Next XVG or Next ARRR?
Or maybe well, well beyond?
2017 XVG 200x …
2021 ARRR 400x …
2022 EPIC 800x-1600x?
This is a guest post by Ludwig von Freeman. He makes a case why EPIC will outperform XVG’s 200x and ARRR’s 400x. He has been a great fan of ARRR for a long time, continues to support it as a community member and occasional contributor. As a reminder, Epicenter DAO is offering an “air grab” prize pool of 10,000 ECR tokens as a welcome gesture to any ARRR holders who wish to participate in the claim. Visit the ARRR*ECR Community Group for more information.
On July 12, 2020, an anonymous writer laid out their thesis for why they believed EPIC to be the “next XVG” - in other words, a microcap moonshot that had 100x potential.
Verge did 200x in the 2017 run, ARRR outdid that at 400x in 2021. I believe EPIC will 800x.
If EPIC is so great, why have you not heard about it from the altcoin gem hunters on YouTube? Because they are not getting paid to promote it! The project prides itself on its organic, grassroots approach focused on substance and steak, rather than hype and sizzle. Its OG contributors have been in the space a long time - miners who remember cracking BTC blocks solo, ETH ICO whales, XMR back when BCN was the king, XVG, GRIN… they’ve seen it all and one key lesson was that it pays to be leading edge, but not bleeding edge. DeFi Hacks are all too common, and they above all want to keep people’s wealth safe.
Over a year has passed. While his prognostication hasn’t yet come true in that the breakout moment has not yet been achieved, I believe all the ingredients are there for some “epic” wealth creation for those who take the time to understand why EPIC is unique among literally every other asset on the planet, far beyond a simple “privacy coin”.
Simple awareness is all that is lacking for this overlooked asset. I aim to build a case, well-supported by evidence, that at today’s levels, the sheer magnitude of potential ROI on offer is compelling enough to justify jumping through the hoops that it takes to acquire some.
EPIC doesn’t do marketing like this. Perhaps it should?
You see, EPIC is at present quite challenging to buy, as it is not available on any major centralized platforms. In keeping with the project’s cypherpunk ethos and admonition that if they’re “not your keys, they’re not your coins” the network has evolved an entirely decentralized market structure consisting of dex platforms and p2p traders who make markets informally.
Section 1: Close Similarities
Both began life with no ICO and no premine
Both ARRR and EPIC are 100% PoW mined
Both ARRR and EPIC offer 100% private transactions by default
Both ARRR and EPIC are community-driven, decentralised projects with a cypherpunk ethos
Coin price - ARRR prior to liftoff in April 2021 was 30-50 cents. EPIC is 30 cents right now, down from $1.28 prior to the Value Overflow Incident in March
Both have had around 2 years to season before the liftoff phase
Section 2: Where EPIC Excels
EPIC has a better coin distribution
EPIC emission schedule is superior
EPIC had a fairer launch
EPIC has better network effects
Stronger mobile game plan
Privacy & anonymity
Better overall value proposition
Fewer compromises
Better technology foundation
More regulatory compatible
Lower environmental footprint
Section 3: Where ARRR Excels
ARRR has a larger community - approximately 10k in its main telegram vs. 1.2k in @EpicCash.
ARRR has extensive coverage from Jeff Berwick and similar promoters. EPIC does not engage in any paid marketing.
Better Economics
Coin Supply
ARRR maximum supply is 200 million. EPIC is only 21 million. ARRR has 15 times more coins in existence than EPIC. (190 million vs 12 million)
ARRR hit $16 at its peak, which means that, adjusted for its lower supply, EPIC will be around $200 per coin when it hits the same level - this would still only be <40% of XMR, which will be covered in a future installment.
Better Distribution at Origination
ARRR mining requires a special-purpose, $2+k ASIC computer. If you don’t have one of these, you are (practically speaking) frozen out of mining.
The proof of work algorithm employed, Equihash, is within reach of a GPU, but you’d receive a pittance compared to the performance of a dedicated ASIC. A 1080ti mining EPIC would yield $150/month worth of EPIC, whereas with Equihash on ARRR, it may be < $1, the difference is that dramatic and this is why “ASIC resistance” has become such a buzzword.
EPIC uses Freeman Multi-Algorithm Proof of Work, which keeps multiple algorithms running in standby and rotates block rewards noncompetitively between them. Thanks to this innovative distribution mechanism, despite a zero budget for marketing, the Epic Blockchain has achieved full node coverage in 101 countries in just 2 years.
More Hashrate per Dollar Spent
The drip feed of new coins produced by a blockchain is called its “security budget” because it is the value of those new coins, and the resource inputs (normally electricity) it takes to obtain them, that protects the value of the data inside. Cryptocurrency blockchains rely on economic security as well as, if not more so than, technology security.
