This is The Weekly Coin, a weekly newsletter highlighting high potential lower-cap Cryptocurrency projects.

This week in The Weekly Coin we’re highlighting Ren. Ren currently lands on the 77th slot on CoinMarketCap. Yea, it's not hidden in the realms of the 2nd CMC pages and beyond. But, after researching this coin, I think it's a game-changer for DeFi and well, the cryptocurrency world as a whole. Also important to note is that I'm not invested in Ren and no one paid me to write this. Oh, and of course, I'm not a financial adviser. 😁

TL;DR

Ren allows the free movement of value between all blockchains and transfer of tokens in zero-knowledge. Unlocking new liquidity and resources to power a new wave of value in the open finance movement. With Ren all decentralized applications can run in secret, preserving the privacy of all users and data. (Renproject.io)

What is Ren?

Ren had humble beginnings as a project called Republic Protocol. Republic Protocol launched in 2017 and had their ICO on February 3, 2018. The platform focused on providing decentralized dark pools. A dark pool is a term used in traditional finance for anonymous over-the-counter (OTC) order books without moving the market (more on dark pools here). Republic Protocol's decentralized dark pools were specially designed to combat OTC trading which is known for their high fees and also to help increase institutional money flow into crypto. The technology behind these decentralized dark pools is called RenVM.

💡 Institutional investors want to get in the game, but are staying on the sidelines until crypto has matured and risk is low.

RenVM turned out to be the perfect solution for interoperability between blockchains. This is because in a decentralized dark pool blockchains need to see each other. Republic Protocol then saw how massive this opportunity was and rebranded to Ren.

Ren is the evolution of the technology that underpins Republic Protocol, in its most useful and general form. It becomes something much bigger than Republic Protocol and will empower developers to build decentralized and trustless applications, with a distinct focus on financial applications. Using our own newly developed secure multiparty computation protocol, all DeFi applications will have access to interoperable liquidity and run in complete secrecy. (Ren — The Evolution of a Protocol)

💡 To dumb it down a bit, Ren is the organization's name , REN is the ERC-20 based token, and RenVM is Ren’s core product .

Token use

To put simply, for now, the REN token is used as a work token. The token is used as a bond to run a Darknode. What is a Darknode?

RenVM is replicated over thousands of machines that work together to power it, contributing their network bandwidth, their computational power, and their storage capacity. These machines are known as Darknodes. Darknodes communicate with other Darknodes around the world to keep RenVM running. Without them, there is no virtual machine upon which Ren can exist. RenVM uses Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithms and secure multiparty computations so that Darknodes can be operated by anyone without needing to trust them. This is what makes RenVM — and by extension Ren itself — decentralized, trustless, and private. (Ren Documentation)

Ok so now we know what a Darknode is but what is REN Tokens used for?

The decentralized network of Darknodes is permissionless, but to prevent the forging of a large number of identities a good behavior a bond of 100,000 REN tokens is required in order to register and run a Darknode. This prevent malicious adversaries from running an unbounded number of Darknodes and overwhelming the network with misbehaving Darknodes. (Ren Documentation)

As stated, to run a Darknode you'll need 100,000 REN. You can liken this to Proof of Stake (PoS) systems in which you stake a certain currency to encourage honest behavior in block production. The benefits of running a Darknode is you will be paid transaction fees. Initially, the fees were paid in REN tokens but now Darknode operators can be paid other cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, ZEC, and other ERC20 tokens.

The REN token is required to run a Darknode but the tokens are not required to use RenVM. Let’s say someone wants to acquire BAT with their BTC using a RenVM enabled DEX; where would they get the REN to preform the transaction? A centralized exchange? That defeats the purpose. A decentralized exchange? They'd need ETH or an ERC-20 token. Idk if you've used Uniswap before but you don't need an Uniswap token to swap, send, or pool. Using the RenVM is similar, you don't need to use the REN token.

Why I think Ren is a game-changer

With around 900 million dollars locked up in DeFi it's no secret that DeFi is booming right now. Go to DeFi Pulse and take a look at which chains all the DeFi applications are being built on, go on. What you'll see is every application is built on Ethereum.

