So, yesterday I covered the decentralized gambling platform, Augur, and how it could be an interesting place to earn some extra coin if you’re inclined. The decentralized nature means that anything is a subject for gambling.
Today I want to discuss Veil, which is built on top of Augur.
Of course, no project I talk about in the premium newsletter is done from a place of veiled (pun intended) benefit for me. Getting paid to talk to my premium community about a project is double dipping, and at RSC we’re strictly single scoop.
Instead, my intention here is help us collectively find more profits in 2019. After all, it’s in my best interest to find you projects, coins, and opportunities that can help you expand your portfolio.
Under that context, let’s discuss why Veil is a cool project that could have some profit implications. Like I said, it’s built on top of Augur. Veil’s mission is help Augur go mainstream, and it’s doing that in two ways:
- Veil makes trading faster and cheaper. Ethereum transactions are slow, so Veil used the 0x protocol to speed up trading and minimize the number of transactions you need to send. Veil order creation and cancellation happens off-chain, and Veil pays gas to persist trades to Ethereum.
- Veil helps you get paid faster. Augur’s decentralized oracle system ensures markets are resolved correctly, and it’s a necessary component of a trustless network. But the finalization process can take weeks to complete. Veil introduces a feature for supported markets they call instant settlement. That means you can redeem your Augur shares for ETH as soon as the market expires. Veil has high confidence that the markets will be reported on and settled correctly, so they let you sell your Augur shares to Veil immediately at the reported price rather than waiting for finalization in Augur. Instant settlement is optional, but the idea is to let you choose your own level of trustlessness.
What’s more, Veil will be launching on Ethereum’s Mainnet on January 15, 2019.
Given the regulatory environment for derivatives in the United States, Veil will at first be launching internationally.
Veil is a non-custodial platform, and they have no control over your funds or assets. To simplify the process of approving assets for trading, Veil makes use of Veil Ether (a fork of Wrapped Ether) and Virtual Augur Shares (wrapped Augur shares that are pre-approved for trading), as outlined on their blog.
Veil will eventually have millions of markets, but at launch they plan to have the following:
- Cryptocurrency derivatives. Veil will support leveraged versions of BTC, ZRX, and REP structured as 7 day scalar markets. These products make it easy to buy leveraged long or short exposure to popular cryptoassets.
- Ethereum network hedging products. Markets on Veil don’t need to just track prices—the same framework can be used to trade on any time-series. Veil will offer derivatives to trade on Ethereum’s gas price and hash rate, which will be useful hedging products for relayers to hedge their gas exposure or miners to hedge their hash rate risk.
- Grin markets. Grin is a new scalable privacy coin that has no addresses, no amounts, and is therefore less storage intensive than other privacy coins and digital currencies. Right now, crypto is lacking a true currency to act as a medium of exchange between parties because no coin has all four cornerstone properties of global, fiat-free digital cash: price stability, scalability, decentralization, and privacy. Grin’s implementation of MimbleWimble (a blockchain protocol focused on fungibility, privacy, and scalability) hopes to solve these four areas differently and more effectively than any other currency-focused digital asset available today. Veil will support markets that track Grin’s price, hash rate, and important network events. Gain long or short exposure to Grin with a few clicks.
- Academy Awards markets. The Veil team watches a lot of movies, so they’re going to let you trade on who will win the Academy Awards.
So, as you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited at the prospects of both Veil and Grin (and by extension MimbleWimble). I think there’s a lot of good ideas being floated about, and reading through the Githubs of both projects it’s clear they have passionate developers and dedicated teams.
Who knows? Perhaps Veil and Grin will be another footmark in the larger blockchain story. Or they might become important projects that shape the direction we’re going in.
Regardless, both represent possible great opportunities, and for me that’s exciting in of itself.