Welcome to the 72nd 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 earlier this year, and subsequently published an updated report in September. This will be the final update in that series of reports, and given that the preceding report was published in early September, 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
General:
Name: KardiaChain
Ticker: KAI
Algorithm: ERC-20 (until Mainnet, launching December 29th, 2020)
Sector: Blockchain Solutions & Interoperability
Exchanges: Uniswap, KuCoin, MXC, Gate.io, Hotbit, Bilaxy, Bittrex, Coinone, Kyber Network, 1inch Exchange, IDEX and Hoo
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 December 2020, following which 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 half a year at this point and has spent the bulk 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 11th December 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: $0.0165 (90 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: $28,898,100 (1,575 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $82,566,000
Exchange Volume: $1,301,832 ($573,400 excluding wash)
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 1.98% excluding wash
Category: Lowcap
Average Price (30-Day): $0.016
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $681,063
Average Network Value (30-Day): $28,205,261
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 2.41%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.0366
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): +12.6%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A
USD All-Time High: $0.047
% From USD All-Time High: -65.2%
Premine % of Max. Supply: N/A
Premine Location: N/A
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 3.74 BTC (excluding ~$460k of Uniswap liquidity)
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.24%
Supply Available on Exchanges: 46,123,707 KAI
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 2.64%
*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 December 2020, but tokens are vesting 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: 1,391,300,000 KAI (1252 BTC at current prices)
Annual Inflation Rate: 79.5%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 3,141,300,000 KAI (according to schedule printed below – although current circulating supply was expected to be 2.05bn KAI, so we are currently ~300mn KAI behind schedule)
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: 3,865 (migrated to a new contract following the Kucoin hack)
Circulating Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 22.36%*
Circulating Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 26.96%*
Circulating Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 37.06%*
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 11*
*Excluding team and exchange addresses, but including subsequent private addresses
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 for the time being, 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 -0.0366, which is less than a quarter of that found in the previous report. This places it somewhere among the bottom fifth of reports, indicating that it is very likely to be in consolidation against the Dollar and thus potentially in its accumulation range. We will look more closely at this a little later.
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 3.74 BTC (vs ~11.7 BTC in the previous report) within 10% of spot price across all listed exchanges, equating to 0.24% of its Network Value (a third consecutive decline from the figures found previously). It does now have $460k of liquidity on Uniswap, however, which is an improvement. But it is worrying to see that nominal buy-side liquidity on orderbooks has declined despite price now trading lower than in the previous report.
Concerning sell-side Liquidity, KardiaChain was found to have 46.1mn KAI available for purchase (vs 27.8mn in the previous report) in the orderbooks across all listed exchanges and Uniswap, equating to 2.64% of its Circulating Supply (as opposed to 1.59% previously); again, this is a little worrying, as almost 20mn more KAI is now available for purchase on the books as opposed to being held off-exchange.
Now, let’s take a look at the volume-related metrics:
KardiaChain was reported to have traded $1.3mn of Exchange Volume in the past 24 hours, equating to 4.5% 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 ~$573,400. This equates to a moderate 1.98% of network value (a decline from 3.5% in the previous report). More importantly, its Average Daily Volume for the past month was $681,063 (accounting for wash), equating to 2.41% of its Average Network Value for the same period; a decline of almost two-thirds vs the prior reading of ~6.47%.
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 in a couple of weeks. I have referred to the spreadsheet linked here for my calculations, and worked out that 1,391,300,000 KAI will be joining circulation over the next 365 days (1252 BTC-worth at current prices). This gives KardiaChain a fairly high annual inflation rate of 79.5%, though this will decrease significantly the following year. Circulating supply is expected to be 3,141,300,000 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 1.797bn KAI to be added to circulation over the following year, we can work out that the average daily supply emission is 3.811mn KAI, or 3.43 BTC-worth at current prices. This equates to ~$63,400 of daily supply emission. As KardiaChain traded ~$573k of volume over the past 24 hours, and an average of $681k of volume daily for the past month, we find that KAI’s average daily supply emission is covered 9x by its 24-hour volume and 10.7x by its Average Exchange Volume (both lower than previous figures, which is again a little disappointing). Further, Liquidity of 3.74 BTC is only marginally sufficient to cushion the blow, if it were to be dumped on the books.