Ethereum has a smart contract platform for business logic, whereas Bitcoin doesn't. You can loan and mint something like DAI without trusting an intermediary, all of this is done on Ethereum. But what if you wanted to use Bitcoin on a DEX to get DAI? Another problem is Ethereum doesn't know Bitcoin exists and vice versa. Ren fixes this. You can trade Bitcoin on a DEX like Uniswap against Ethereum or mint Dai with Bitcoin. Check out this Github repo outlining how to enable BTC and ZEC in Uniswap. As a developer of a decentralized exchange myself, I think this is huge. 🔥

Well you might be saying "We have wrapped Bitcoin", well wBTC isn't actually Bitcoin, it's more like an IOU token or a proxy. An imposter!

Well, you might be saying "We have Atomic Swaps", well Atomic Swaps are slow and a bit annoying and complex. The two parties looking to transact have to send the transaction, wait for confirmation, then send a transaction and then finally wait for a confirmation. What if the internet goes down for a person in the party? What happens if the market gets flooded?

With the RenVM it's only one transaction, it's quick, easy, and you send actual Bitcoin. There is also no need for specialized software. The RenVM takes care of it all. Check out these examples of RenVM in action.

Also, check out Ren's Chaos Dex where you can swap SAI (DAI) for BTC or ZEC. For more information on Chaos Dex go here. Idk about you but this stuff blows my mind.

Ren is in talks with dApps in the DeFi space making sure RenVM is aligned with their platforms. There also is documentation and integrations for you to build on RenVM. Ren also has been making great strides recently in inter-blockchain liquidity by recently announcing The Ren Alliance.

The Ren Alliance is a consortium of DeFi companies and/or projects that are helping secure, develop, and utilize RenVM. (Introducing the Ren Alliance)

Also, Important to note is Ren has top tier investors in the likes of FGB Capital, Polychain Capital, and Kenetic Capital. But its headlining investor is crypto giant Huobi, which this past July launched its Huobi Cloud platform for OTC desks. Work is being done and a lot of progress is being made.

Why do we even need Interoperability?

I'm gonna yank the text straight from an article by Capgemini which explains the benefits of interoperability quite nicely.

The blockchain-based networks are being built to offer specific capabilities such as making payments, storing and trading assets and others. However, these capabilities are being offered in isolation where these networks don’t talk to each other and cannot share data. Existing centralized systems have evolved to offer the same capabilities in a more integrated way where these systems are able to run end to end transactions seamlessly making it easier for users. If blockchain-based networks have to make a strong case for their adoption, they have to be able to work with each other and offer this seamless integration of capabilities to their users. Strong interoperability would give users a much more useful, user-friendly experience. With this interoperability, users will be able to experience the seamless integration of capabilities being offered by the blockchain-based networks. If we have to hypothesize an example, it would look something like this – User will be able to tokenize the asset (e.g. artwork) over Ethereum based DApp, will be able to transfer the tokenized asset to another address over Cardano, and pay any corresponding transaction fees over the bitcoin network. (Capgemini)

The cryptocurrency space is pretty fragmented at times. There also is a bunch of tribalism. It can be a bit annoying. One coin makes massive efforts over here and another coin is making massive efforts over there. What if we could combine the efforts into one big force of nature? I think we can take over the world. Which, would be, huge.

Idk about y’all but I’m gonna be following the Ren team to see what they come up with. The impact this coin can have could be massive. I think Ren is definitely a coin you should look at.

Stay safe out there folks,

Ken

Stats

CoinMarketCap Rank: 77

Current Price: $0.071621

Market Cap: $60,968,014

Max Supply: 1,000,000,000 REN

Where to buy REN: Binance, Huobi, Kyber Network, Uniswap

Development Frequency*: On Github, the Ren organization has several active repositories that help developers integrate Ren into their dApps. They even provide a TypeScript example as well as Documentation on getting started. As a developer, this is a beauty to see.

Helpful Links

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I am not invested in Ren.

*Important to note that many Cyptocurrency projects have hidden repositories or do not store their work on Github.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser. This is not financial advice. This is just my opinion. Always do your own research before investing. I am not responsible for your trades.