Centrality is a blockchain marketplace for decentralized applications (dApps). It’s the product of a New Zealand-based blockchain venture studio made up of a team of 70+ developers who have worked for leading tech companies, such as Baidu, Alibaba, Google, XERO, Hyperledger, IOTA, and Consensys.
The company’s goal is to build an application marketplace that gives users complete control over their data and allows small companies to succeed by working together, thus creating a more equal and fair world for all users. Centrality also helps developers to build applications on top of the platform. It circumvents the traditional startup model by:
– Providing a place to incubate dApps that doesn’t have the cost or performance constraints associated with public blockchains.
– Providing boilerplate services to get applications up and running with minimal effort. Developers can also create modules to add to the platform’s service catalog.
– Providing a marketplace for different applications as well as access to a user pool, content pool, data pool, and merchant pool. Applications with different use cases can work together to acquire users, content, data, and merchant.
– Enabling dApps to be ICO-ready with integrated assessment and advisory investment banking support services. Centrality will receive an allocation of any tokens issued by a dApp it powers in exchange for delivering the core technology and ecosystem.
– Enabling a machine learning framework that can help to connect users in one application to a relevant experience in another one in real time to better increase engagement.
Providing access to post-ICO services such as performance monitoring, exchange listing, and ongoing reporting.
Centrality already has a growing ecosystem of applications that have established users and are reportedly generating revenue.
CENNZ Pricing, Market Cap and Volume
The available supply of CENNZ is capped at 1.2. billion tokens. It was launched in a token generation event (TGE) that ran from January 15 to February, 15, 2018. The TGE reportedly raised $80 million USD. The proceeds will be used to finance the development and maintenance of Centrality and associated services.
Only 70% (840 million) of the available supply was put up for sale in the TGE. Of the remaining amount, 20% (240 million) will be used to buy intellectual property and expand the network, 5% (60 million) is held by the developers, and 5% (60 million) is in a reserve fund.
The value of one CENNZ token has hovered between $0.2 USD and $0.4 USD since its launch. Its market capitalization was first listed at ~$250 million USD, and other than the occasional dip or spike, it has more or less remained constant.
How Centrality Works
Centrality runs a hybrid consortium chain based on Ethereum with several improvements for better performance and security. The design will theoretically prevent stress on the public network due to large transaction volumes, reduce latency and congestion, and avoid network fees when creating transactions.
Centrality is meant to act as the technological “foundation” for dApps. Applications that join the marketplace are plugged directly into the foundation. Think of the platform as a large LEGO base plate and its applications as stack of smaller LEGO bricks.
Users can transition between and transact with different applications developed using the Centrality SDK without having to download or install another application, sign-in, or create a profile. When a user signs up to one application, they are instantly able to opt-in to all applications on the platform.
Centrality uses a range of smart contracts to accomplish its goals, including contracts for paying merchants, exchanging tokens, managing identity, rewarding token holders, sharing revenue, and on-boarding users. All the smart contracts will be available to the public for review.
Centrality also provides developers with a robust library of components to use as building blocks. These include:
Hybrid Wallet – Centrality has developed a hybrid wallet that handles cryptocurrency and fiat currency payments. This wallet can work inside dApps or traditional platform applications, allowing businesses to easily move their users to blockchain-enabled platforms.
Login with Blockchain – This component enables users to use their blockchain profile to move seamlessly between dApps and carry their profile data to new interactions. A user’s unique Ethereum address will be their ID throughout the ecosystem. Their profile will be created and securely stored on-chain using a smart contract.
Blockchain Everywhere Microservices – A module that provides a mechanism for secure communication and allows services to interact with, store and retrieve data from the chain. Developers can use it to build complex services that can transparently interact with pure blockchain components.
Content, Inventory Management and Creation – A module for the creation, management, and publishing of content and inventory blocks. Attributes can be assigned to these blocks and then be combined to create a wide range of product types.
Smart Contract Generator – In order for dApps to trust each other in the marketplace, Centrality allows applications to create commercial relationships with each other using smart contracts. A range of template contracts will be available on the platform. Developers can also design and add new contracts to the marketplace.
Token Factory – Centrality encourages all applications that join the ecosystem to create a native token in order to facilitate the graduation from the Centrality consortium chain into a public chain application. The tokens created will use the ERC20 standard and support interactions with existing Ethereum infrastructure.
