Introduction

For the uninitiated, they can be spoilt for choice. However, with the space drawing interest from government agencies and big businesses, settling for the right option can be the difference between winning, that is, meeting and even surpassing objectives, and flopping–miserably.

Of the many other there, High Performance Blockchain (HPB) is remarkably different. At core, they seek to revolutionize blockchain infrastructure. To that end, they blend hardware and software, creating an ultimate permisionless blockchain that is public, stable and scalable with a Proof of Performance as the preferred consensus algorithm. HPB combines the Blockchain Offload Engine (BOE) hardware with a tailor made software, designed purposefully to achieve their overall goal as pitched by the blockchain creators.

The BOE unit is part of the ECDSA (Ecliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) module that verifies transaction signatures while concurrently enabling the network to process thousands of transactions per second. HPB can process at 10k TPS in China and 5K TPS at the rest of the world. The BOE is simply a chip-acceleration engine that boost the node’s hardware chipsets which in turn power the HPB ecosystem.

It is specifically because of the BOE that the blockchain works as billed, introducing high speed and above all, the main differentiator of low latency. Apart from that, HPB is satisfactorily decentralized as their nodes are distributed across the world. Combined, there is top-notch security in place as the community first of all secures the network and secondly, from other measures installed by the platform’s architects.

Furthermore, for consensus, there is voting and task delegation meaning enterprises can not only deploy smart contracts, launch dApps but can also use the platform as the goal of HPB is to empower businesses by building a dApp ecosystem in a scalable, secure platform that is fully customizable, low maintenance and launched by an ambitious, experienced team.

Team

The High Performance Blockchain (HPB) team is drawn from individuals from all over the world. With a roadmap to meet and a cause to fulfill, Xiaoming Wang is leading a dedicated global team of developers and experienced consultants. Wang is passionate about blockchain and is one of the first pioneers in the space. He’s well known in the Chinese blockchain sphere and one of the founders of Union Pay Smart, Union Pay’s Big Data team.

Assisting Wang is Jinxin Li, who doubles up as the co-founder and the head of HPB’s Strategic Development. Li is among the first miners of Ethereum and a successful blockchain investor with stellar digital asset portfolio. Before joining HPB he was the Chief Blockchain Analyst at Guotai Junan Securities. Other co-founders include Li Xu, the CTO and Lou Shanlin, the Tech VP. Noteworthy team members from the rest of the world include Emma Zhu, the CMO, Danny Rowshandel, the Managing Director of Overseas Business Development and Julien Passagne, the Business Development Director.

Advising the team is Zongru Wan, a member of a Nobel Prize-winning team, NEO, Zhen Lei, the Jixianyuan CEO, OKCoin co-founder and Bibox Founder, Zhen Chen, the Dongfang Fuhua, Fund President and six others.

Road Map

Launched in Q1 2017, High Performance Blockchain has had tremendous success. After their one-month crowdfunding raising $2 million from a $5 million hard cap target, the team continue to develop even after last year’s crypto winter. They launched the HPB Test Net in Q4 2017, followed that up with mainnet launch in Q3 2018 and are currently building a Global HPB Ecosystem development to be concluded by end of July 2019. After that the aim is to optimize BOE hardware and software while simultaneously expanding their Baas Offering for the rest of the year.

Partners

For what the project represent and their ambition of building a network from where businesses, more so, in China can operate from, HPB has a close connection with NEO. The investment arm of NEO is HPB’s Angel Investor with the “Ethereum of China” keen on using HPB accelerator in their VM.

Another key partner is UnionPay Smart, a state owned firm that handles 80 percent of all China’s financial transactions. UnionPay, the parent company of UnionPay Smart, is literally bigger than Visa and MasterCard combined and that is just the magnanimity of HPB. The partnership could be the largest so far in the blockchain space.

Banyan Network BBN is also determined to bring businesses into blockchain and are therefore partnering with HPB. However, we note that the founders of UnionPay Smart, HPB and Banyan Network BBN are closely tied. Other partners include Cyber Physical Chain or CPC, SharesChain, Bottos or BTO, OK Capital or OKEx, BlockWater Capital, Bixin, Krypital Group, LLC, Xianghe Capital and the list keeps growing.



Tokenomics

Based off Ethereum, the HPB token was ERC-20 compliant and changing hands at $0.22 during their crowd funding between July 1 and Aug 1 2018. Then, the hard cap was set at $5 million but only $2 million was raised from investors. Of the 100 million HPB tokens, only 33 percent were allocated to investors.

