Just when you thought that we have enough cryptocurrencies, a new player emerges. Uber co-founder and Expa founder Garrett Camp revealed that he has been busying himself with a brand-new cryptocurrency, which is called Eco.
Introducing https://t.co/hojcQhgW5E 🙂 https://t.co/7hSRgEHgSf // @eco
— Garrett Camp (@gc) March 1, 2018
His latest endeavour is a result of his own experience with purchasing cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, last year. Camp told Fortune that he hopes to address the issues he found with these projects, while providing what digital currency was meant to be: instant, affordable and borderless.
If you’re also wondering why it’s called Eco, Camp further revealed that the name is not only short and easy to pronounce in a wide range of languages, it also reminds consumers of concepts like ‘ecosystem’, ‘economics’ and ‘e-Commerce’.
Having said that, we couldn’t help but wonder if this was something he had meant to kickstart earlier as Eco’s Twitter account indicated that it had been set-up in September 2016.
Eco is currently in its early stages, and the company has released a whitepaper outlining its design proposal. It seeks to address three issues within digital currencies: verification of network nodes; usability of applications; and efficiency of transactions.
The whitepaper also highlights that Eco will attempt to make significant improvements by: forming a verified network, where universities run nodes; increasing overall token supply and creating simple web and mobile apps; and designing a system with more energy-efficient and coordinated token generation, to reduce overall power consumption.
While users can sign up now to claim their free Eco, the company is planning to get a test net running by the end of the year. There will be one trillion tokens offered initially, where Eco plans to distribute 50% of the token supply to the first one billion unique, verified human users on the platform.
Another 20% will be allocated to verified nodes (partner universities) and its network of researchers and developers. The remainder will be held by the Eco Foundation to fund operations and community grants; active contributors and advisors; and strategic partners worldwide.
[Source: TechCrunch, Fortune]
