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N.B: The following Coin Report on Ryo is community-selected. Ryo placed 1st in the recent community poll. XDAG, which placed 2nd, will also have a Coin Report published at a later date.
Welcome to the 22nd Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Ryo. This will comprise 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
Prior to Q2’s community poll, I had little idea about the Ryo project; in fact, all I knew was that it was privacy-focused. It then won the poll, marginally beating out XDAG (another privacy coin that will be featured in a later report), and I finally get a chance to see for myself why such a small project is so popular.
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 Ryo prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
Fundamental
General:
Name: Ryo
Ticker: RYO
Algorithm: CryptoNight-GPU
Sector: Privacy
Exchanges: Bisq, Crex24 & TradeOgre
Launch Overview
Ryo was launched in June 2018, as a continuation of the original chain after Sumokoin (itself a fork of Monero) hard-forked to an ASIC-friendly algorithm, in an effort to remain loyal to GPU miners. It originally operated with a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism on the CryptoNight-Heavy algorithm but implemented a custom CN-GPU algorithm later.
Ryo has a ‘Camel’ distribution curve for its supply emission, with block rewards changing roughly every 6 months. Its current block reward is 56.28 RYO with a block time of 4 minutes. It has burned 8.8mn RYO that originally made up the hidden Sumo premine (one of the primary reasons for Sumo being abandoned).
Price-History Overview
There is very little available price-history for Ryo, given that it is a little over a year old and is not listed on any of the larger exchanges. That said, it formed its all-time high shortly after it was first listed on exchanges in July 2018 at ~3600 satoshis against BTC, simultaneously setting its all-time high of $0.31 against the Dollar. These highs remain untouched and Ryo is currently trading near all-time lows against BTC.
Project Overview
Ryo is inherently a privacy-focused project, with private transactions set as default, utilising a high minimum RingCT ringsize of 25, relative to Monero’s current minimum of 11.
Given the high degree of competition in the privacy space, with new projects launched on a daily basis claiming to offer the best possible privacy features, there is a lot that Ryo must overcome as a small, relatively-unknown project in order to find success here.
Let’s see how it is currently faring, beginning with some Metric Analysis:
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 27th May 2019. 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: $0.056 (641 satoshis)
Exchange Volume: $1,811
Circulating Supply: 11,550,074 RYO
Total Supply: 11,667,387 RYO
Maximum Supply: 88,188,888 RYO
% of Max. Supply Minted: 13.23%
Network Value: $650,406 (74.04 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $4.966mn
Category: Lowcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 0.28%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.052
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $905
Average Network Value (30-Day): $585,204
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 0.15%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.03439
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): +6.3%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A
USD All-Time High: $0.31
% From USD All-Time High: -82%
Premine % of Max. Supply: ~10% (now burned)
Premine Location: Instructions on viewing premine can be found here
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 0.0995 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.13%
Supply Available on Exchanges: 249,251 RYO
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 2.16%
*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: Every 6 months, the block reward changes according to a Camel distribution curve. Current block reward = 56.28. 65.07 reward after that. 360 blocks minted daily.
Average Block Time: 4 minutes
Current Block Height: 264,087
Annual Supply Emission: 7,972,695 RYO (51.1 BTC-worth at current prices)
Annual Inflation Rate: 69.03%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 19,522,769 RYO
Analysis:
Unlike for the vast majority of these reports, which bring with them a mountain of metrics to work through, this section is a little leaner when concerned with privacy coins, as distribution analysis is often impossible. Plus, Ryo is a pure Proof-of-Work coin, so there is no staking nor masternodes.
One of the ironies of evaluating a privacy coin is that its most valuable feature is precisely what prevents one from determining its value: its inherent privacy. As such, on-chain transactional value is impossible to calculate and thus the success of the coin as an in-demand medium-of-exchange is equally ambiguous, at least by this measure.
