadership, the website, the roadmap, the whitepaper, the wallets and finally providing a general overview:

Project Leadership:

There are currently 23 employees listed on LinkedIn (4 more than in the previous report). There are 10 employees listed on the site (1 more than previously found).

The team currently have 4 offices in Singapore, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Seoul.

Regarding the listed team, this is comprised of:

6 advisors are also listed on the website (2 fewer than in the previous report), including:

Dr. Manh Rinh Vu, former Communist Party Chief of Thai Binh Province
Richard Yun, co-founder of Metadium and COO of CoinPlug
Ryan Fang, COO and co-founder of Ankr Network
Mr. Huy Ho, Chairman of Mai Linh Group
Mr. Vuong Duy Bien, Former Deputy Minister of Culture – Sports and Tourism, Vietnam
Professor Thang Huynh, Mathematics Professor at UC San Diego

Website:

The Website can be found here. Like the whitepaper and roadmap covered in subsequent sections, it remains virtually identical to that found in the previous report. As such, I have provided my takeaways from that report below. However, for this updated report, we are primarily interested with the Medium blog, where significant development progress has been highlighted. Thus, in concluding this sub-section, I will be looking at a number of recent blog posts to better determine how these past three months have gone for KardiaChain.

The website is quite modern in its design and easy to navigate, with links to the whitepaper and Our Products front and centre. The tagline reads, “Hybrid Blockchain Solution / Infrastructure for Enterprises and Governments“.

Below this, we find a link to the current v2.0 testnet, as well as overviews of the first ADapp released on KardiaChain and the new mobile payment channel that is in the works. Regarding the former, there are links to download the app on the App Store and Google Play, with key highlights being that 200k+ users are registered with ON Sports and that these users will be able to use KAI to play prediction games, donate to favourite players, earn via in-app tasks and be rewarded with merchandise. Regarding the payment channel, here it is mentioned that this will allow over 60 million subscribers in Vietnam to acquire KAI using their mobile phone balance.

At the footer of the homepage, we find links to PR material and social platforms.

Turning back to the navigation menu, Who We Are contains pages on the team and advisors, covered above, but also on partners and investors. Regarding Partners and Investors, these include LG CNS, Matic Network, Tokoin, BlockCrafters Capital, Band Protocol, Certik (who issued a 95 grading for KardiaChain’s security audit), Morpheus Labs, Asia Blockchain Review, VITE, Geleximco, ON Sports and the Vietnam Football Federation. It would be useful if, instead of just links to their respective domains, here we could also find information on the specifics of these individual partnerships. That said, I love the focus on Vietnam, partnering with powerhouses in the region.

Turning to What We Do, here we find four brief overview on the current products, technology, features and the roadmap (covered in the next section).

The current products include ON Sports, which is utilising KardiaChain (as mentioned above) for its app, as well as the mobile payment channel, currently being integrated with the largest telephone companies in Vietnam, and the Smart City project for one of the largest cities in Vietnam.

The technology comprises Dual Nodes, Elastic Sharding with Incentive Mechanism and KardiaChain Smart Contract Markup Language, all of which will be covered in detailed in the Whitepaper section.

The proposed features are sustainable scalability, non-invasive interoperability and mass adoptability.

Medium:

Given that there has been a significant amount of developmental progress for KardiaChain over the past 3 months, we must look to their regularly updated blog to more accurately determine the extent of this progress and what it consists of.

Below, I have summarized a series of recent blog posts that I believe are key to understanding where KAI is now and where it is headed:

ChainLink: KardiaChain have integrated Chainlink oracles for dApp building on the network, facilitating access to real-world data. The primary focus at first is for obtaining sporting outcomes and related statistics for KardiaChain’s eSports Incentive Platform.
NEO: KardiaChain have partnered with NEO EcoBoost in order to facilitate interoperability and integration to KardiaChain of any NEO-like blockchains, with NEO selected as one of the first public blockchains for KardiaChain’s Dual Node technology.
Mai Linh: Mai Linh is Vietnam’s largest taxi operator and KardiaChain have recently announced a strategic partnership with the company, where KAI will be integrated into EPOS system. This will be facilitated by Mai Linh’s Green Card, which will allow users to top up the Green Card with KAI to pay for taxi rides, with integration expected this month.
Ankr: KardiaChain have recently announced that their industry-first DeFi application – KardiaChain DEX – that will facilitate cross-chain asset exchange without requiring wraps, minting or token burns and independent of protocols will be run on Ankr. The DEX is currently connected to ETH, NEO and TRX.
FLETA: KardiaChain have partnered with FLETA in order to position themselves amidst the Korean market, where FLETA has endorsement from the South Korean government to work on blockchain solutions for healthcare and medical industries. KardiaChain will integrate FLETA into their ecosystem for non-invasive interoperability. This may be followed by the integration of KAI into FLETA.
Viettel: KardiaChain recently announced a partnership with Viettel, the largest telecom company in Vietnam (it is state-owned) that served 110mn subscribers as of 2018. The nature of the partnership is such that Viettel subscribers will be able to hold KAI to recharge mobile plan balances and internet data via the DeFi solutions from KardiaChain. This will be a three-phased approach, with phase one being the conversion of KAI into mobile balance or 3G/4G mobile data without a discount; phase two will allow for lockups of KAI providing a daily data airdrop; and phase three allowing KAI to be locked to provide up-front top-ups payable in 30 days.

