What Is Safex Blockchain?

Safex Blockchain is a cryptocurrency protocol designed to facilitate eCommerce. Learn about the basics of Safex Blockchain and what makes it different from Bitcoin and Monero.

What Is Safex Blockchain?

Safex Blockchain is a cryptocurrency protocol specifically designed to facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of goods or services worldwide. Additionally, it contains technical features that allow transactions to be conducted with a degree of privacy.

If you're new to cryptocurrency in general, we may be getting ahead of ourselves. Let's take a step back and provide some additional information for those who would like to understand better exactly what and WHY such an ecosystem is essential.

Bitcoin Blockchain

The first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was created in 2008. To understand the basics of what a blockchain is and why it's important, Nik Custodio's fantastic Explain Bitcoin Like I'm Five will give the reader a solid understanding of the fundamental principles. He explained how we can assuredly use digital currency as a medium of exchange and why a distributed ledger is an essential element in the security of such a network.

While groundbreaking, Bitcoin has some drawbacks and limitations. Most significantly, once you share your Bitcoin address with someone, they can forever see the amount of Bitcoin you hold in that address. They can also see every transaction you've ever made with this address.

At a blockchain level, Bitcoin is unable to dynamically increase its block size to allow for more transactional throughput in each block of the ledger. For a cryptocurrency rising in popularity and use, it's akin to a teenager having an adolescent growth spurt but not buying more oversized clothes - things can get ugly.

Like many inventions (e.g. cars), the first iteration of an invention doesn't contain the complete set of features that comes with subsequent development. As history shows, cars have constantly been evolving since German inventor Karl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen in 1886. Improvements to speed, handling, safety, comfort, passenger capacity, and various other technologies and driver aids have evolved the original Benz into the modern passenger car we see on the roads today. On a shorter timescale, the same can be seen in blockchain evolution and development.

Benz Patent-Motorwagen vs. Lamborgini
Benz Patent-Motorwagen vs. Lamborghini

Monero Blockchain

Released in 2014, Monero is another cryptocurrency with privacy-focused features that overcomes some of bitcoin's perceived deficiencies and allows users to keep their wallet balances private. In contrast to Bitcoin's public ledger technology, Monero uses an obfuscated ledger, meaning transactions cannot be traced from one wallet address to the next and address balances are not openly visible for everyone. Like Bitcoin, Monero is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrency with no specific application purposes - it is simply a digital currency that can be used as a medium of exchange or store of value.

Monero is an open-source protocol based on the CryptoNote application layer. Being open-source, other projects can take the Monero code and fork it into their own project, then modify and improve upon it to suit their particular requirements.

Safex Blockchain

Safex Blockchain is a fork of Monero, which means that Safex is also a privacy blockchain. Upon this fork, the development community around the Safex project has taken the CryptoNote whitepaper and evaluated a method of embedding advanced systems into the blockchain. Unlike Monero, Safex has been developed into a suite of advanced, purpose-built e-commerce functions specifically designed to facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services.

Safex Blockchain

Safex is a project built upon innovations at technical and organizational levels. While Safex exists as a fork of Monero, it excludes Bulletproofs and RingCTs (as used in Monero) and only employs one-time addresses and ring signatures for transactions. The network updates and interfaces that Monero has built upon are consistently evaluated and included in the Safexcore repository. Beside the regular send and receive functionality in the Monero network, on Safex Blockchain it is possible to create merchant accounts, create product listings, buy products, rate purchases and earn a revenue share of the network's total sales activity.

Safex uses two cryptocurrencies: Safex Cash and Safex Token. We explained the basics about these two cryptocurrencies - check them out on previously given links. If you read the basics, you will understand that Safex Cash is a mineable cryptocurrency in the Proof-of-Work system. Safex Cash is being mined using the RandomSFX mining algorithm, which means CPUs (as found in home PCs) are the ones most suitable for mining. Right now, the reward is 270 Safex Cash per block, and soon that number will increase to 340.

What is unique about Safex Cash is its distribution curve (the emission rate of the coins), called the S distribution curve. To find out more, as well as a comparison with distribution curves of Bitcoin, Monero, and Litecoin - you can read about it here. Briefly explained, this distribution curve is inspired by the adoption-of-innovations curve. By studying how technology is being adopted, Safex developers decided to implement this knowledge in the emission rate of the Safex currency base. Therefore, they decided how much Safex Cash will be mined in the beginning, at later stages and, finally, when the tail emission begins. Thanks to Daniel Dabek and Ivana Todorovic, we expect half of the people will adopt the innovation ~2025 and the majority of its total market share will be reached by ~2029.

If you want to support Safex Blockchain, you can:

We have explained the basics of Safex Blockchain, above, and gave a basic comparison to Bitcoin and Monero, but we still haven't said WHY Safex Blockchain is a fundamental improvement.

Safex Blockchain is the engine for the new generation of eCommerce. The purpose of the existing Safex Blockchain is to be a safe and reliable eCommerce protocol with the benefit of personal privacy measures. That's why Safex Blockchain exists. To give a unique solution, private transactions, and an easy to use application with built-in features needed for crypto-commerce. This way, eCommerce with cryptocurrency can be done on the core protocol level, instead of just using it as a payment method on top of today's established eCommerce solutions.