Big Data and Machine Learning Platform – Centrality’s big data engine enables applications to provide data analysis, reporting, machine learning and artificial intelligence services to consenting users.
API and SDK – To enable uses to instantly move between applications without having to visit the app store, Centrality provides developers with an API and SDK for creating applications that can interact across the marketplace.
App Connector Engine – This module creates a flow between connected dApps. Developers can specify which applications they want to have a connection with when they use the Centrality SDK.
How Centrality Groups Applications
Applications built on Centrality are grouped into one of ten categories or “scenes.” The goal is to get users to interact with at least one application in each scene and create their own group of dApp experiences. The scenes are: transport, home, travel, work, food, fitness, health, events, export trade, and education.
Applications in different scenes can help each other grow by connecting users to relevant services across the ecosystem. This also enables them to lower their costs of scaling by sharing their content, user base, merchants, and services.
Let’s use two Centrality applications to illustrate how this will work: Belong is a platform that helps employers to give non-salary perks to employees, and UShare is a multi-modal decentralized ride-hailing application.
If a company uses Belong to give an employee a discounted ticket to an event as a reward, Belong can connect that employee with UShare to offer them a ride to the event. When the user clicks on the option to use UShare, the UShare app is installed on the fly and populated with the user’s profile, wallet, and meta data from their Belong profile. The user can now book a ride without having to install UShare from the app store, create a profile, add payment details, or insert the address of their destination.
Centrality vs. Other Blockchain Platforms
Centrality isn’t the only venture studio attempting to create a dApp ecosystem. Consensys is attempting to accomplish similar goals. Centrality is even sometimes referred to as “Consensys down under” because of its similarities to the project.
The main distinguishing factor between the two is that Centrality’s main focus is mass consumer use cases and increasing the general population’s access to the blockchain. The developers want to make everyday processes (like booking a flight, taking public transport, etc.) completely decentralized, and that’s what sets it apart from its competitors.
CENNZ Tokens
Centrality has a utility token called CENNZ that connects all dApps and users on the network, and provides access to the platform’s software. CENNZ is implemented on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC20 token. It can be used anywhere in the Centrality marketplace.
CENNZ tokens are not mineable. They are minted in a smart contract. When an approved buyer sends ETH to the token smart contract, the correct number of CENNZ is automatically sent to their specified wallet address. The tokens entitle holders to the three primary rights:
1. The right to access the platform.
2. The right to deploy dApps on the platform and access related services, including services provided by other applications.
3. The opportunity to receive an airdrop of native tokens issued by dApp developers (called “Scene Tokens”).
Developers must use CENNZ to buy modules for developing their applications and create connections to users, data, content, merchants, and tokens in the ecosystem. CENNZ can also be used to purchase physical goods in the real world from merchants who are connected to the CENTRAPAY platform via traditional point-of-sales systems or web checkouts.
Buying, Storing and Selling CENNZ Tokens
CENNZ can be acquired on Cryptopia and Centrality’s distributed token trading platform, SingularX. The developers claim that a number of top tier exchanges have expressed interest in listing CENNZ, but their current primary objective is to grow the platform. Any value arising from the secondary market is a byproduct of expected platform growth, but it is not the focus of the company.
CENNZ is an ERC20 token, which means it can be stored in any wallet that is complaint with that standard, including MyEtherWallet (MEW), Parity, Mist, MetaMask, and Jaxx. Hardware wallets like Trezor or Ledger should also work.
Liquidity of Centrality
Centrality appears to have a sound business model, at least on the surface. Unlike many blockchain projects that sell tokens before they’ve built anything useful, it already has a portfolio of 20+ applications. The company claims to have partnered with large corporate clients in a range of industries, including airlines, banks, global payment providers, fast food chains, insurance companies, governments, and logistics and shipping companies.
Centrality has also partnered with leading blockchain companies like Blockhaus AG and SingularDTV. On top of all that, the company reportedly received a non-refundable research grant from the government of New Zealand of up to $15 million over three years.
Despite all these positives, CENNZ has very poor market liquidity for a token in the top 100 cryptocurrencies. It can only be traded on two exchanges, one of which is its own exchange platform, and the developers don’t seem to be in a hurry to get CENNZ listed on any of the more popular exchanges. It’s a project worth keeping an eye on, but invest with a hefty dose of caution.
