We covered Emercoin recently, reporting on the its participation in Microsoft’s BaaS platform on Azure. We had a chance to ask Jason Cassidy of Emercoin about these developments and more.
ACN: What does it mean for Emercoin to be added to Microsoft’s BaaS platform on Azure?
JC: The partnership with Microsoft has been a major boost for Emercoin in terms of exposure and future opportunity. Obviously, when one of the largest companies on Earth sees merit in your offering, the market is going to start paying attention. Because our services work in virtually any environment there is also opportunity for us to partner with Microsoft in other capacities as well in the future (using our services internally at MS to reduce overhead and cost, the same benefits they will be rolling out to their Azure customer-base later this year).
ACN: It is early but have you seen growth in interest since it became public that Emercoin is an Azure partner?
JC: Absolutely. We were starting to receive more attention before the Microsoft partnership due to the fact we are one of the only blockchains available today delivers functional solutions. The growth we are experiencing since the MS news has been constant, giving many other industry players a glimpse into why we are fast becoming a household name in the digital currency sphere.
ACN: Is the Emercoin blockchain a clone or entirely proprietary?
JC: Emercoin is a hybrid Proof of Stake / Proof of Work digital currency, getting it’s origins from Namecoin and Peercoin. Our focus is more so on the PoS system than PoW, taking some of the original ideas that NMC and PPC introduced and improving upon them greatly. If you look at all of our blockchain-based services, one can conclude we have a proprietary offering in that what we offer is truly unique.
ACN: What are the benefits of having a hybrid proof-of-stake and proof-of-work protocol?
JC: There are many benefits that improve the overall security of the Emercoin blockchain by introducing such a model:
- For a successful attack on the network, the attacker must accumulate 51% of the computing power, and 51% of M1 aggregate (total coin supply). This task is much more difficult than just to accumulate 51% of the network’s computational capacity.
- The POS mechanism does not require huge computing power to process transactions on the network. This means that greater network security is achieved without a large investment in mining hardware, and makes Emercoin cheaper to maintain and more environmentally friendly than alternatives which rely solely on POW.
- The POS concept employed by Emercoin does not allow delegation of stake to mining pools or to other persons. This helps to preclude the possibility of abuse of trust by a centralised party and further increases the reliability and stability of the network.
Implementation of RFC5389 (STUN) protocol:
- To discover its external IP-address, the client does not use only one server owned by a private company (as do all other Bitcoin derivatives). Instead, Emercoin uses a standard mechanism based on the proven and mature specification RFC5389 (STUN) which uses 263 geographically distributed redundant servers. This makes simultaneous service denial virtually impossible and reduces the possibility that a third party can easily collect all user IP-addresses.
ACN: Emercoin has an impressive range of DApps on the blockchain, solutions for SSH admin, network security, e-commerce, advertising, business contacts, ownership and identity management. Are they all operational?
JC: We pride ourselves on under promising and over delivering here at Emercoin, and part of that philosophy is our focus on producing functional, scalable services for business and personal use. Every one of our EMC services are operational and can be adopted by anyone with virtually no cost and little time. We have customers making use of all of our services right now and we are seeing user adoption grow as the market becomes aware of this unique offering.
ACN: Which DApp gets the most interest?
JC: Currently the most popular EMC services we have are EMC SSL and EMC DPO. Our decentralized Secure Socket Layer implementation is the feature I personally am the most excited about, as it has the ability to improve security for the entire internet. When you factor in we are offering a passwordless authentication solution for every internet user, it is easy to see why EMC SSL is receiving so much positive attention.
ACN: How does a customer use or trial any of these applications?
JC: In the case of EMC SSL there is some setup involved initially and we provide expert level whitepapers and documentation to walk you through the process. Depending on the service, this may be as simple as installing a program to allow a direct tunnel for communication to the Emercoin blockchain. Every service we have is easy to setup and use, and you can find out more in-depth details on how to start using our many features at Emercoin.com
ACN: What sort of service could Emercoin provide for banking and other financial services?
JC: We have a EMC TTS, our trusted time stamping service which can be used to time stamp critical transactions / events. Beyond this, EMC SSL and EMC DPO are also tailor-made solutions for the financial industry. Mortgages fraud is now a thing of the past with our Digital Proof of Ownership solution, which can greatly reduce overhead and thus cost. Lastly, EMC SSL has the potential to completely change the way the financial industry views network security, with the option of rolling out a secure solution for passwordless authentication.
Lastly, we have our EMC InfoCard service, which is our storage system for digital business cards that works in conjunction with EMC SSL. The banking industry has a superior solution for the management of company-wide business contacts, once again remove overhead while simultaneously granting an unprecedented level of flexibility.
ACN: How do you make revenue from these solutions?
JC: There are many positive benefits we receive from user adoption of the Emercoin blockchain. Firstly, there is the direct benefit of having more economic activity being processed through the EMC network, which is always a positive development. This will increase the usage and thus demand of EMC while also spreading awareness of the services we offer. A byproduct of this is often appreciation of the underlying currency itself (EMC).
Emercoin also specializes in the development, implementation and support of custom made tools and services meant to help organizations and individuals utilize the Emercoin blockchain to it’s full potential. This is a revenue stream that we will see more traction in as adopters of scale come into the EMC blockchain and make use of our many enterprise services.
ACN: The value of Emercoin really shot up last month. Was this a result of the partnership with Microsoft?
JC: It certainly played a role in helping legitimize Emercoin as an industry leader. If you take a close look at EMC’s value, you will note that the currency was appreciating well before any partnership with Microsoft was being discussed. In fact, EMC has been rising in value since late last summer, which is indicative of increased market awareness. There are only a few blockchain’s one can invest and make use of right now that offer solutions to real world problems, and Emercoin may be the best example of this in the market today.
ACN: Is your role Chief Communications Officer? I apologize for all the questions but Emercoin is one of the more interesting projects in the blockchain tech ecosystem.
JC: Yes, I am the Chief Communications Officer at Emercoin. A common day for me includes much more than active promotion of the Emercoin blockchain. Due to my background I am able to have an active role in the development of new technologies, interface with some of the largest companies on Earth to understand their needs for adoption as well as steer the company in the right direction in terms of how we market ourselves. I am a strong believer in under promising and over delivering, something this industry is in dire need of.
Taking this approach is going to lead Emercoin to greater success in the years to come, as this mindset will always yield quality results.