If ARRR and EPIC both offer $1 worth of coinbase rewards to miners, this universe of miners will rationally keep pumping in electricity until they are spending 99 cents to make $1 if they are allowed to. The market willingness to provide hashrate in exchange for the newly created ARRR coins is rate limited by the step of needing to obtain ASIC miners from China.
With EPIC, a would-be miner need only invest their time to install the software (which is now as easy as Nicehash, with a one-click miner thanks to Blacktygr Freeman of the Epic Community), which they can run on almost any ordinary home PC.
At the end of the day, it is the incoming energy that secures a chain. With freer competition to provide this energy, as is the case with EPIC’s open vs ARRR’s closed mining, this makes for a more secure chain, all else being equal.
Proven Emission Schedule
The EPIC emission gently compresses the first 19 years of BTC into the first 9 years of EPIC, so that at the Singularity in June 2028, the supply of both BTC and EPIC are both 20.4MM and they stay in sync forevermore.
Fairer Launch:
ARRR was launched as a “test project” with an admonition not to mine it. Those who mined early on reaped large amounts of coins (years worth of EPIC emission) for minimal cost. EPIC launched after a 100 day public testnet and supported not just ASICs from Bitmain, but CPU and GPU on Linux, Windows, and even Mac. Some people are extremely salty about this.
Wealth Distribution
ARRR is 90+ % emitted, whereas EPIC is only 55% released. This has enormous implications for years to come. No disrespect to the accelerated emission schedule of Pirate Chain, however my point here is that the Bitcoin emission schedule of 20.4MM coins in June 2028 on the way to 21MM in 2140 is a proven formula that has generated $1T of value, which is why EPIC did it exactly the same.
Network Effects: Coin Creation
Proof of work is not just a network security concept, it’s also a coin dispersion mechanism. In ARRR, the origination of coins is gated by the need to buy a $10k ASIC miner. In EPIC, no special equipment is required.
EPIC can be mined on over 6 billion devices, ARRR on only around 1 million. When more people can directly obtain coins by mining, without having to involve the friction and costs of middlemen, this facilitates network effects.
Mobile Perspective
The heavy duty moon math involved in processing zk-snark transactions is beyond the capabilities of low-end smartphones, so creative workarounds are required. EPIC is built for mobile: Full nodes run locally in <2gb of storage space, and signing a transaction is quick.
Utility
The range of addressable market use cases for ARRR is fairly limited - those where the desire to transact confidentially is paramount. The usability compromises involved make it such that it must be very “worth it” to justify jumping through the hoops and ascending the learning curve. It is less compelling than non-private alternatives. EPIC offers concrete security, scalability, cost and speed advantages vs. competitors, with privacy just as a bonus.
EPIC, by contrast, is simply an effective form of digital money. Its addressable market includes the privacy niche, but is not bounded by it. Official estimates are that <1% of cryptocurrency transactions are potentially illicit, which underscores the relative size of the licit vs. illicit market opportunities. EPIC is going after the grand prize of “money for everyone” vs “money for certain special situations”.
Better Technology Foundation
ARRR is built predominantly in C++ off of the Bitcoin Core codebase, inherited from Zcash. EPIC is written in Rust, inherited originally from Grin.
Tech Pipeline
Permanent Dependency on Zcash / Historical Dependency on Grin
ARRR is forever dependent on the Electric Coin Company to maintain and evolve the code base. The abstruse “moon math” employed is well beyond the ability of mere mortals to understand, so the talent pool of people with the requisite skills to work on it is very low. The Venn diagram of people with the skills, the ability to volunteer for a free open source project, and the political compatibility doesn’t overlap much, so there is an ongoing question of techological viability. In a fast-moving space, to have a fundamental vulnerability like this is concerning for assets that purport to be a reliable store of value over time.
EPIC continues to evolve its own independent strength and stands confidently on its own merit. Should Grin continue its slide into senescence, that will not materially affect it in any way.
Mimblewimble vs Zk-Snarks
There is an erroneous, yet fairly widely held belief that zero-knowledge approaches, such as the snarks used in ARRR/ZEC, are superior to Mimblewimble. This is emphatically not the case and I will leave it to more knowledgeable commentators such as Todd Lewis, CSA of Epicenter Labs, to get into the weeds on the particulars.
EPIC does not use a trusted setup as do ZEC and ARRR.
Vulnerabilities
Because of the complexity of the code, Zcash carried a hidden bug for over two years that, if exploited, would have allowed for infinite secret minting. The Mimblewimble math at the heart of EPIC couldn’t be simpler: outputs = inputs + new coins created that block.
EPIC is so simple, it can be printed on a T-shirt.