Roadmap:

The Roadmap can be found here. This roadmap has not changed since the first report and there remains a need for a significant update.

This is a very brief roadmap, with no real detail here on individual goals nor any further reading links available, but there does appear to be plenty to look forward to and clear ambition. It is a little disappointing given the stellar informational resources thus far along with detailed responses by the team on social channels. There is also no measure of progress available.

The roadmap is presented as a timeline, as follows:

Q1 2018 – Q1 2019, which was the conceptualisation and development of the prototype.
In Q2 2019, there was a public testnet v1 and v2 release.
In Q1 2020, the first DApp launched on KardiaChain (ON Sports), along with BFT dPOS consensus.
In Q2 2020, there has been a VTVCabs traditional marketing campaign for ON Sports, development of the full Dual Node and development of the mainnet v0.1. There is also the Youth Union Incentive DApp Pilot and eSports Incentive Platform.
For Q3 2020, we can expect the release of the Kardia Master Wallet, along with Youth Union Incentive roll-out in District 5 Ho Chi Minh City.
In Q4 2020, the KardiaChain mainnet v1.0 public release is expected, along with a mobile payment channel and eSports Incentive product launch.

I reiterate that this roadmap is insufficient for potential new users. It would be invaluable to provide more detail native to the roadmap or at least some further reading materials associated with the goals.

Whitepaper:

The Whitepaper can be found here. Again, nothing has changed here (though I would not have expected it to, unlike for the roadmap). As it is an invaluable document for new users, I have provided my key takeaways from the previous report here.

The document is 11 pages long and is somewhat more of a technical whitepaper, though it is highly accessible and concise. There is 35-slide pitch deck that is more visual available, also.

The document begins with Our Philosophy. Here, the team states that blockchain solutions are believed to be critical. However, unlike other projects, Kardiachain do not expect to be the sole one-chain-fits-all for everything, instead expecting there to be many co-operating networks, like an internet of blockchains. Individual blockchains will be suited to specific purposes but there will be a smart ecosystem that can utilise the strengths of each. Kardiachain thinks of this ecosystem as a living organism, with individual blockchains as body parts or organs and KardiaChain as “the heart that facilitates blood flow (traffic/transactions).” Unlike many other interoperable protocols, KardiaChain will not necessitate any fundamental changes to existing blockchains, instead allowing for seamless implementation of these inter-blockchain connections whilst requiring no inherent change from participants. As they put it, “integration without assimilation.”

Moving on to Background, here, they discuss how single chains won’t be able to handle the calculating power required for mass adoption (Instagram requires 46k tps and so on). Single chains are commonly not interoperable, therefore operations cannot be scaled beyond inherent throughput limits. Scaling becomes more seamless if more chains are added to the network, as opposed to attempting to improve the throughput of the individual chains. Thus, interoperability of KardiaChain will allow for 3-dimensional scaling, where Z-axis scaling refers to sharding and X and Y axis refers to horizontal duplication (transaction routing) and function scaling (task splitting), respectively.

Subsequently, we come to the KardiaChain Approach. The approach, in short, is adaptation to other blockchains without forcing changes; a seamless, ready-to-market approach. The team state it most clearly when they say “KardiaChain aims to provide a unified infrastructure that can develop solutions which are able to run on multiple platforms, by enabling the interoperability among them, and while leaving the implementation as simple as possible from the perspective of developers.”

Beyond this, we find a section on the KardiaChain Solution: The blockchain network that connects other networks and applications within one ecosystem, with the primary solution being the Dual Node. The Dual Node is comprised of a Translator, Router and Aggregator. The Dual Node has a number of benefits, including: algorithmic transaction routing to improve cost effectiveness and speed; unified smart contract language; a non-invasive solution with backward compatibility and seamless integration; practical implementation; and secure, decentralised inter-chain data ingestion.

Dual Nodes can access ledger data of two chains simultaneously; KardiaChain and another chain. These nodes can receive transactions from external chains and input that data into KardiaChain securely. Dual Nodes are permission-less and utilise consensus to verify data. The Translator utilises the Kardia Unified Smart-Contract Language (KSML) for communication between differing platforms. The Router is responsible for designating the chain to which requests are directed. The Aggregator batches updates to reduce strains. A more detailed breakdown and illustration of the technology is also provided.

Turning to KardiaChain Technology, this is broken down into the Heart, Arteries and Veins.

The Heart is comprised of the KardiaChain Development Toolkit, which includes user-friendly UI, efficient APIs and a powerful SDK, as well as the Kardia Virtual Machine. It also includes Ecosystem Knowledge (EcoKnow), which maintains a record of statistics on all blockchains directly engaged by KardiaChain, allowing for smart routing algorithms. Statistics are obtained and updated in real-time, making EcoKnow the knowledge base for all nodes. Further, the heart comprises the Main Ledger, maintained by Dual and Standard nodes, plus the Master Wallet, which is for user credential storage and inter-chain transactions within one user-friendly wallet.