Finally, let’s take a look at Distribution:
There are currently 3,865 holders (down from 4,308 holders in the previous report) of KAI on the ERC-20 standard, which is a modest address count. The reason for the decline is because KardiaChain migrated to a new contract following the Kucoin hack. 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 22.36% of circulating supply of 1.75bn KAI; the top 20 control 26.96%; and the top 100 control 37.06%. Of the maximum supply of 5bn KAI, the top 10 control 7.83%, the top 20 control 9.44% and the top 100 control 12.97%. 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 11 were inactive for the past 30 days, with 3 addresses in distribution (net outflows during that period) vs 6 addresses in active accumulation (vs 4 addresses accumulating in the previous report). There is a net outflow among these addresses of 888,031 KAI over the past 30 days, equating to an insignificant 0.05% of circulating supply (there was also a net outflow of ~2.186mn KAI from large holders in the previous report).
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 four platforms. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the KardiaChain Twitter and Facebook accounts:
Twitter Followers: 14,148 (vs 12,435 in September 2020)
Tweets: 706 (vs 415 in September 2020)
Average Twitter Engagement: 0.83% (vs 1,42% in September 2020)
Facebook Likes: 4,040 (vs 3,799 in September 2020)
Facebook Posts (30-Day): 57 (in multiple languages) (vs 27 in September 2020 for preceding 30-day period)
Average Facebook Engagement: 2.3% (vs 0.6% in September 2020)
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Twitter:
The KardiaChain Twitter account has continued to grow, albeit at a more steady pace than pre-September, to a mid-sized audience at 14,148 followers, but its engagement has declined to 0.83%. 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 still 18.4x 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 30.7x greater. Relative to other coins, KardiaChain’s engagement remains in the top third of previous reports but has dropped off towards the bottom of that. That said, I remain impressed by the commitment to posting quality content on a regular basis.
Facebook:
Now, with regards to Facebook, KardiaChain has grown its audience a little to 4,040 Likes vs 3,799 in September. Where it has vastly improved, however, is in its engagement, which has increased almost four-fold to 2.3%, with the team posting nearly twice a day in multiple languages for the preceding 30-day period. Its engagement is 25.5x greater than the average across all industries of 0.09% and 115x greater than the average of the Tech and Software industry (0.02%). Great work!
Discord:
There are 336 members of the KardiaChain Discord group. This must be quite a new group given its small size, but there is effectively no activity here as of yet.
Telegram:
There are 6,628 members of the KardiaChain Telegram group (up from 5,672 in the previous report).
Below are my takeaways from the recent activity in the group:
- The group are highly active, with constant daily discussion, very much focused on the development of KardiaChain and its ecosystem.
- The team are active in the group and respond to queries and questions, providing support where required.
- There is palpable excitement about how 2020 has gone for KardiaChain and the community do not appear to have any reservations about the capacity of the team to build on this in 2021.
- KardiaChain recently joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance to further adoption to Asia.
- Much of the recent discussion is focused on the upcoming launch of the mainnet on December 29th, 2020, with particular excitement about KAI’s Dual Node technology.
- Certik recently audited the mainnet code and the code has now been published for the public.
- There is no information at the moment regarding the token swap that is set to take place after the launch of the mainnet to native KAI.
- The VNDC will be launching a stablecoin on KardiaChain for Vietnam. This will bring 1 million holders to the ecosystem. The VNDC will also become a genesis validator for KardiaChain.
BitcoinTalk:
There is no active BitcoinTalk thread available for KardiaChain.
