What is Neutron ($NTRN) which will be listed on Binance?
Binance just announced that it would list Neutron ($NTRN) today. This article provides a quick overview of the project and discusses whether it is worth buying.
What is Neutron?
Neutron is a cross-chain smart contract platform which has integrated the Cosmos Hub's Replicated Security (RS) feature. Built on the Cosmos SDK and CosmWasm, Neutron facilitates interoperability across the 51+ interconnected blockchains in the Cosmos network. This framework is designed to offer developers a secure environment for developing smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
Key Features of Neutron
- Interchain Security: Neutron employs an Interchain Security feature, aligning with 175 validators and staking approximately 186M ATOM. This mechanism allows the Provider-Chain's security protocols to produce blocks for Consumer-Chains.
- Interchain Orientation: Neutron supports the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), Interchain Accounts (ICA), and Interchain Queries (ICQ). These are intended to enhance communication within the IBC framework and introduce operations such as interchain liquid staking and cross-chain collateralization.
- Permission-less Framework: Neutron operates on a permission-less foundation, meaning it's designed to allow anyone to deploy code and participate in the Interchain economy.
Recent Developments
In May 2023, following approval from the Cosmos Hub community, Neutron launched its mainnet. This platform was developed with the intention of simplifying the deployment of smart contracts and DApps on the Cosmos Hub.
Neutron and Binance
From a financial standpoint, Neutron recently secured funding through a round led by Binance Labs, resulting in a $10 million investment in the platform. Other participants in this funding round included CoinFund, Delphi Ventures, LongHash Ventures, Semantic Ventures, and Nomad Capital.
The funding was announced on June 21, 2023. In less than four months, Binance is now listing Neutron.
Neutron ($NTRN) Tokenomics
According to Neutron, the distribution of $NTRN is shown below.
The total supply of $NTRN is 1,000,000,000 tokens and inflation is set to zero, meaning no additional $NTRN tokens will be created beyond the 1 billion cap.
These tokens are distributed across four categories:
- Founders: Locked for one year, unlocked linearly over three years, with no voting power during the transfer restrictions.
- Early backers: Locked for one year, unlocked linearly over three years, with voting power during the transfer restrictions.
- Community: Tokens allocated to the community through Neutron’s airdrop and launch event. 3-month unlocking period and optional lock-up, with voting power during the transfer restrictions.
- Neutron DAO: Tokens held in the DAO’s Reserve and Treasury. Mostly liquid, they can only be used or transferred with the approval of the majority of voters.
As a result, the initial circulating supply is approximately 66%, with 12% in the hands of the community via an airdrop and 54% belonging to the team via treasury.
Utility
Transaction fees constitute Neutron’s main source of revenue. They originate from local transactions and cross-chain transactions through Neutron’s IBC fee model. Transaction fees are paid in NTRN or ATOM tokens.
- 25% of the fees are sent to the hub as payment for Replicated Security;
- The remaining 75% are either burnt (NTRN) or sent to the Reserve (ATOM, etc.).
However, it is unclear how much of the 75% will be burnt.
Concluding Thoughts
Neutron is a premature project with the majority of the token circulating supply in the hands of the team. While it appears to innovate within the Cosmos ecosystem, I will not invest in a project that has obvious errors on its official website.
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