The team and the reserve fund were slotted 20 percent each while ecosystem development got 24 percent of the total coins in supply. According to HPB, the Reserve Fund will be set aside for “strategic investment, token exchange,government cooperation, response to industry changes and more”. Besides, all coins will be locked for three years since purchase and once the period elapse, only a third of these coins would be unlocked once per year.

At the time of press, there are 43,619,949 HPB coins in circulation with a daily volume of $5,519,881 and a market cap of $18,838,581 according to data streams from Coin Market Cap. However, investors should not that the annual inflation is capped at three percent but that will double to six percent once there are 150 nodes. Despite last year’s slump—down 86 percent from 2017 peaks of $13.65 of Jan 13, 2018, the coin is changing hands at $0.4318 meaning investors are up 5.5X in ETH and roughly 2X in USD terms.

HPB/ETH Technical Price Analysis

Syncing with the rest of the market, HPB has been on a roller coaster ride. With wide amplitudes, HPB is likely to recover against ETH and other digital asset after sliding 86 percent after printing all-time highs of $13.65. Presently, what we have is a strong reaction from Feb 2019 highs.

Although sellers have reversed gains of May-10, the inverted hammer of May 8 could provide the necessary impetus to help lift prices back to 0.002 ETHs and even 0.003 ETHs or Q1 2019. All the same, investors should only load up on once HPB bulls clear May-10 highs at the back of favorable short-term catalysts.

NB: This is not Financial Advice.



Short-term Price Catalysts

Pound to pound, HPB serve the same purpose as EOS, Ethereum or Tron but with a leaning towards enterprises. Commanding high throughput in China—10K TPS and relatively high TPS at the rest of the world, platform can satisfactorily perform and even exceed goal. In the long term, the lack of public exposure on this asset means it is grossly undervalued as there is government involvement via Unionpay Smart as well as established entities like NEO that at one time was touted to replace Ethereum as its killer.

All the same, it is HPB’s consensus algorithm, the dPoS as well as their specialized hardware nodes incorporating the BoE unit that is a differentiator. Completely decentralized with 150 BOE Nodes of which 31 are HP-Nodes, there is sufficient security. Ideally, 70 percent of all nodes are allocated to the community while the HPB Foundation controls six percent of them all. The other 24 percent is assigned to enterprise invitees as NGOs and others.

Besides, the HPB MainNet upgrade is in progress. The objective was to optimize performance and to implement some key technical breakthroughs. The first phase will be complete on May-17 or at block height of 2560000 while the second will be through by June 10, 2019. By then, exchanges are supposed to upgrade their systems.

At the same time, they already have a strategic partnership with SWFT Blockchain allowing HPB to be exchanged with more than 140 other assets via the SWFT Pay. Besides, there is an “memorandum of understanding (MOU) with DLT Lab – an UK-Government backed distributed ledger accelerator and incubator in London” with the aim of “sourcing and selecting an agreed number of suitable third parties for blockchain development on High Performance Blockchain’s MainNet.”

That, plus Ledger integration, the Scan UI which is ready to roll and the UnionPay smart authorized traceability system V2.0 test Phase combined with Remix.dev, an IDE tool that can operate without the need of downloading, the future is indeed bright. All this will likely be highlighted as HPB attends Consensus 2019 where more announcement and partnerships could be struck.



Long Term Price Catalysts

HPO may be serving the same niche as Ethereum and EOS but they are high rollers. Their partnership with NEO for example is an automatic marketing of their hardware accelerators. At the same time, working with UnionPay Smart city is an indirect government endorsement of a company that plans to achieve solve the blockchain Trillemma: That of striking a healthy balance of resolving the TPS bottleneck common with other networks, increasing scalability while not compromising decentralization.

Apart from UnionPay partnership, another noteworthy collaboration is HPB’s working with the Laya.one. Laya is one of the largest gaming networks in China. To quantify, research shows that up-to 70 percent of all gaming companies in the world’s second largest economy including Tencent, Cheetah and Xianomi use Laya.one infrastructure. In turn, Laya.one will be using HPB’s network and most importantly their BoE unit which is huge for investors. Then there is Knownsec that recently concluded their HPB MainNet code, HPB Wallet and Smart Contracts security audit concluding that “HPB has proved itself to be a high-performing blockchain with high security.” The involvement of Knownsec is huge because the security firm main client is Tencent and other high-capital corporation in China.

Furthermore, their partnership with ITCEC, which is affiliated with China Electronics Corporation (CEC), another state owned company for the development of a smart city off HPB high-throughput platform relays the magnitude and the undervaluation of the HPB token.