You may know about Skeincoin (SKC) or you may not. Either way, you will in the know by the end of the article, and you will be glad of it! We’re all busy people so let’s cut to the chase! From transaction costs of <$0.0001, to its ability of processing 10,000 transactions per second (with lightning) there are many reasons one may be interested in Skeincoin, however these are just two of many reasons why Skeincoin is a true hidden gem.
Today I want to discuss a brief history of the Skeincoin team and how it got to where it is today. It is important people understand this information as it is excellent evidence that the team is dedicated, hardworking and willing to push through the hard times to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
November-December 2013
Skeincoin was first created in in the latter part of 2013 by Red Kendra (1), with the ANN (announcement) for the project being posted on Bitcointalk on November 1st of that year (2). The announcement was initially met with much interest on the forum. The project had no premine, which allowed equal access and opportunity to all who wanted to mine Skeincoin. Whilst there were never problems with the Skeincoin team or the technology associated, there were issues in the cryptocurrency space at this time which would ultimately be enough to destabilise this small, yet ambitious project.
January 2014
Between the original Bitcointalk announcement in November 2013, the Skeincoin team worked in the background to try and secure exchange listings, which quickly began proving difficult. It was not until the 8th January 2014 when it was announced that Skeincoin was listed on Openex, its first exchange.
Much to the disappointment of the Skeincoin community at the time, the team was struck with what would be their first wave of bad luck. Less than one week of Skeincoin being listed, Openex was hacked. Bitcoin wallets on the exchange were affected, causing many users to lose bitcoin stored on the exchange (3). It was publicised that any stolen bitcoin was recovered but following this unfortunate news, trust towards Openex in the Skeincoin community began to dwindle very quickly. There was a rebound of pressure on the Skeincoin team to find a new exchange not only to increase liquidity, but to diversify against further threats to users’ security when trading Skeincoin.
Community members began community votes for other exchanges, however the main target was Cryptsy, a popular exchange at the time, which is now no longer in existence. However, Skeincoin would never be listed here despite community efforts.
A Skeincoin community WordPress was established by members of the Skeincoin community in early January. It aimed to provide relevant Skeincoin information and tutorials. Sadly, due to other commitments from the creator and with the apparent demise of the project, the WordPress was not updated after 7th March 2014 (4).
By 25th of January, it appeared that Skeincoin would be able to break free from the barriers it faced to effective trading when it was listed on Freshmarket. However, this taste of freedom was short lived. In an attempt to secure itself against further hacks, Openex announced it would be in maintenance for 3 weeks. Still a relatively unknown project, and back to trading on just one active exchange, a negative sentiment began to creep into the Skeincoin community. By February 2nd there was almost no trades on the exchange. One Skeincoin miner was even close to obtaining 51% of the hash rate around this time. It was clear the project was in decline, yet by this stage many factors were out of the team’s hands.
February 2014
Openex resumed trading early on February 4th, but this was overshadowed by yet more bad fortune as on 5th February, Freshmarket was hacked also and announced its own shutdown as a result.
To make matters worse, as the Skeincoin project entered these new troubled waters, community frustrations in the Bitcoin talk thread regarding a lack of PR and promotion from the team became increasingly common. The coin was not being noticed, and the level of interest seemed to be at an all-time low.
In a last-ditch effort to revive the project and gain some order in the chaos, the core members of the team and community decided to form the Skeincoin foundation which was officially announced on 12th February. The aim for the foundation was to streamline ideas between a tight community and decide upon the correct direction of the Skeincoin project and which actions should be prioritised by having regular meetings to discuss such topics (5).
To make matters worse for cryptocurrency as a whole, it was during February 2014, when Mt. Gox, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world shut down and filed for bankruptcy (6).
On February 14th it was announced that Swisscex, another exchange, planned to list Skeincoin and the following day, Skeincoin was available for trade on Atomic Trade.
From this point, things began to look more positive for the Skeincoin project again. Work commenced on a website and community members began to design logos for the coin.
March 2014
On 5th March, it was announced that a new exchange called Bittrex (heard of that one?!) would be doing some community votes to list coins upon its launch. Skeincoin entered this vote but regretfully, did not make the cut. Interestingly, Bittrex is the only exchange to show any interest to the Skeincoin project that is still in existence besides Cryptopia where the project currently has the vast majority of its trading volume.
The Skeincoin team was even working on an android wallet in March, but unfortunately it was never listed on Google Play, and there is no obvious evidence to suggest what state it was developed to.
By mid-March a newfound push to get listed on more exchanges was undertaken. Requests were sent to all of the major exchanges at the time by members of the Bitcointalk thread, including C-Cex and Kraken. Unfortunately, applications for Skeincoin listing were declined or unsuccessful by all, with Kraken stating they did not have the resources at the current time to go through the lengthy process of listing a new coin.
In late March, Cryptobetfair.com, an online cryptocurrency gambling site, added Skeincoin and it is still listed there today (7).