And that concludes my updated 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 33 employees listed on LinkedIn (10 more than in the previous report). There are 9 employees listed on the site (1 less 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:
- Tri Pham, CEO and Co-Founder, 10+ years experience in entrepreneurship
- Huy Nguyen, CTO and Co-Founder, Tech Lead Manager at Google
- Anthony Vo, CFO, First VP, Bank of Hope
- Johnny Tri Dung, CBO, Co-Founder of Big Cat Entertainment & Chief Growth Officer at Galaxy Play
- Thien Nguyen, Tech Lead, 10+ years experience in software infrastructure, co-founder and VP of Engineering at Quosap
- Nam Do, Tech Lead, Senior Software Engineer at Google
- Huy Doan, Tech Lead, Software Engineer at Google
- Luu Tran, Director of Product Development, previously CTO at INVESTIP Group
- Thao Dang, Head of Marketing and Partnerships, previously IT Business Analyst at FPT Software
7 advisors are also listed on the website (1 more than in the previous report), including:
- Colonel Tuam Pham, Former Deputy Director of Traffic and Transportation
- Michael Parks, Marketing Director at Block Crafters
- 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 has been updated in its design since the previous report to reflect the upcoming launch of the mainnet, but the content remains largely the same. What I am focused on here – just as in that second report – is what has changed for KardiaChain, particularly regarding progress towards its aims. This can be better evaluated by taking a detailed look at the regularly updated blog rather than the website, so, I have provided an overview of the most important developmental updates (and there are quite a few) since September below:
- KardiaChain was listed on Loopring.
- The team launched a new platform – KAIStarter – which allows KAI holders to earn revenue share. KAIStarter is a DeFi platform and its first project, Sugar Daddy Sugar Baby, was broadcasted to a YouTube channel with 6 million subscribers. For KAI holders, a lockup of a total 7.5mn KAI for 3 months will allow holders to receive revenue share from this in USDT, proportional to the individual’s locked amount.
- KardiaChain launched their mobile top-up service on Viettel, Mobifone and Vinaphone – the three largest network providers in Vietnam. This provides 90 million people with access to KAI, and those that hold KAI are able to recharge balances on their mobiles and access internet data packages.
- The Mai Linh Green Card was launched, allowing for travellers in Vietnam to use KAI to pay for taxis.
- KAI became available to purchase on Indacoin with a fiat gateway, allowing users to purchase with Visa and Mastercard.
- KardiaChain’s partnership with Big Cat Entertainment is official, with Big Cat helping the KardiaChain team explore adoption of KAI within the entertainment industry, via tokenising celebrities, social mining, voting on content production etc.
- FLETA and KardiaChain remain in a working partnership to integrate blockchain within healthcare and medical institutions in South Korea.
- MANTRA DAO became a validator for Kardiachain.
- The team launched a Community Ambassador Program.
- The KardiaChain Foundation bought back 650mn KAI from private allocations and this has been locked in the Foundation Reserve for 12 months.
- KAI was listed on Bittrex.
- Colonel Tuan Minh Pham, Former Deputy Director of Traffic and Transportation, joined the advisory board.
- KAI launched early NFTs in the form of Zodiac cards.
- KAI Membership – the public interface of the ecosystem – began development, launching an app on Google Play with tens of thousands of users at present, expected to be at a million by mid-2021. This app will serve as the hub for KardiaChain users, with fiat gateways, vouchers, gamification, custody, NFTs, DeFi solutions and much more all set to be integrated into the app over the coming year.
- KardiaChain joined the DID Alliance.
- The team announced a partnership with Nami, which a Vietnamese cryptocurrency exchange, to improve the adoption of KAI among the local community.
- KardiaChain partnered with Bounce.finance to enable a one-stop shop for NFTs and DeFi, with KardiaChain able to create NFTs (such as Zodiac) to be auctioned on Bounce’s platform.
- The KardiaChain mainnet code was audited by Certik prior to launch on December 29th, 2020.
Overall, no doubt about it that the team continue to push forward on the development front at an intense pace.