The Arteries consist of the Translator; KSML; Inter-chain Machine-Learning Network Router (the aforementioned Router for directing transactions and requests – EcoKnow allows this to be self-optimising, continually becoming more efficient as statistical knowledge is added to the database); and Executors, which submit smart contract code.

The Veins are the Ingestor, which gets new blocks from specific chains via the Dual Node, the Aggregator and the Group Pool and Group Ledger (self-explanatory).

Following this, we have a brief section on the Consensus Protocol, with KardiaChain opting for dual consensus via Byzantine-Fault Tolerant delegated Proof-of-Stake, for both Main Consensus (mCon) and Group Consensus (gCon), with the former specifically for the Main Ledger and gCon for inter-chain. Dual Nodes will be tied to one specific chain and all nodes will be standard by default but will be able opt-in for Dual Node status by delegating a stake of KAI.

Turning to the Staking Model, Kardia Native Tokens (KAI) are locked by nodes to become Validators (either Standard Nodes or Dual Nodes, with a varying locked amount). These Validators are, of course, rewarded with KAI. It would require 60% of network staking power for a successful attack, with all stakes from all nodes that voted for a malicious block being burned in case of failed attack, making attacks expensive.

Finally, regarding the Usage of the Token, KAI is a unit of exchange within the KardiaChain ecosystem. It is expressly for payments and settlement, as well as to reward Validators for validating new blocks, who themselves must stake KAI in order to be eligible to validate. KAI will be an ERC-20 token until the mainnet release, which will be followed by a token swap.

The document is very informative yet concise, as well as technical where it needs to be but still accessible to a layman. It could, however, have more detail on KAI itself, such as a token distribution breakdown and emission/vesting information.

Wallets:

Currently, KAI is an ERC-20 token, thus is compatible with all major wallets, including hardware wallets by Trezor and Ledger, for example. This will be the case until the mainnet launch and token swap in Q4 2020.

And that concludes my evaluation of the developmental progress of KardiaChain.

Technical Analysis

KAI/BTC

KAI/USD

So, as readers of the first report on KardiaChain will be aware, there have been some significant changes to price over recent months, with KAI going on an absolute tear throughout summer.

If we begin by looking at KAI/BTC, we can see that price initially formed its all-time low at 5 satoshis back in mid-May, then rallying higher until resistance (and the then-all-time-high) was found at 50 satoshis. Price then spent 6 weeks or so range-bound between 50 satoshis as resistance and 20 satoshis as support, before ultimately breaking out in mid-July and beginning its bull cycle. The following weeks have seen price hit all-time highs of 387 satoshis in mid-August, which is 77x the all-time low; all in the space of 3 months. Impressive stuff.

Now, since that all-time high formed, price has fallen off significantly but hasn’t really printed a classical cyclical reversal. That said, the lower-high at 280 satoshis could be considered a complacency shoulder if price was to break below 180 satoshis from here, where it has found support for several days now. A daily close below that level would signal to me that the first bull cycle is likely over. However, for now, the trend remains strong, with the 50dMA supporting price at present and a swing-failure of the 180-satoshi low looking like the prime area for a reversal. Bulls will want to see price rally from here, breaking above the 280-satoshi high to return to daily bullish market structure. Above that level, a retest of the all-time high is likely, with price discovery in sight if KAI is able to close above 387 satoshis. For now, it remains in consolidation, but cyclical invalidation is ~20% lower.

Turning to KAI/USD, the trend is even clearer here, and there isn’t much to add except that trendline support from mid-May’s all-time low at $0.0004 has been supporting price throughout its bull cycle, with this most recent pullback appearing fairly similar to the previous one that preceded another leg higher. Invalidation of the trend would occur on a break below trendline support and a move to fresh monthly lows, which would open up a potentially significant decline if $0.013 failed to hold as support also. Until then, assume the bulls remain in control.

And that concludes my updated Coin Report on KardiaChain.

Conclusion

This report is now approaching 6,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.

My final grading for KardiaChain is 8 out of 10.*

*The grading remains an 8 because whilst speculative prospects have decreased (risk/reward is not as attractive as in June, whilst there have been declines in measures of speculative interest such as large holder accumulation, relative liquidity and volume-to-network value), the developmental progress has continued to impress and the working partnerships secured are very significant. Moreover, the community has continued to grow exponentially. I have little doubt that KardiaChain will be one of the more prominent blockchain projects in the future if they continue on this path. If this was at the beginning of its bull cycle, it would absolutely be worthy of a 9; fundamentally, it already is.

Here, you can find my grading framework, for reference.

Lastly, here is a link to a Google Sheets file with any significant data from previous reports compiled for cross-comparative purposes. I will keep this updated as I continue to write these reports.

I hope this report has proved insightful and that you’ve enjoyed the read! Please do feel free to leave any questions in the Comments, and I’ll answer them as best I can.

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