Since the invention of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency by Nakamoto Satoshi a decade ago, we have seen a massive growth in the popularity of blockchain technology especially as a means of value exchange replacing the use of fiat in some applications. In the last few years we have also witnessed the emergence of platform blockchains and dApps which have focused on moving the direction of this technology away from value exchange/storage, but more towards improving and simplifying how we live our daily lives. Sadly, this space has been oversaturated with so many projects promising the best of what blockchain technology has to offer while operating solely on proof of concepts, hype and ICOs. These money-grabbing ventures have now become get-rich-quick investment vehicles, invariably causing a dearth of development in this space.

Thankfully, it isn’t all gloom and doom, we have seen the growth of solid projects with real use cases such as Ethereum, NEO, Chainlink, amongst others. These are projects which have moved from the proof of concept phase into real products which affect how we live positively. Hydrogen is one of the newest projects in blockchain and their mantra is creating real blockchain technology that changes the status quo in fintech while impacting lives around the globe. Hydrogen is a blockchain project on the Ethereum platform that was launched in February with the aim of drastically reducing the gap between public blockchains and real-world businesses. The platform enables new and existing private systems to seamlessly integrate and leverage the immutable and transparent dynamics of a public blockchain, unlike Ripple’s partly centralized solution.

A deep dive into Hydrogen further lends credence to the philosophy of the team and what they hope to achieve. Starting with the method of token distribution, 25% of Hydro tokens were distributed to developers earlier this year while another 10% has been earmarked for distribution in the Hydro Community Development project. Comparing this to the current norm in crypto now, it is obvious that the Hydro team have put fair distribution and development of the project first above all things. 30% of the tokens belong to the team, 10% for early investors and the remaining 25% stays in the repository for partnerships with huge enterprises. So how exactly does the Hydrogen team make income from this? This is achieved by licensing their APIs to these huge enterprises and helping them with the integration of their private systems with the Hydrogen platform. This doesn’t apply to medium and small sized enterprises/start-ups who simply need to obtain Hydro tokens for staking as they are given free access to use these APIs without the need for licensing.

The Hydro token is a utility token which is an integral part of ensuring good actors, incentivising participation and validating users on the Hydrogen platform. The tokens especially play a huge role in the three projects the Hydrogen team are completing this year. Raindrop, the first project on the platform which has already been completed with the app launching at the end of May, is focused on enabling better security with the invention of a decentralized 2-factor-authentication (2FA) system that vastly improves on the security offerings of current centralized 2FA solutions such as SMS, email, Google Authenticator, Authy, amongst others. For systems level authentication, the token is used as a means of proof of identity during authentication. On the client side, websites are required to stake Hydro as an incentive to be good actors in the system so that their clients can use the Raindrop app. The beautiful thing here is that the end user of the Raindrop app does not need to spend Hydro tokens, nor Ether to access the system. Other projects slated for release later this year include Snowflake which focuses on using blockchain technology to solve identity and data management problems. This is followed by the Ice project which aims to secure documents on the blockchain using cryptographic techniques.

One of the most important factors that determine the probability of a blockchain project succeeding is the team, and this is one place where Hydro really shines. The Hydro team is made up of 28 professionals who are experts in the field of blockchain engineering, finance, design, data science, technology and growth hacking. Headquartered in New York, the team is actively recruiting in new positions which shows they have a good understanding of project capacity and capability in relation to the goals they have set out to achieve. Another interesting nugget is that Hydrogen is an evolution of an earlier quite successful company called Hedgeable which focused intensely on product innovation to attract new users.

Furthermore, since the project became official in February, it has organically grown a community of enthusiasts who constantly support and challenge the team with regards to the short and long-term direction of the project. With an 8000-member strong telegram community and good following on other social media platforms, the project has been able to attain a massive level of publicity without any major marketing drive from the team. This is a lesson for other projects in crypto, create real products and the deserved recognition will follow. There is a need to stop the ICO and hype culture currently engulfing the crypto space, projects like Hydro have shown that this can be achieved by doing things the right way, the way Nakamoto Satoshi envisaged.

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing articles that highlight certain aspects of the Hydrogen project and why I think it will be one of the biggest crypto projects this year. In the meantime, you can do more reading and research about this game changing project here:

Social Media

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/projecthydro

Blog: https://medium.com/hydrogen-api

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@hydrogenapi

Telegram: https://t.me/projecthydro

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/gxAUagw

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChDPAVs_qKREy9zAQsc6VVw

BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2778123.0

Important Links

Website: https://hydrogenplatform.com

Github: https://github.com/hydrogen-dev

Raindrop White Paper: https://www.hydrogenplatform.com/white-papers/Hydro_Raindrop_White_Paper_English.pdf

Hydro API Documentation: https://www.hydrogenplatform.com/docs/hydro/v1/

Hydro Community Development Program: https://medium.com/hydrogen-api/introducing-the-hydro-community-development-program-d774909c67b8

Hydro Smart Contract: https://etherscan.io/token/0xebbdf302c940c6bfd49c6b165f457fdb324649bc

Token Tracking: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hydrogen/