Dero (DERO) Review & Analysis – DERO Token Review

Dero

The World’s Fastest Anonymous Blockchain.

Network Token

Dero is the first crypto project to combine a Proof of Work blockchain with a DAG block structure and wholly anonymous transactions. The fully distributed ledger processes transactions with a twelve-second average block time and is secure against majority hashrate attacks.

Dero will be the first CryptoNote blockchain to have smart contracts on its native chain without any extra layers or secondary blockchains.

Fast Transactions – DERO network has a block time of 12 seconds. This means DERO travels 50x faster than Bitcoin.
Tech Leader – DERO is the industry leader with innovation and features DeroDAG technology, Bulletproofs and a TLS encrypted network.
Easy To Use – DERO officially supports almost all OS Windows/Mac/Linux/Unix/BSD/Solaris, even Android/IOS.

“Although the Bitcoin network is globally well established, it suffers from slow transaction times and does not support smart contracts. The Ethereum network allows for smart contract deployment, but the transactions and smart contract details are visible to everyone, which greatly reduces the number of possible applications, as many companies and individuals want to keep their financial transaction and contract details private. The Dero project is currently developing an entirely new blockchain technology which will be the first to support private smart contracts combined with industry-leading transaction throughput.”

Positives

Before we get into some of the actual Positives of the Dero Project and the DERO coin itself, we have to mention the timeline of events for this project. If we had a list of projects that have flown under the radar this year, Dero would be listed way up there. Taking a look at their Roadmap we can see plenty of progress has been made since December/January when they launched. What is surprising is just how little attention this project has gotten until just recently, considering the technical advantages Dero has over competitors with significantly higher valuations. The developers behind this project have show that they aren’t about to hype up the project, announce announcements ahead of time or promise strict deadlines/milestones just to keep investors happy. We also need to mention the extremely dedicated Community that Dero has behind it, they’re one of the most engaging communities that we’ve come across. Awesome!
Dero is an absolute heavyweight when it comes to the tech behind the project. Dero not only supports the old-school proof-of-work consensus method but brings along with it the ability to privatize Smart Contracts, all over a DAG Blockchain which allows for 12 second blocktimes and 2-minute confirmation times right now with the possibility to scale to thousands of transactions per second. Dero has taken the best bits from projects like Ethereum and Monero to effectively create the best of both worlds. It’s still relatively early days for the project and we’re yet to see how the network operates under significant load but from our review it looks technically impressive on all fronts. We had a quick play around with the GUI Wallet and were super impressed by just how fast we were able to send DERO from one address to another.
The future of Dero is very exciting. We’ve seen how the network handles Transactions first hand and we’re impressed. The Developers hope to have Private Smart Contracts live and ready to go on the Mainnet by the end of December 2018. Private Smart Contracts are where we think Dero will really shine. Enigma (ENG) is doing Privatized Smart Contracts but if you check out their Roadmap, they’re still quite a while away from actually implementing this. We get the feeling that Dero is going to be securing a lot more exchange listings in the fourth quarter of 2018 as their marketing efforts continue which is always great for not only investors but for the networks health as more popular exchanges provide exposure. We’d love to see a more detailed Roadmap Update by the Team but no doubt that’s just around the corner.
Not too much more to say honestly! We’ve all heard about Privacy Coins, we’ve all heard about DAGs and we’ve all heard about Smart Contracts. Dero is simply taking what makes those technologies great and combining them which is what a lot of people have been waiting for. With so many coins claiming to be “the best” at “A” and failing miserably at “B”, we’ve seen projects rise and fall over time due to these shortcomings. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Dero over the next 6-12 months as they continue to push forward.
As always, we like to take a step back and look at projects from a purely investment based perspective. DERO has shot up in value over the past week or two and it’s well deserved (check the tech). Now sitting at a $8.5m Market Cap (October 2018, this will not age well), DERO still has a huge amount of growth potential. Other projects working in the Privacy/Smart Contract boast valuations of anywhere from $10m-$1.7b market caps, so there’s plenty of room to grow and based off of what we’ve seen so far, an $8.5 Market Cap is very low. We’re close to DERO’s All-Time-High valuation of $10m which was achieved in May 2018, the next time the market runs up like it did in April/May, DERO will have already had a head-start. Short term (< 3 Months) We’d like to see DERO sitting anywhere from $1.50 to $5, possible up around $10 if another Roadmap update is brought out. Mid Term (6 – 12 Months) we’d like to see DERO at a stable $10 to $20. Based on other projects in this space we feel that’d be pretty respectable, especially if the market turns around. Anywhere passed 12 months would be impossible to accurately speculate on but we’d be confident on a $50+ DERO in 1+ years. (These speculations are not to be mistaken for financial advice)

Concerns

Our main concern is not with the Dero project itself but more within the space that they’re operating in. “Privacy Coins” & “Private Transactions/Contracts” are keywords that are thrown around a lot by countless projects and in the Cryptocurrency space, investors eat these up and buy whatever the next most private, most untraceable coin is. At the end of the day these coins need to be adopted on a decent scale for them to have any long term success, otherwise they more often than not gain a “cult hit” status and are used by a dedicated group of people rather than a wider audience. Privacy coins aren’t what mainstream companies/industries are looking for, what they ARE looking for is a way to implement Smart Contracts and in some industries, Private Smart Contracts. There ARE competitors playing in this space but there is more than enough room for several projects to thrive. Privacy Coins have gotten a dirty name over the past few years due to their use by criminals and organised crime so we’d like to see Private Smart Contracts be Deros’ main selling point as this is what’s going to legitimize the project and get it out of that one category. As long as Dero can progress with their Roadmap, get their name out there and network effectively there shouldn’t be any issues. This is by no means a concern for the Dero Project itself but rather an outside perspective on the space they’re operating in.
The team is suitably anonymous seeing as Dero is fully committed to privacy. Some investors may be put off by the lack of team details (No LinkedIns, Crunchbases, etc) but investors should know that Dero never held an ICO or a token sale, there was a pre-mine lockup for the developers but everything else is being mined through nothing but good old hard proof-of-work.The Team is always readily available to answer questions so transparency isn’t an issue which is the main thing. Their Github is always kept pretty open and active so you can check the development progress yourself. We’ve mentioned above the importance of getting Dero in front of a bigger audience and having anonymous developers may become an unnecessary hurdle at some point, but we’ll see.
No other real concerns here. The Pre-Mine for DERO was 10% of the Total Supply and we’ve noticed some investors are a bit shaky on the DERO Team having this amount of DERO locked away, but considering there was no ICO, it’s not a huge deal. After all, the developers need to have an incentive to work on the project and nobody should have to work for free. The website is so smooth and nicely branded along with the fantastic GUI wallet so lets hope the explorer gets some much needed love sometime soon. Apart from those minor comments, Deros Positives far outweighs the concerns we’ve pointed out here.