Instead, let’s take a look at those metrics we can calculate, beginning with Volatility, before moving on through the remaining General metrics and concluding with Supply Emission:
Ryo’s 30-day Volatility was calculated to be -0.03439; the 4th-lowest of any coin previously reported on, despite Ryo making all-time lows recently against Bitcoin, indicating that RYO/USD may well have bottomed out. That, however, shall be determined in the Technical section.
Moving on, I found Ryo to have buy-side Liquidity of 0.0995 BTC, equating to 0.13% of its Network Value. This is rather poor, and whilst it can partly be explained by its lack of listings on larger exchanges, there are plenty of altcoin on TradeOgre with better liquidity than this. Of course, liquidity is also dynamic and thus subject to (sometimes dramatic) change. Nonetheless, this figure places Ryo 6th-from-bottom amongst coins in prior reports.
Regarding its sell-side Liquidity, I calculated that there was 249,521 Ryo available in the orderbooks on listed exchanges, equating to 2.16% of its circulating supply. This places it around 7th-highest for the largest percentage of its circulating supply available for purchase on exchanges, suggesting that, whilst there is not a great deal of demand from buyers at current prices, there is also not a huge amount of Ryo up for sale at any price.
Now, let’s take a look at the volume-related metrics, as these weren’t so pleasing, at least not for a speculator:
Ryo traded $1,811 of Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours, equating to 0.28% of its Network Value. Those that are regular readers of these reports, or that have read my free Definitive Guide To Altcoin Selection will know that I like to see a figure above 1% to indicate speculative interest in a coin. This is well short of that. The picture is more bleak when we look at averages across the past month, with Ryo trading an average of $905 daily, equating to 0.15% of its Average Network Value of $585,204 for that same period. This is the 3rd-lowest of any coin previously reported on. Disappointing.
Moving onto Supply Emission, using Ryo’s block reward schedule, I calculated that it has annual supply emission of 7.972mn RYO (51.1 BTC-worth at current prices). This gives Ryo a rather high annual inflation rate of 69.03%, and thus potential headwinds for price growth.
However, more significant than the supply emission itself is its relationship to traded volume. Given the above figures, we can work out that Ryo’s average daily supply emission for the next 12 months is 21,843 RYO, equating to 0.14 BTC, or $1,230. Ryo’s Exchange Volume just about covers this supply emission, but its Average Exchange Volume does not, indicating that headwinds for price growth are rather high and that Ryo likely cannot sustain current prices at current levels of speculative volume. Further, Ryo’s Liquidity of 0.0995 BTC is also less than the average daily supply emission, and thus Ryo would not be able to soak up the emission if it was dumped on the market by miners.
A bleak outlook for a potential buyer, so far.
Let’s now move on to the Ryo 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.
Ryo is present on all four platforms. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Ryo Twitter and Facebook accounts:
Twitter Followers: 848
Tweets: 1,518
Average Twitter Engagement: 1.21%
Facebook Likes: 430
Facebook Posts (30-Day): 2
Average Facebook Engagement: 0.12%
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s 2019 social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Twitter:
The Ryo Twitter account has one of the smallest audiences of any coin previously reported on. That said, in RivalIQ’s report, we find that the average Twitter engagement rate across all industries is 0.048%, which means that Ryo’s engagement rate is currently 25x greater. Further, the average engagement rate for the Media industry (the most relevant in the report) is 0.009%, thus Ryo’s is 133x greater. Of course, this is largely due to the size of Ryo’s audience, which inflates its engagement rate. Relative to other coins from previous reports, Ryo’s engagement is the 7th-highest. Positive, regarding engagement; but I’d like to see more eyes on its primary social platform.
Facebook:
Now, with regards to Facebook, Ryo has an even smaller audience but with far weaker engagement. With 430 Likes, it has the 4th-smallest Facebook audience of any coin previously reported on. Further, its average engagement rate for the past 30 days was 0.12% from 2 posts in the past 30 days. The average engagement rate across all industries according to RivalIQ’s report is 0.09%, so Ryo is failing to even hit the average. That said, it is around the middle of the pack for engagement amongst coins from previous reports. This shows the relative weakness of many cryptocurrency projects on Facebook compared to Twitter. A greater effort on this platform would undoubtedly push those figures up for Ryo, however.
