One of the biggest gainers in the crypto world in the last month was Energi's token NRG. The altcoin has stormed up the rankings on CoinMarketCap, but what is Energi? and what are they trying to achieve? In this article I will look into their growth and give you an introduction to the project.

Energi (NRG) Growth June 8th 2019 - July 8th 2019

The overall price of the token has increased dramatically, from June 8th to today, it has increased from over 2 dollars per coin ($2.24) to over $8 as of writing this article ($8.02), on top of that it broken over $10 13 days ago, so currently it is looking very promising as you can see below in the graphs from CoinGecko.

Also the Market Cap has dramatically shot up as well in the same time period. On June the 8th Energi's Market Cap was standing at around $38 million, today it stands at around $144 million.

Because of this recent growth, it is no surprise that the token has moved up the rankings dramatically. Back on June the 8th it was just breaking into the top 100 coins on the market, but now has climbed around 40 places to be sitting around the top 60 coins.

What is Energi?

Energi was started by Tommy World Power in summer 2017, born from Tommy’s vision of a powerful economically-optimized self-funding cryptocurrency, combined with smart contract capabilities and decentralised governance. In their design, Energi’s own emission is used the primary funding mechanism for fuelling growth.

What makes Energi interesting was that while in it's development phase it was funded solely by Tommy. No money was raised by outside or public investors, and there was no ICO. Energi launched on April 14th, 2018. Through the bear market of 2018, Energi has continued to grow and expand, at a time when most projects had gone into hibernation mode, or even completely diffused. As of now, Energi has approximately 20 active contributors building Energi and they are growing fast.

Below you can see a recent interview between Ivan on Tech and Tommy, where they go through the basics of Energi and the ideologies behind the project.

One interesting ideology from Energi is in regards to mining coins.

The majority of cryptocurrencies today have a system of mining in place which rewards those mining the cryptocurrency. This functions as inflation or could even be seen as a type of “tax” on the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, alone, is rewarding over $5 billion dollars a year on mining.

Energi see Bitcoin’s massive mining reward as an overkill, and believe Bitcoin could be about as secure with only a fraction of that mining reward, but could instead use that capital to improve their ecosystem. If Bitcoin had a system in place similar to Energi, Bitcoin would currently have billions per year to allocate to development and growth. This is an enormous missed value, a gap which Energi seeks to fill. Combining this with governance and smart contract capabilities is what they see it as major features of the most powerful cryptocurrencies of the future.

Energi has evolved from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake and is designed with high staking rewards to encourage security and growth. The bulk of the coin emission though is afforded to the Treasury and Masternodes. Masternodes administer governance, security, instant transactions and private transactions over the network, while the Treasury provides essential funding for all Energi services.

Their Treasury will support thousands of developers leading the way with cutting edge development, while also funding thousands of marketing and business development specialists to expand user awareness and build merchant adoption worldwide.

Future Plans of Energi

Energi are not just growing in value, trading volumes and team members but they are also expanding their project as you can see below.

Q2 2019 - Energi Core begins work on Energi X (a 0-fee Futures Exchange to rival Bitmex), with its primary trading pair being NRG. Energi X is a major endeavour and will be one of Energi's major focuses over the coming years. It alone can drive major demand for NRG, and enormously empower Energi both in the realm of cryptocurrency exchanges, and as a cryptocurrency platform at large. There is no firm estimated release date yet, but launch is tentatively planned for Q3 2020.

Q3 2019- Earndrop (Instead of crowdfunding / holding an ICO, Energi decided to instead offer a portion of their tokens to the wider community in exchange for their ongoing support and engagement. So far there has been 3 rounds). Round 4 begins and due to high demand, Round 4 is expected to finish quickly. NRG for Rounds 2, 3, and 4 will be released concurrently after Round 4 is finalised.

Q4 2019 - Technically Energi is a fork of the Dash source code, but it is not a fork of the dash blockchain. They are moving towards an Ethereum blockchain. Energi 3.0 will be released Q4 2019. Energi will be rebuilt as a smart-contract platform adapted from Ethereum, compatible with apps written for Ethereum. This major update enables virtually all of Ethereum’s capabilities while incorporating their Treasury, Masternodes, and Governance systems, all-in-one. Energi will begin adopting other existing Ethereum infrastructures. This upgrade also enables dApps to migrate to the Energi ecosystem, by doing so they will benefit from Energi Defence (cybersecurity), their incubator, and other expanding services.

Energi will also begin on boarding the most impactful blockchain projects and dApps into the Energi platform. Energi will also begin giving grants and providing support via an Incubator Program for the most innovative upcoming dApps in the crypto space.

If you wish to read their roadmap, you are able to by clicking here. And you can keep up to date with the project by following them on their Facebook, Twitter and Medium.

Energi is an intriguing project not just from it's recent growth but also from the fact of what they are trying to achieve, i believe this project will continue to grow in value in the foreseeable future, but what do you think? Leave a comment at the bottom as I am very interested to hear your opinions, and don't forget to tip the article if you enjoyed the read!