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The vast majority of crypto projects today, from premine and instamine funding models, to startup funding ICOs, follow examples set by previous market entrants. Upfront payouts, uncertain valuations due to volume often being uncapped and the looming problem of requiring donations to advance the state of the project, collectively have made investors leery about potentially signing on to what may be a flash-in-the-pan "pump and dump". The lack of self-funding, combined with ongoing costs, is a particular concern to many ICO investors. Bitcoin (Crypto: BTC) is a classic example of developers having to pay it forward in order for the project to prosper. This landscape makes projects like self-funding SmartCash (Crypto: SMART), which did *not* ICO and only started trading in July of 2017, of particular interest to crypto enthusiasts.

Checking Every Box on the Cryptohead Wish List

A self-funded, community-driven and privacy-focused digital currency targeting the key vectors which make it look like crypto gold to those conversant with the space, SmartCash emphasizes merchant adoption, ease of use and the kind of decentralized architecture needed to ensure it remains a robust player for the long run.

Privacy-driven fungibility is vital to the health of a decentralized network, and it is a core value for SmartCash. This is an increasingly important issue as we see exchanges and merchants now actively discriminating against BTC based on the owner or history of certain coins, especially if the bitcoins were stolen in a highly publicized event, or mapped to darknet transactions. SmartCash initially used the zerocoin protocol to allow users to "burn" (renew) old coins in exchange for new ones and was very upfront with the community when vulnerabilities in that protocol were detected, promptly redrawing the roadmap towards a BIP47 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 47) based privacy protocol.

Community First Means Momentum

Currently at approximately 27.3 percent of the maximum supply of 5 billion in play, with about 766 million in circulation, community-centric SmartCash is characterized by a great deal of attention having been paid to incentivizing community members to participate and drive the growth, as well as advance the project. SmartCash employs a crowd-sourced governance model via the SmartHive Governance Portal, allowing SmartCash holders to propose and vote on which projects get funded by the now roughly $164 million community hive budget. Community members can open a new proposal with just 100 SMART and are encouraged to submit pre-proposal threads on the SmartCash Community Forum in order to facilitate the process of approval, as well as proposal refinement(s) from the community.

The unique approach of awarding some 70 percent of block rewards to the SmartHive and Hive Structuring Teams is a real game-changer that sets SmartCash apart from other cryptos and puts a solid foundation under the project's future development trajectory. This is a radical divergence from the industry standard of having core development teams, which SmartCash looks at as a development methodology ultimately leading to both inefficiency and corruption.

Self-Funding Essential to Project Longevity

Not only does this unique approach of heavily incentivizing community-driven development resolve the problem other coins are facing when it comes to funding development via donations or capital injection (a Faustian bargain that can lead to developers having to do whatever "the money guys" say), it supercharges the community projects part of the equation. Let's face it, one of the real sustaining forces for cryptocurrencies today is community engagement and organic growth through empowered users. Especially as the coin market becomes more and more crowded. Empowered users who will not only add new value to the project as time goes on, but will engage new people and bring them into the fold, is one of SmartCash's strongest selling points to the crypto enthusiast. A decentralized governance structure, backed by funding, is seen by many in the space as delivering on the dream of Satoshi. Furthermore, SmartCash features innovative project factors such as the dividend-like SmartRewards program, which also acts as a price stabilization mechanism, rewarding wallets with addresses that hold 1,000 or more SmartCash on a monthly basis.

A Decentralized Transaction Network

Another interesting feature of the SmartCash project is the recently announced SmartNode program designed to speed up and further decentralize the already lightning-fast transaction envelope of this project, which currently boasts 55 second block reward times according to one of the core developers. SmartNodes incentive the community to make the network more robust by paying hosts 10 percent of the block reward on every block for hosting dedicated, always-on servers that run a SmartCash wallet with 10,000 SMART collateral. Contrast the InstantPay instant transactions possible via such a network, enabled by numerous SmartNodes, with the 10-plus minutes often required to confirm a BTC transaction and it becomes readily apparent why SmartCash could rapidly become the global cryptocurrency merchants turn to for covering their transaction layer. SmartCash has already established a substantial list of participating merchants and is well on its way via community outreach to getting more merchants signed on using the popular CoinPayments website.

Enlightened Governance

There is a lot about the SmartCash project for cryptoheads to be excited about, especially long term. Because SmartCash's governance system esteems stakeholders who have more skin in the game, directly benefitting the biggest community coin holders and supporters with the power to more significantly impact its evolution, there is an immediate and tangible advantage to accruing a larger and larger position. Also, because anyone who owns even a small quantity of SmartCash still has a voice, the project effectively fuses together the advantages of both egalitarianism and participatory meritocracy. This hybridization of two seemingly antithetical governance principles speaks to the very heart of the cypherpunk culture from which crypto blossomed and does so in a language based on privacy and decentralization, in the spirit of cooperating to advance the interests of all who are involved in the project.

SmartCard Ease of Use

SmartCash was widely discussed at this year's Anarchapulco conference and popular YouTuber, Omar Bham (Crypt0), took some time to hang out with two of the top developers and demo the new SmartCard, which will not rely on a traditional payment provider's network. SmartCard functionality will include exchanges for converting to local currency on the merchant side and has been developed to be dependency free, allowing users to setup a pin, transfer from any other wallet and simply print out a QR code graphic or use the card number at the point of sale.

While this may not seem like a big deal at first blush, it is a revolutionarily simple alternative to the complex transaction processes currently required for transacting in many other cryptocurrencies. The SmartCard's usability-focused setup is a hallmark of the user-friendliness objectives that are core to the SmartCash project and such an emphasis on ease of use speaks volumes about where the project is headed, as well as how intuitive functionality will continue to occupy center stage moving forward.

Crypto, Evolved

Functionality and accessibility are important adoption drivers for SmartCash, especially with merchants. An extremely rigorous development schedule and enticing rewards for developer participation grant the project a capacity for maintaining its rapid evolutionary lifecycle. This is already evident from the track record of this novel new coin, which has progressed by leaps and bounds since its debut in 2017.

If you would like to learn more about SmartCash please visit https://smartcash.cc/