Our mission at SHIELD has always been to provide our users with secure, anonymous transactions without compromising on speed. In this, we believe we have achieved our mission and we will continue to develop these core principles to ensure SHIELD is as secure and anonymous as possible. However, we understand that a currency only truly holds value when it is accepted as a form of payment or exchange. In its current state, the SHIELD currency is limited to peer to peer transactions among friends and family — but we intend to change that entirely.

As established corporations and businesses have been slow to accept cryptocurrency as a legitimate form of payment, and media outlets have made the transition harder still, the SHIELD team has decided to empower its community directly, providing users with an outlet that will broaden the use case of the SHIELD currency!

With this in mind, the SHIELD team is excited to reveal the first of our secret projects.

Presenting: “The SHIELD economy”

The SHIELD Economy is a fork of the Openbazaar Marketplace, providing the SHIELD community with an outlet to buy and sell goods or services — all with the speed, anonymity and security that SHIELD currency has to offer. Our development team has been chomping at the bit to announce this exciting milestone on the SHIELD roadmap, and hope the public is just as excited to start using it!

We believe that our new marketplace will allow for a greater usability of SHIELD, while also attracting a wider audience and expanding the global SHIELD community. The SHIELD Economy will also provide established businesses with a more accessible entry point to begin using — and benefiting from — SHIELD as a currency. With our business users in mind, we intend to implement a verification system, allowing businesses to register as ‘official verified users’ on the marketplace to increase user confidence and improve both brand awareness, and integrity for the seller.

But what does “The SHIELD economy” mean for SHIELD?

Through our Project BOO PoS system, SHIELD holders will be able to either stake their coins, or if they hold enough, create a (shared) masternode, with the only requirement being a relatively fast computer and a stable internet connection. This system will effectively enable users to confirm transactions with their own coins, and in doing so, earn even more SHIELD in the process. Our Proof of Stake protocol will operate hand in hand with SHIELD network masternodes to confirm transactions made on the SHIELD marketplace, further decentralizing the currency and creating a secure network for the users, by the users.

Now, we know that decentralised marketplaces won’t be as exciting to everyone as it is to us, so if this isn’t your thing, don’t worry! SHIELD developers are already hard at work on yet another secret project, slated to be announced some time in Q2 2018. If you want to be among the first to find out about upcoming projects, subscribe to our Twitter, follow our Medium and join our Discord community.