Listen to enough crypto podcasts and you’ll hear numerous discussions about how to best bring about the mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Yet for all the talk, there’s been surprisingly little progress made in taking crypto mainstream.

Hoping to change that is Project Hydro, a global decentralized community of developers building accessible applications for financial services like lending, P2P payments and savings.

Created by Hydrogen, a fintech platform for developers and enterprises, Project Hydro is an open source, community-driven initiative built on top of Ethereum. Protocols carry out various processes while interoperability is derived from a token, HYDRO, which we are pleased to announce will be listed on Liquid in the next couple of weeks. Each protocol has HYDRO utility baked in, ensuring the token plays a key role in the ecosystem.

Could Project Hydro be the solution the blockchain community has been waiting for?

Let’s find out.

The Hydro protocols

Built by a dedicated developer community, the Hydro protocols are the life force of the ecosystem. Those protocols are currently Raindrop, Snowflake, Tide, Ice and Hail – H2O in its various forms.

Raindrop is a multi-factor authentication protocol that secures user accounts and databases. On the server side, an on-chain microtransaction must be completed before access is granted. On the client side, any developer who wants to leverage Raindrop to onboard users must stake and maintain HYDRO to ensure they remain good actors.

Snowflake is a decentralized identity protocol that helps individuals craft their digital identities and enables projects to easily and securely access this data. Snowflake acts as a passport for identification information, with the HYDRO token as a gateway fee, allowing dApps into the network and streamlining user interactions.

Tide comprises smart contracts that make it simple to create real-world decentralized applications to facilitate identity-linked payment functions across P2P, point of sale, e-commerce, credit, and traditional payment systems. The HYDRO token is used for all subscriptions, remittances, interest, invoicing and more.

Ice is a file-management system that enables documents and data to be stored, stamped, transacted and encrypted on the blockchain. HYDRO tokens maintain ecosystem integrity and are used to pay for services.

Hail is identity-linked security tokenization. With Hail, businesses can build and deploy security tokens.

Hydro products leading the way

A number of products and smart contracts have already been developed within Hydro, giving users access to everything from peer-to-peer payments to secure file storage.

Hydro Pay is a peer-to-peer payment app leveraging the Hydro ERC-1484 identity standard. Gas fees are removed to better facilitate small payments between users. Future versions will add a plasma sidechain for instant transactions, fiat gateways, point-of-sale functionality and the ability to swap ERC-20 tokens for HYDRO.

Molecule is an enterprise-level solution for decentralized identity, asset and security tokenization, crypto payments, and international remittance.

Hydro Vault is a decentralized wallet with 2FA integrated into the smart contract, made possible thanks to Hydro’s Raindrop protocol. Hydro Vault includes phishing protection and custom security features for added defense.

Hydro dAppStore is an open-source, community-built platform for hosting decentralized applications built in the Hydro ecosystem.

Hydro Drive allows users to store files on or off the blockchain with the ability to both sign and timestamp important documents, as well as send them securely. Files have built-in encryption and are tied to an identity through Hydro’s Snowflake smart contracts.

Hydro is coming to Liquid

HYDRO is now live on Liquid.