Discord:
The Ryo Discord group has 1,014 member, with 19 new members in the past week, equating to 1.9% weekly growth. This is a small group, but it’s similar in size to Ryo’s other social channels, and actually a little larger than their Twitter.
Announcements is generally updated 5 or 6 times a month but has been updated less frequently of late, with 1 update since 25th April. Within this channel, I found links to Medium posts with dev updates; plus links to discussions about proposed emission curve changes.
FAQ links to the detailed FAQ on the website, though this
could easily be copied native to the channel to ensure new user accessibility.
Support is generally quiet, which is no bad thing, as there is clearly little that users need fixing, at least on Discord. The rare instances of required support seem prompt.
Core Development and Getting On Exchanges have been quiet since March.
General, usually the most active channel in a Discord, is mostly comprised on a bot displaying discussion from the Telegram channel. Thus, clearly the Discord isn’t in much use.
Overall, minimal activity.
Telegram:
There are 1,071 members in the Ryo Telegram group, with 3.3% weekly growth. This is a similar size to the Discord but is clearly far more active, with near-constant discussion, at least during the period which I observed.
Within the group, I found discussion on the block reward change that occurred recently, increasing block rewards from ~48 to ~56 RYO per block, along with a pinned message relating to a proposal to shift the emission curve following the next two reward increases. This will take Ryo from a Camel distribution curve to one with a plateau. There is also a lot of general discussion about the necessity for privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, as well as broader crypto-related chat. Also, I found that Ryo is considering implementing ringsizes above 1000, whilst keeping block size relatively similar to their current size.
Beyond this, there wasn’t a great deal of discussion on the project itself, particularly regarding its development and the growth of its userbase. The project is clearly small, thus efforts should be made to grow the community, and it’s disappointing that this is not palpable on any of Ryo’s social platforms.
BitcoinTalk:
The Ryo BitcoinTalk thread was created on June 3rd, 2018, and has since generated 625 posts spanning 32 pages in 354 days. This equates to 1.76 posts per day, on average. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 32 posts via 11 individual posters, giving an average of 0.35 posts per day; a steep decline in already-low engagement.
Regarding the content of the thread, the past 90 days of discussion largely revolves around mining, but I also found that the team recently released the Quasar web wallet for Ryo. There is a little back-and-forth regarding the recent update of the GUI wallet, which has caused a couple of issues but these are swiftly resolved. In April, Ryo was added to Crex24, and in mid-May, the team released an update to the GUI Atom wallet with an in-built solo pool for miners with zero fees. Most significantly, there is some discussion on a proposed emission curve change, on which you can find more info here and here. In short, the proposal is to shift the emission curve from its current Camel distribution, inherited from Sumokoin, to a plateau curve, allowing miners to mine peak rewards for a prolonged period.
Regarding the announcement itself, all social links are provided, as are links to the Ryo wallet and block explorer. A brief history of the project, as well as its key features, are also provided. Further, the block reward schedule, with accompanying graphics, is made available, as is some basic information on the team, though this is limited to usernames.
And that concludes this section on the Ryo Community. Onto 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 is no information available on the team on the Ryo website. However, there are 5 listed core members on the BitcoinTalk Announcement page, plus 12 Github contributors.
Whilst I appreciate that, particularly for a privacy coin, anonymity is often paramount for the team behind the project, some indication as to the experience of the team and their various roles would be useful.
Website:
The Ryo website is full of relevant and useful information, more so than almost any other crypto website I’ve come across. There’s material on all manner of topics, with blog posts, press material, detailed summaries and more native to the site. However, the way in which this material is organised and presented, along with the overall UI/UX of the site, is clunky and confused, with poor navigation.