August 2014
Just 8 months after the original announcement, interest in the coin was the lowest it has been since its inception. This decline was seen despite Red Kendra posting a wallet update in late July. Posts on the Bitcoin talk thread became few and far between and the community was unsure of the direction the project should go in. Without any real trading volume, and such low adoption, no use case could be achieved by Skeincoin. One user on the Bitcointalk thread at the time described this as a ‘chicken and the egg’ problem.
Due to the low hash power being achieved by Skeincoin at this time due to the lack of people mining the coin, it was proposed that the team should implement ‘merged mining’ with Myriad coin. If it were implemented it would have allowed miners to mine both coins simultaneously. The reason for this was that it would be mutually beneficial to both of the coins by combining hashing power making both coins’ networks more secure (8). Despite the benefits, there was no partnership with Myriad coin.
April-May 2015
By April 2014, the only exchange Skeincoin was listed on was Atomic Trade, which by this stage, had rebranded to Banx.io (now inactive). There was talk of a renewed effort to get Skeincoin listed on C-Cex, a more trustworthy exchange, to spread the trading risk as had been done before in 2014 with Openex and Freshmarket, but this fell through.
Early in May, the market cap of Skeincoin fell below $5000USD, yet, into July the project began to show signs of recovery and the market cap began to rise again. However, this ‘recovery’ was most likely due to the block halving which was approaching at the time. Miners rushed to mine as many blocks as possible before the halving.
In late May, Skeincoin was added to the vote to be listed on Cryptopia and by the end of the month it was listed on the exchange and remains there to this day (9).
October 2015
By this stage it looked like Skeincoin, the once determined yet now stagnant project, couldn’t take much more of a beating. However, this was not the end of Skeincoin’s setbacks. The skeincoin.org domain expired, meaning there was now no website, and despite still being active, the project looked dead to outsiders. From this point, posts in the Bitcointalk thread were often months apart.
June 2017
Despite the thread being almost silent for over a year, Red Kendra released an updated Skeincoin wallet which signalled the project was apparently not dead in June of 2017.
November 2017 – Present
Just a few days after Skeincoin’s third birthday, the current CEO Andrej Ashuev posted in the Bitcoin talk thread with a proposal for the coin. He had a new and ambitious vision for the coin with inspiration taken from the beginnings of DASH and how a rebranding and new team induced massive success.
After gaining support for his vision, Ashuev created his new team from the remaining original members plus new ones too to create a stronger and more well-rounded team. Interest in the project was now fully reignited and by this point and Skeincoin was now (and still is) tradable with BTC, LTC and DOGE pairings on Cryptopia.
The current logo for Skeincoin was created by Graphic Guru who is the current graphic designer for the project.
Upon inception of the new team’s takeover, discussions were undertaken about whether to rebrand and change the Skeincoin name. It was quickly decided to keep the name to symbolise the originality of the Skeincoin project in using the Skein hashing algorithm.
Zoran Ilišković ‘Graphic Guru’, the Chief Design Officer, and Ashuev bought the current domain Skeincoin.co and began to assemble ideas for the new and updated website. The confidence displayed by Ashuev about the Skeincoin reboot was infectious. Old wallets were synced proving the chain was still alive and the price of the coin began to increase. By 1st January this year (2018) the coin was up to date on CoinMarketCap and had a functioning Twitter account (10) and Telegram chat (11).
At this point, the new team, fronted by Ashuev, was in search for a developer and were trying to contact Skeincoin’s founder Red Kendra without initial success, yet by 21st January 2018 when he was reinstated as lead developer, the very same day the new was released, giving a fresh new look to an old coin (12).
A new Bitcointalk thread was also created on January 21st 2018 (13).
From February, Skeincoin has been listed two new exchanges: ICQBase Exchange and FreiExchange.
In March of this year, the Skeincoin foundation was announced and it is based in Belaruses’ High Technology Park in Minsk (12).
Most recently, on July 5th the SegWit status for the Skeincoin project was marked as “locked in”.
It is not always just the tech which makes a project successful. Skeincoin has proven it is not a flash in the pan and is here for the long term. Unlike other community reboots, the Skeincoin team is an amalgamation of new and old team members who are striving for success together. They do not and will not have problems with old developers trying to sabotage the new project similar to what happened with the PacCoin (14) and Peepcoin/DAPS (15) projects which both suffered significantly due to problems with the old developer. The Skeincoin team is friendly and approachable and after speaking with many of them personally, I am confident their project will succeed.
Sources
1. https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/skeincoin-skc/
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322828.0
3. https://www.ccn.com/openex-hacked/
4. https://skeincoin.wordpress.com/
5. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=461693.new#new
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox
9. https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Exchange/?market=SKC_BTC
10. https://twitter.com/Skeincoin
13. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2800098.0
14. https://www.reddit.com/r/paccoin/comments/7rzejx/newold_pac_saga/
Cameron McCloskey