Roadmap:
The roadmap on the website appears blank upon clicking the tab in the navigation menu, but I was able to find this article referring to KardiaChain’s plans for 2021.
Here, the team explain that the primary goal for the end of 2020 is to launch Mainnet 1.0 with open source code, network security certification, predefined validators, a KAI Master Wallet and a KAI explorer. Subsequently, in Q1 2021, the mainnet will have a version upgrade, integration KAI Staker 1.0 for Single Nodes, the KAI Token Swap Bridge, addition of Dual Nodes for new blockchain platforms, and the team will initiate technical integrations with their partners, along with launching their SDK. As we come to Q2 2021, KAI mainnet 2.0 is expected for release, within which the team expect to launch KAI Staker 2.0 for Dual Nodes, KTV-39 for token listings on KAI and KTV-79 for NFT support. For Q3-4 2021, the team will be looking to launch another version upgrade of the mainnet, with the Dual Node added to more blockchain platforms, KSML 1.0 to be launched and integration to enterprise and government hybrid or private networks to begin.
That is the bulk of the technical development expected in 2021, but we can also look forward to other developments, particularly for KAI Membership, which is a new “one-stop shop” for users that is in development. The team will be working on the KAI Base where user accounts and wallets will live in one interface, the launch of KAI eVouchers for redemption with partners and gamification of KAI. In 2021, this will be built out to include DeFi Wealth Management features, mobile banking, DID integration, and the launch of the PoKAImon NFT Game.
As concerns the ecosystem, the team have a number of subsidiaries in mind, including pushing KAIStarter, KardiaChain Saigon FC Futsal, launching a Youtube series, KAI Yield Farming, KAI Talents, the launch of the KAI eSports platform, further development of the Youth Union App, building out the KAI DEX, the development of KAI NFTs and the launch of a KAI Donation platform. That is a lot of work to complete in one year, but given the developmental progress of KardiaChain in 2020, I honestly have no reason to doubt the team here.
Whitepaper:
The Whitepaper can be found here. Nothing has changed here since the previous report. 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 on December 29th, 2020. Following the launch of the mainnet, it is expected that there will be a token swap, but no details have been published as of yet.
And that concludes my evaluation of the developmental progress of KardiaChain.
Technical Analysis
KAI/BTC
KAI/USD
As we can see from the charts above, KAI has now been trading for around half a year, having played out a full market cycle against Bitcoin in that time.
If we begin with KAI/BTC, we can see that price printed its all-time high at 388 satoshis in mid-August following its first bull cycle, rallying from the all-time low of 5 satoshis in four months. Following this, price began its first bear cycle, playing out the textbook stages of the cycle as price formed complacency at 280 satoshis and bled out from there, ultimately capitulating into support at 79 satoshis, which has become range support since November. This range is currently being capped by prior support at 122 satoshis and the 200-day moving average. As long as this range holds, I fully expect to see a breakout above 122 satoshis become the catalyst for KAI’s next cycle, with clear signs of accumulation in this range recently, as we can see from that volume spike last week. It may still take some time to re-accumulate before the next cycle begins, but buys in this range have a clear invalidation on a close below the December low around 75 satoshis, with the next level of support coming in at 53 satoshis. Risk-averse speculators should wait for an upside breakout from the range before entering.
Turning to KAI/USD, from the chart above, we can see that price has managed to hold above its 200-day moving average following the all-time high at $0.048, capitulating into $0.01 in November before swiftly breaking back above prior range resistance turned support at $0.013. The MA continues to push price higher, with an ascending triangle forming into resistance at $0.0185. If price can close back above that level, I’d expect $0.022 to be tested; flip that as support once again and all-time highs are on their way.
And that concludes my evaluation of 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.*
*Were it not for the disappointments found in metric evaluation, the push forward on the development front and the more attractive price of KAI at present would have propelled KardiaChain to a 9, but for now it remains an 8.
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.