There is no doubt that 2017 will be remembered as the year that cryptocurrency got worldwide attention. And it was an obvious result, because having millions of dollars being exchanged every day is something that people will start noticing and talking about. And, of course, some countries like South Korea and China even started legislating about it, prohibiting some practices while recognizing cryptocurrencies as digital goods, but in general the trend is clear: cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

But also to many other people out there, 2017 was also the year they started trading and investing in crypto. And if you have been for a while, it’s quite probable that you have already got some profits. And maybe now you’re asking yourself which coin is right for you, in what team you should deposit your well-earned profits.

I asked myself that questions too, until Asch (XAS) caught my eye months ago. Let me explain it.

Like most of you already know, the altcoin market is exploding, while at the same time offers affordable prices to new investors even if they do not possess a lot of income, democratizing the market. Moreover, being connected to a collaborative and decentralized market enhances a lot the possibilities of bring even a rather undervalued coin to new heights. So it was in this search that I found ASCH, a rather unknown cryptocurrency to the west, but very popular in China. And while still has a good and affordable price, I’m a true believer that there is a lot of room to grow, based on 4 key factors that I found in ASCH these months I have been with the community. These are the pillars that it will lead them to success: 1) Tech 2) Team 3) Community 4) Actual use.

ASCH name comes from “Application Side-Chain”

1. Tech

First things first: Any currency without good tech isn’t worth holding. And what does Asch has to offer? Well, Asch is a decentralized application platform, which provides a series of SDK and API to help developers creating decentralized applications based on JavaScript and sidechain technology. By providing a whole set of industry standard solutions (customized sidechains, smart contracts, application hosting, etc.), Asch offers an easy-to-use, fully functional plug & play ecosystem, by which developers can rapidly iterate their JavaScript applications, and easily deploy them onto the system.

So, what makes Asch special? Well, I believe there are many factors worth noticing. The first one is the “sidechain technology”. What does that even means you’re asking? Well that was the genius Asch’s solution to scalability problems. Unlike Ethereum who all their Dapps are going through the main chain, with Asch Dapps also have a sidechain where all the Dapp data could go through, making the platform substantially faster. Plus, in this platform developers could issue their own tokens within Asch ecosystem, like CryptoCurrency Time (see below for more info). Also, like many of you already noticed, Asch is compatible with JavaScript, and this fact alone increases the chances of more and more people developing with Asch’s tech, due to JavaScript popularity.

In addition of all that, Asch can save blocks on relational databases (this reduces the difficulty of Dapp development), and the speed of block production is very quick (I’m talking about one block per 10 seconds and confirming it fast), and there will be no forking issues. On top of all this if you’re still wondering about how’s the developing going, they’re working in this very periodically. Just now the new version of Asch (1.3.5) came out (source) (also if you want to more more about this tech check this official Asch article).

2. Team

While Asch team has kept a low profile, their success had put them in the spotlight even if they would not want it, because their good work it’s undeniable. That’s why just a few days ago Asch’s founder Shan Qingfeng won the “China Blockchain Industry Selection 2017” outstanding individual award (source), which serves as a recognition to his good work leading Asch.

However, isn’t just the founder who got some recognition, but also Asch itself won the best popularity award in the “China Blockchain Technology Innovation and Application Contest” while also finishing third in that contest (source). Nevertheless, what I have seen in them isn’t just awards and excellency, but also a human side, like these picture of some people of the team celebrating a local holiday.

(I hope they release the dumplings recipe!).

These are young and talented people who have proved themselves open to community suggestions, and that’s why they’re now providing weekly reports and planning to do some videos (source).

And all of this was just this year, so what departs the future? I honestly believe this kind of traction will only lead to success.

3. Actual use.

Since Asch is a platform, its value increases when more people are using Dapps (decentralized apps) with Asch’s tech, like “CryptoCurrency Time (XCT)”, a distributed social news sharing and communication platform based on Asch’s side-chain technology. So it does affect you if you’re an Asch holder? Well from 25th december until 25th january if you have enough XAS you can participate in the XCT airdrop (AKA free tokens) (click here for more details about the airdrop), so right now there are some incentives looking to please the investors, and I think these kind of rewards will be something constant. Another example of a Dapp developed thanks to Asch is Koumei Cottage (KMC), which is a decentralized market platform for socialized prediction (more info here).

In other words, this proliferation of DAPPs in short time are due to ASCH tech being very easy to implement, since just require developers to know javascript. So it’s exciting to know that right now Asch is being implemented in other projects besides the main one, because that will bring more and more people to the platform.

4. Community.

How could bitcoin be so big without anyone knowing the real identity of its creator? To lots of people seems counter-intuitive to trust in something built by an unknown person, but here we are with bitcoin being the indisputable king. How could this be? I believe the answer is found not in who created the coin, but in the people who supported it, because the spirit of decentralization and open source philosophy resides in the community. Helping each other out, filling the gaps what we could have as individuals, and leaving something for posterity are values common to projects like Bitcoin, Ethereum and ASCH. And like I said before, Asch won the best popularity award, and that was only due to their strong community, especially among chinese, but because everyday people from all over the world are helping Asch getting bigger and bigger.

Finally, also it’s worth noticing that recently Asch incorporated a foundation (source) which will provide good governance practices while having and supporting an open source and community oriented view (see why that is a big deal here).

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Want to know more about ASCH? Don’t forget to check their webpage ( https://www.asch.io ), their medium page ( https://medium.com/@AschPlatform ), or their subreddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Asch_Platform/ )!