Haven
untraceable payments x stable value storage
New ground is being broken in the cryptocurrency space with Haven’s release into the crypto world this week. Over a hundred miners jumped on board in the first few hours of the network and the initial rapid growth has been exciting to watch.
Haven is an untraceable cryptocurrency that proposes a mix of standard market pricing and stable fiat value storage without an unsustainable peg or asset backing. This means the coin can be traded at market value while also having a way to lock in market price without having to sell the coin in the market back to USD.
It achieves this by using a built in on-chain smart contract/protocol that controls the minting and burning of coins to facilitate value for users that choose to send their coins to Offshore Storage contracts while allowing everyone else to be exposed to the natural price movements of the currency.
Haven is a fork of Monero so inherits the stealth and anonymity that it’s famous for. Haven also has the benefit of starting the blockchain from scratch with RingCT for extra privacy. Further, Haven’s Offshore Storage smart contract allows privacy conscious individuals that want to keep their money in an untraceable currency without being subject to market fluctuations, a means to do so. This gives you all the power of a Swiss bank account in your backpocket.
With Haven, You can dip in and out of Offshore Storage to maintain value and do so in an invisible way due to the cryptographically secure protocols utilized on the Haven blockchain.
Lets learn a bit more about Offshore Storage.
What is Offshore Storage?
Haven is sent from your wallet to a native smart contract which will hold the balance in terms of the fiat value at the time of the transaction. This balance never leaves the Haven blockchain and as such remains completely untraceable and unlinkable to the user.
Digital currency is a useful way to keep your money out of the traditional banking system only as long as you can store it without a constantly fluctuating price and the threat of losing significant value. With Offshore Storage, you get all the privacy of cutting edge digital currency with a guarantee on the fiat value. This makes Offshore Storage ideal for storing large amounts of money out of the traditional system that you don’t want exposed to digital currency volatility.
How?
Haven uses a system called ‘mint and burn’ to maintain fiat value relationship. In practice this works as follows.
Bob decides he wants to put 200 of his Haven into offshore storage.
The offshore smart contract determines the current market value of that Haven (in USD for now) based on a weighted average of volume across supported exchanges.
If the current value is $1 USD then the contract will record a value of $200 USD worth of Haven at Bob’s request. The 200 Haven that was sent is then burned and the total money supply decreases. If the price of Haven then moves to $2 USD and Bob decides to access his Offshore Storage, he will be returned 100 Haven (100 * $2 = $200 USD as per original value).
If the opposite occurs and the price of Haven halves to $0.50 then 400 coins will be minted and sent to Bob.
At first, the minting of new coins draws you to the conclusion that the value of the coin would decrease as the total money supply has increased. In practice, this operates a little different.
This ’mint and burn’ method draws on the quantity theory of money described in monetary economics in order to avoid inflation and changes in currency valuation based on the movements in the total supply.
The theory states that MV = PT where:
M = Money supply
V = Velocity of money
P = Average price level
T = Volume of transactions
An increase in the money supply should, with a constant velocity and volume of transactions (assumptions of the economic model), cause an increase in the price level (inflation). The problem with this is that the money supply of Haven will always be unknown. Although there are 18.4 million coins (before tail emission) that will be mined, the ’mint and burn’ lets the money supply fluctuate freely. Velocity of money is also cryptographically unfeasible to determine as the Haven blockchain does not reveal the amount of Haven transferred nor the wallet addresses they are transferred to.
For this reason, the currency is unable to be valued based on total supply.
Offshore Storage contracts will be implemented once the network reaches a mature stage with enough exchange support to allow redundancy and accuracy of prices. The current focus is on growth, stability, privacy and usability for everyday transactions with an easy to use mobile wallet app that anyone can use without prior knowledge of crypto.
Offshore Storage Use Cases
- Point of sales systems where goods can be bought with Haven and shop keepers can immediately lock the fiat value in to protect from price fluctuations. This has the added benefit of keeping the shopkeepers business and income completely hidden on the blockchain as neither his wallet address or amounts are revealed.
- Storing large amount of money outside of the traditional banking system. Privacy focused cryptos are perfect for this but without a reliable way to maintain value through fluctuations the process of holding could be costly. Sending Haven offshore quite literally, makes money disappear until you want it back at which point the value remains intact.
Supply & Emission
Total supply: 18,400,000 coins before tail emission and offshore storage.
Coin symbol: XHV
Hash algorithm: CryptoNight (Proof-Of-Work)
Block time: 120 seconds
Links
Website: http://havenprotocol.com/
Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2989487.0
Discord: https://discord.gg/vWQ2GZX
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HavenProtocol