The homepage does a fantastic job of highlighting the coin’s numerous features and advantages, as well as the GUI wallet and the roadmap, as I cover in the next section. The copy is both concise and informative. Further, all social links are available both in the footer and via the Community page. But I can’t help but feel that the material has all sort of been thrown onto the homepage; some simple UX updates would clean the site up a great deal.
Roadmap:
The Ryo roadmap is native to the website homepage, found towards the bottom of the page.
The roadmap itself is extensive, providing a full history of the project since its beginnings as Sumokoin in June 2017. There is a fair amount of detail relating to each specific event or goal, and I like that the roadmap is presented in a visually appealing manner and that each month has its own section. Further, I like that current/recent goals are separated from the history of the project itself. For the purposes of this section, I will begin at the rebrand to Ryo in June 2018.
From this point, the project has experienced the release of numerous wallets, each building upon the previous until the release of the Atom GUI wallet in September 2018, which was built from scratch. Further, a web wallet was released and a dev fund was introduced into the block reward schedule, as of August 2018. In February 2019, Ryo implemented the CN-GPU algorithm, developed by the Ryo team. Lastly, in May 2019, the Atom wallet update introduced solo mining for CryptoNote coins in-wallet.
Moving onto Core Code Development, Ryo have implemented a private payment ID system and increased the default ring size to 25, as well as Bulletproofs for faster transaction processing. Goals in progress include performance optimisation, blockchain compression and Electrum-like wallets.
Finally, regarding Infrastructure Development, the Atom wallet has continued to be developed, as has the Quasar web wallet, and the team are looking to implement atomic swaps, mobile wallets for Android and iOS, developer tools, payment processors and an XMR-Stak GUI interface.
Whitepaper:
There is no whitepaper available specifically for Ryo, as a project, though there are various whitepapers on the features it inherits from Monero. There is a highly-technical ReadMe available on Github, which is what the Whitepaper hyperlink on the BitcoinTalk thread links to.
I would like to have seen a whitepaper for the project itself, as it is useful for potential new users or investors to learn about the primary aims of the project, as well as its future vision, without having to read from numerous, scattered sources.
Wallets:
There is a GUI wallet called Ryo: Atom available for Mac, Linux and Windows. There is also a command-line wallet available, as well as a web wallet. No hardware wallet or mobile wallet support, at present.
Technical
RYO/BTC
RYO/USD
Analysis:
Given the lack of extensive price-history for Ryo, it is only necessary to look at the Daily charts for both RYO/BTC and RYO/USD.
Beginning with RYO/BTC, we can see that price formed its all-time high of ~3600 satoshis almost immediately after being listed on exchanges, and that the past 10 months or so has been little else but prolonged bleeding. In fact, only a few days ago, price made an all-time low of 550 satoshis. Now, given that Ryo is clearly in a long-term downtrend, and price is currently capped by trendline resistance, I would not be looking to buy until we get a clear breakout above said resistance, as well as a higher-high above a recent swing-high on the Daily timeframe. This, to me, would indicate the end of Ryo’s extended bear cycle and the beginnings of a potential bull cycle, with market structure turning bullish. As such, if the current all-time low of 550 satoshis holds firm and becomes a cyclical bottom, I would be looking to buy on a clean break of 800 satoshis, with accompanying volume. If price fails to break above this level, no doubt we will be seeing new lows.
Now, looking at RYO/USD, the picture, whilst very similar, does have some pronounced differences. Firstly, RYO/USD has been capped by clean trendline resistance since its very first days on an exchange, with its all-time high set around $0.30. It bled out all the way through until March 2019, where it formed its all-time low of $0.039. This low remains intact several weeks later, and price recently rejected a move below it, indicating that the cyclical bottom for RYO/USD may be in. To be sure, we’d need to see price break and close above trendline resistance for the first time in its price-history.
Conclusion
This report is now approaching 4,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Ryo is 6 out of 10.
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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