No matter the project or technology behind them, we can all agree on one thing — we’ve had an intense year in cryptocurrency.

Amongst other things, what stood out to everyone was how much innovation took place. Hundreds of cryptocurrencies came into existence, bringing with them new ideas, possibilities and directions for blockchain technology. It was exciting to imagine the future through their vision.

Psst! You can give 1–50 claps for Medium posts, so make your claps count!

But I didn’t let them carry me away too far.

Anyone, that kept even the slightest bit of a cool head could see that what took place in the months leading up to 2018 was unsustainable. Now, more than half a year later, we see that clearly, although in hindsight for all too many.

With our purses now guardedly shut in the bear market, everyone is waiting for their investees to walk their talk instead.

But ICOs are running into a major problem that I was expecting already a long time ago.

Namely, while ICOs birthed great ideas, they don’t yet have stable structures in place to realise them. The majority had only the vision, but nothing to show for. They’re likely still struggling to find qualified employees, considering the shortage of developers able to code in blockchain specific languages, not to mention building the actual idea (my worst offender is Pillar Project).

Older projects, with years of experience, loyal teams and, most of all, working blockchains are in the prime position to select through the best of new ideas and incorporate them into their own projects.

.. leaving the newcomers behind, if they’re not careful.

So who’s going to walk the talk?

To be the first to know, I’d keep an eye out for updates on what all the originals are doing.

CLOAK has been around since 2014. It’s a cryptocurrency designed to facilitate private, secure and untraceable transfers by using Enigma, which is a secure and decentralized off-blockchain mixing service. CLOAK is built on Proof of Stake — which also means it pays a generous interest to its holders (6%).

The team behind CLOAK has been busily working on improving themselves since inception. It was a closed-source project at the start, due to which it went under the radar for investors. But on New Year’s Eve 2017, the team released their code, on which they’d been working on behind the scenes for over 3 years (see their Github).

Benefits of being around for a while:

Have had time to tinker and tweak themselves Have had time to research and understand their industry Have a working blockchain, which means they’re a big step ahead projects just starting out So they can pick the best new improvements and add them to their project A tried and tested community that clearly stuck around — network effect Experienced team already in place with substantial work history

And so on.

Today, CLOAK is releasing an important new wallet update for Linux and Raspberry Pi (aarch64), that brings various fixes and improvements, including fixing flaws detected and explained in a security audit by Cognosec. The windows wallet will follow very soon.

CLOAK independently sought to be audited by the cyber-security firm and the suggested security improvements have been addressed in both CLOAK Evolution and it’s current update CLOAK rEVOLUTION.

In addition to an easy to use user interface, the official CLOAK wallet provides users with anonymous stealth addresses and a fast connection to their blockchain. In fact, by doing smart things with big numbers, the current update brings 20% faster blockchain index loading time and 30–50% increase in speed performance for syncing blocks.

New and improved.

I’m motivated to believe the case for privacy driven projects, like CLOAK, is quite strong, as it serves an important role in empowering citizens in the maintenance of civil liberty in a democratic system.

Looking at huge privacy scandals of recent, privacy is likely to make a comeback. The public roastic Facebook went through is a great example of the public becoming more aware.

If this speaks to you, I urge you to check out CLOAK.

You can chat with the team members directly on the dedicated CLOAK chatroom to find out more about the state of CLOAK today — not an easy thing to do directly with most projects these days.

And be sure to take a look at their Roadmap to see all the good stuff — such as Atomic Swaps and light, hardware, mobile and Electrum web wallets — CLOAK still has in store for us.

If you’d like to read more about CLOAK, you can do so here, here and here and read their Whitepaper.

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Full disclosure: Nele Maria Palipea is an advisor for CLOAK, a privacy focused cryptocurrency from 2014.This is not investment advice nor is it an official representation of the project. It’s an opinion piece. So please consult official sources and contact the project for fact verification.