Throughput
ARRR capacity, based as it is on BTC, is similarly low. EPIC delivers 3x the performance of BTC (17 vs 5.5 transactions / second) today, with the capability to crank that up quite a bit - to perhaps 1000 or even more. Within 5 years, EPIC can deliver Visa-level capacity on L1, with Bitcoin-grade security, for <1/100th the cost.
The EPIC Blockchain Protocol is simply without comparable peer - there is no network in existence that can do what it can do.
Neutrality
Epicenter DAO works hard to maintain friendly relations with other projects. While some may see XMR, FIRO, and ARRR as competitors for the segment of “privacy coins”, the team doesn’t see it that way. Holders of Pirate Chain, Monero, Firo, and others are all eligible for the ECR Airgrab program wherein simply by demonstrating “proof of keys” a welcome gift of ECR tokens can be claimed.
ARRR and XMR community members expend energy against each other, whereas EPIC is copacetic with both:
Regulatory Compatibility
Institutional Concerns
Regulated institutions must wrestle with voluminous contents of compliance frameworks issued by a wide variety of public policy makers, regulators, self-regulatory organizations, NGO’s, and ESG activist groups. The uniquely flexible, modular component design of Epicenter makes use of the confidentiality features of EPIC, but not at the expense of other important goals.
EPIC is just one moving part in the overall Epicenter vision of a decentralized money stack for the web3 world. Confidentiality for some is a bug, not a feature. Crypto.com for example, cannot offer any privacy-enabled assets on its platform. Neither does Coinbase. Entire swaths of market opportunity and potential ecosystem partners are excluded when all functionality needs to live on a single chain.
Catalysts on the Radar
EPIC V3
EPIC Server V3 is a crucially important upgrade to the blockchain “operating system” and unlocks a range of new features.
Facilitates exchange integrations
Send transactions non-interactively
Better stability and security
Enhanced privacy - Tor support added to existing I2P coverage
This version has undergone 10x+ more testing than any prior release. The team has conducted extended after-action analysis of the Value Overflow Incident in March and identified areas for ongoing improvement.
Mobile Wallet
The long-anticipated Epicentric React Native mobile wallet will finally be releasable once the network updates to V3.
CoinKit Wallet
It will become possible to send EPIC through Discord, Telegram, and Twitter.
CEX Coverage
EPIC currently lacks even a single centralized exchange platform. Proposals have already been received from Bitmart, Digifinex, and LATOKEN , with Gate.io, Bitrue, WazirX also in communication. They appreciate that we have taken the time to solve their primary prior pain point - interactive transactions - driving customer service issues experienced with Grin.
ViteX currently does millions of dollars in volume a day, whereas the above-mentioned platforms do billions. What kind of difference will it make to have one-hop coverage to hundreds of altcoins?
The current leading contender is Bitmart, which offers:
USA Accounts
Institutional Accounts
Fiat On/Off Ramp
All appropriate operating licenses (which means it won’t suddenly vanish one day, as is a serious risk with TradeOgre)
It doesn’t even matter which one it ends up being - any half decent exchange at all will be a strong positive.
EONE: Ethereum Complex Coverage
EONE tokens are individual EPIC coins placed inside a standard ERC20 token wrapper. By riding on the Ethereum rails, the tokenized coins become tradable on platforms that cannot work with the native coins themselves.
Wrapped ERC20 EPIC can access the full extent of Ethereum DeFi: Aave, Balancer, Compound, Maker, Yearn and more. Epicenter already has partnerships with 2 leading L2’s: Wanchain and Polygon.
Promotional Exposure from ECR
For 2 years, EPIC has been held back by its self-imposed limitation to not pursue “pay for play” influencer marketing to shill. BTC doesn’t have a marketing department, therefore EPIC can’t either.
Now, however, with the mission of Epicenter DAO being to unite the world’s wealth in a single universal fungibility layer, a bit of awareness-building is in order and activity in the @EpicCashAmbassadors chat group is getting hot and heavy.
Halving
Currently in Era 2, the network releases 11.5k coins daily. Up to 10,000 computers participate in the mining process on a daily basis, which is currently active in 101 countries. The next halving, slated for end of October 2021, takes 5.7k coins per day out of the equation. Currently at 8 coins per minute, this declines to 4.
To put the value of a single EPIC coin into perspective, let’s look at where we will be at the Singularity, in June 2028. The supply of BTC and EPIC will be identical, at 20.4MM coins. Only 210 coins per day, for a population of 8 billion people, are available.
Conclusion
EPIC has all the attributes necessary for a moonshot. Even a small bag punches well above its weight, and can be transformative for a portfolio. There are 19 million BTC and each one costs $50k. EPIC can do everything BTC can do, better. There are only 12 million in existence, and they cost 50 cents instead of 50 grand. Can you afford not to take the time to pick up at least one?
If you appreciate this content, stop by at Freeman University, where I teach wealth acquisition and cryptocurrency valuation analysis.
Thanks for reading!
