Espers is a hybrid blockchain combining Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake mechanisms. The team created it in response to the lack of usability of various existing blockchain technologies, along with the division and lack of cooperation between projects. With Espers, the team hopes to provide unification and expand possibilities. Once implemented, it will include features like cross-chain interfacing, websites on the chain, modular sidechains, secured messaging, and file storage within the chain.

Everything will be connected via a universal interface that any coin can take advantage of. The coin behind the ecosystem, ESP, is the catalyst driving these services while also stimulating interest in processing blocks for the Espers network. With this encouragement, stakers and miners will participate and lead to the consistent generation of blocks, as well as a lightning-fast network.

Websites on the Blockchain?

Team members at Espers recognize that blockchain technology has already changed a vast number of areas. However, they also see its potential for more, including websites on the blockchain. By making it possible to have websites on the chain, Espers Blockchain will provide extreme levels of safety, making websites virtually impenetrable. They hope to make this a new standard for security and safety of websites. The Espers Blockchain will additionally ensure that websites are never removed or taken down, regardless of what happens, much like the immutability of the blockchain. Additionally, website owners will be in complete control of their own data and server times will be faster.

The Espers team feels that by hosting, storing, and operating websites as well as related services via the blockchain, this will almost completely eliminate the possibility of attacks affecting usability. With the blockchain acting as an internet protocol, there is an additional layer of protection that is nearly impenetrable. For example, websites operating on the blockchain cannot suffer from DDoS attacks since there aren’t files to hack or datacenters/servers to compromise.

What Is Espers’ Secure Messaging?

Another one of the important features of Espers is secured messaging. In its white paper, Espers points out that few attempts at secure messaging have actually taken advantage of the blockchain’s algorithm for encryption. Existing systems optimize speed by fixing the message to a private key instead of the blockchain itself. This is clever in that it allows for quick messaging without increasing the blockchain’s load, but the Espers team sees flaws. These include the fact that truly secure messaging should broadcast the message among the blockchain nodes just like any mined block.

Espers instead intends to store raw text on the block, allowing for security before sending the message. The message’s security is twofold, including both the encryption via a dedicated algorithm and the ability to confirm the validity of the message, just like the blockchain would do with transactions. The message contents would stay private, but the blockchain would report when messages get sent and which public key receives them.

Other Key Espers Features

The Espers Blockchain stores most files locally, allowing for mobility and a lightweight blockchain. Chain Apps are the ability of Espers to plug in any blockchain-operated app and thereby grow capabilities. X-nodes are different than masternodes in that they do not require a specific balance of ESP to be locked in.

Espers Wallets

Espers has wallets available for most operating systems. You can download the wallet for Windows or Mac directly from the website, get instructions for Linux, or view the source on GitHub. There is also Bootstrap for both Mac/Linux and Windows. The full client might not show the most recent version of the wallet, but this is not cause for concern. There is an automatic updater that will take care of it. If you have doubts, you can also check for updates from the launcher.

How to Buy Espers ESP

Espers are currently available on CoinExchange, Livecoin, and Alcurex. At the time of writing, one ESP was equivalent to 0.000326 USD or 0.00000004 BTC. At the moment, those listed exchanges are the only ones with the correct wallet and blockchain. Do not buy Espers from the Yobit exchange since it has an old version featuring an unsupported wallet and no connection with the blockchain. Despite requests from Espers’ developer team, Yobit will not update it.

What Is Espers’ Hybrid Distribution Method?

Instead of relying solely on PoW or PoS mechanisms, Espers uses a hybrid distribution method that puts both PoS and PoW on the same blockchain. The idea of a hybrid system is still fairly new. There are few blockchains with a sufficiently robust difficulty algorithm that can adjust the time between blocks generated for either PoS or PoW or both.

To resolve this problem, the Espers team customized a difficulty retarget algorithm, VRX, that allows for the generated block types to be shuffled properly. This significantly increases the blockchain’s security since each PoS and PoW make up for the shortcomings of the other. This gives the Espers Blockchain an advantage over systems that rely on just one or the other of these methods instead of a hybrid solution.

Mining Espers

Another option is to mine Espers. You can find the necessary tools on the Espers website’s mining page, including the CPU-Miner, GPU miners for AMD and NVIDIA, and GitHub. The same page has detailed instructions for mining ESP with a CPU or GPU via this blog post. There, you will find the specific coding information for mining as well as where to find a miner, clearly divided into CPU, GPU with NVIDIA, and GPU with AMD.

What Does the Espers Roadmap Look Like?

In Q4 of 2017, Espers updated its website, revised PoW and PoS, upgraded the wallet, and completed a marketing campaign. It also created the mobile wallet and lightweight client, plus wrote the whitepaper. Now in Q2 of 2018, the focuses are the mailing system, sidechains, and x-nodes. In Q3, it will focus on CrossChain, Site on Chain, and Chain Apps.

Conclusion

Espers offers a new blockchain that takes the best features of PoW and PoS systems to create a hybrid blockchain. There are multiple features in progress that will they hope will revolutionize blockchain technology, including truly secure messaging that takes advantage of that technology.