Espers: Cryptocurrency with Hybrid PoW/PoS and Unique Algorithm

Cryptocurrency world has seen tremendous growth in the past 1 year. Billions of dollars pouring into it everyday, big business like banking start to notice the groundbreaking technology behind it. While many people are rich from cryptocurrency trading, some also went bankrupt. But generally, the market are bullish and We'd like to think that it will keep bullish for many years to come. Lots of new trader or investor are looking for the next big thing, based on coinmarketcap.com there are 856 cryptocurrency available today, but many of those 856 coins are actually scam, worthless or outright dead without any development. In this article We will explain about Espers, a cryptocurrency which uses its own algorithm and also use hybrid proof of work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) system.

History
Espers first announcement was on April 2016, the development team behind espers are cryptocoderz , cryptocoderz are group of crypto enthusiast which aims to deliver new technology for blockchain in general.

The original chain is known with the ticker ESP1, this original chain had many errors and fixing those errors will require more effort than to just start over with a new and clean chain. There was swap for the ESP1 to ESP2 so anyone who own ESP1 can swap their coin 1:10 into ESP2.

The new chain is using ticker ESP2 (Warning! If you are on yobit.net, DO NOT buy espers there as it is an old chain (ESP1) and yobit.net refuses to update the chain to a new one). The new chain is based upon bitcoin version 0.10+ with added blackcoin reference for the proof of stake functionality.

Currently, you can trade ESP on :

https://www.novaexchange.com/market/BTC_ESP2/

https://www.coinexchange.io/market/ESP/BTC

https://poswallet.com/exchange/esp_posw/

Espers consensus: Hybrid Proof Of Work and Proof Of Stake
Espers is one of few cryptocurrency which utilized hybrid between Proof Of Work (PoW) and Proof Of Stake (PoS) to achieve distributed consensus.

It means that, people can choose whether they want to mine Espers using GPU or CPU (Proof of Work), or Staking it by letting their wallet unlocked and act as a node (Proof of Stake).

This is quite cool because cryptocurrency that is purely using PoW algorithm can become somewhat centralized, with miner hold so much power they practically able to monopolize future consensus (Just like bitcoin with its BU vs Core drama). Meanwhile the issue with PoS is, early adopter of the coin, especially the one with large balance will gain proof of stake rewards more than the others, discouraging new people to earn rewards via staking. With hybrid PoW and PoS system, the goal is to solve both problems and have balance between miners and staker/voter.

The mechanism for Espers PoW and PoS hybrid system is, a block can either be a PoW block or PoS block. You can find which block system that is currently active by viewing it inside the wallet.

When the block is PoW block, staking is automatically deactivated, and when it changed to PoS block, the staking will be activated again. You can find similar system on Decred.

Another advantage of using hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake is, it is nearly impossible to get 51% network attack. So 51% network attack is an attack targeted to a blockchain. This attack is usually done by miner or group of miners that is controlling 50% of network's mining hashrate. With successful 51% attack, the attacker will be able to halt transaction confirmations, reverse completed transactions and theoretically able to double-spend the coins. This type of attack usually happens to new coin with low network hashrate. A couple of coins have suffered 51% attack in the past. Shift, Krypton, HTML5, and WildBeastBlock are examples. With PoW and PoS shybrid, unless someone had majority of PoW hash rate AND majority of PoS rate, and also met the parameter set by Velocity system, it's nearly impossible for Espers to be attacked. With Espers hybrid system, attack on PoW block will cause the chain to re-target, resulting only temporary control of the block. Meanwhile, attack on PoS block will require astronomical amount of money. With this system, Espers is way more secure to 51% network attack than other coins that using purely PoW/PoS consensus.

Espers whitepaper
Complete whitepaper are still on progress. However, you can download the Velocity whitepaper here and VRX Retarget system here. Both of these technology already implemented to Espers.

Espers Roadmap

Currently, The coin are still in alpha version, so a lot of ongoing development are taking place as we speak. The dev team already release Espers roadmap, which include:

On Chain messaging system
This will enabled users to send message through their wallet to other wallet users. The plan is to make it a secure messaging platform on the blockchain. This will be extremely useful if you need to purchase something privately.

Mobile Wallet
Android mobile wallet will be released some times on June 2017. iOS wallet coming soon.

Website on blockchain
Decentralized website. Plan to make espers to be able to host website on blockchain.

Sidechain and Chain apps
A Sidechain is an independent chain from its main chain. Sidechain will allow movement of value, which will be pegged to the main chain, to freely move it to Espers network as well as other sidechain without any trusted third party necessary.

Masternodes
Masternodes will be implemented in the future. It's still on development at the moment so we don't have any information on how much it will cost to run a masternode.

Built in mining
With built in mining, you will be able to mine Espers with your GPU with a simple setup from the wallet.

Algorithm
Espers will use HMQ1725 (Highly Modified Quark 17 algorithms 25 hash rounds) algorithm. This algorithm is created by Cryptocoderz team and it was made specifically for Espers. There is also another hashing algorithm to be made named "Scatter" which is still under development. With HMQ1725 algorithm, you can do both CPU and GPU mining.

Community
Espers has an active community on discord, if you are interested in this coin and wanted to get more information, you can join Espers discord channel here. The main dev usually active on discord to answer all of your questions related to Espers.

Wallet

Espers are using QT-based wallet, with some nice design overhaul. A couple of QT wallet standard menu can also be found on the Espers wallet. Unique feature such as site on chain, mining on wallet and secure messaging will be available soon.

Esper mining
Complete guide on how to mine Espers can be found here.

Espers for long term investment?
In short, yes we recommend you to invest in Espers if you are willing to wait. We see it as a long term investment, not short term pump and dump scheme. We are basing this on several points on what make this a good long term investment:

• It is still on early stage of development, the key for huge gain in cryptocurrency investment is to get in early.
• It has dedicated and active dev team, which you can easily approach via discord.
• The price is really cheap at the moment, trading at 3-4 satoshi. Any coin with active development and trade under 10 satoshi is a steal.
• The community is really active and supportive. Member on discord generally will be able to help you in case you have any problem such as wallet sync issue etc.
• The lead developer identity is public and a well known crypto enthusiasts. He currently living in California, United States.

Final Verdict
We'd like to think of Espers as hidden gem among pile of garbage. Many cryptocurrency today exist only for one purpose: Quick money grab to scam new investor, but Espers is definitely not one of those cryptocurrency. If you can wait a couple of month from now, you will see a good return of investment. Our target: At least 1000% profit in 6-12 month.