Is Hathor Network Future Crypto Industry?
What is Hathor Network?
Firstly,Hathor is a proof-of-work based protocol that deploys DAG and blockchain data structures within an interoperable environment. The project was initiated in 2018 by a team of highly skilled developers, and its mainnet was launched in January 2020.
Hathor is one of the few blockchain protocols that is based on heavy scientific and academic research. Its research paper was written by the CTO Marcelo Brogliato and published as part of his PhD thesis.
Hathor has described itself as the ‘’WordPress of blockchain’’ and provides a simplified blockchain network where everyone can build solutions. Its one-stop solution means that developers can build tokens and decentralized applications without the requirements of learning specific programming languages or frameworks like Solidity, Substrate and Rust.
Developers can also create smart contracts within their network via open APIs in multiple programming languages and familiar coding tools. Hathor also offers a developer-friendly headless wallet that is useful for complex applications.
Hathor provides fewer entry barriers for end-users, and anyone can mint custom tokens within a few minutes using its mobile or desktop wallet. All that is required is to lock 1 HTR token for every 100 units of a custom token created.
Non-fungible tokens have been a growing trend in the crypto world due to their application in digital art, sports, and entertainment. Users can mint NFTs within the Hathor desktop wallet without any technical knowledge. NFTs minting only costs 0.02 HTRs to be created, and users can transfer them within the Hathor blockchain without extra transaction fees.
Merged Mining concept
Hathor is one of the few blockchain protocols that use the concept of Merged mining. Merged mining enables the mining of more than one cryptocurrency without requiring additional proof-of-work effort.
Proof-of-work is an energy-consuming algorithm but provides apparent benefits in security and decentralization. Merged mining enables miners to increase their investment at reduced costs since they don’t have to buy extra hardware to mine additional cryptocurrencies.
Miners can mine Hathor tokens HTR on F2Pool and Poolin, two of the most popular mining pools on the bitcoin network. Also, the current HTR mining rewards will be halved from Jan 5, 2022, from 32 to 16 tokens per block.
Nano Contracts
Hathor is to provide plug-and-play blockchain solutions and be the first choice for builders. What does that mean? And who are the builders? To ensure that we’re all on the same page, let’s start by explaining the concept of Nano Contracts.
Nano Contracts are simplified smart contracts that won’t require any coding knowledge to set up in their simplest form. A simple user interface in the wallet will enable anyone to configure a contract to add logic and a use case to their token. This can all be done in minutes.
There will be a set of pre-made Nano Contract blueprints that anyone can configure. A Nano Contract is an instance of a blueprint, like an object is an instance of a class in object-oriented programming languages.
Software often comes with templates for common types of documents, presentations, or tasks, and Nano Contracts are no different. These blueprints will be like templates for Nano Contracts, and using them will be as simple as selecting a blueprint and configuring the variables for your contract. There will be a selection of blueprints available catered toward different use cases.
We are also considering letting developers write their own blueprints in Python. This means a more accessible entrance for established non-blockchain developers who won’t have to learn any new blockchain-specific languages. Creating your own blueprints will allow for more flexibility and complex custom logic when the pre-made templates don’t entirely cover the needs of your specific use case.
Like custom tokens on Hathor, Nano Contracts will be native, built into the protocol itself. Having native tokens and contracts means you get the same level of security for all assets issued on the network, mitigating the risk of bugs and security issues that we often see with custom development on other platforms.
Every Nano Contract on the network will have been verified, and this approach will eliminate rugs and exploits caused by contract vulnerabilities, whether intentional by the developer or not. In addition, by only allowing verified contracts, we remove the possibility of any ill-intentioned developers replacing secure and audited contracts with malicious ones.
We have seen this happen with projects on other platforms. In a successful hack on Ethereum, the project developers swapped the safe contract — which had passed a security audit — with a malicious one where they had snuck in a call function, allowing them to withdraw all funds. That was just one of many examples of how smart contract audits often aren’t enough (for the record, in this case, the vulnerability was flagged in the audit, but the developers were still able to pull the rug).
The level of transparency and pre-configured, native functionality we aim for leaves much less room for exploits and developer blunders, creating a safer, more user-friendly ecosystem for all participants.
