SAN FRANCISCO—Uber’s co-founder and chairman, Garrett Camp, has created his own cryptocurrency.
Called Eco to refer to the multiple facets of a monetary system – like economics, ecosystem and e-commerce – the project is currently in the design stage with limited programming complete, and Camp is looking for more field experts, scientists, and researchers to get involved in his initiative. He expects to initiate the test-net later this year, Investopedia reported.
The virtual currency system will be developed and operated by a new non-profit organization, the Eco Foundation. Camp, along with his partners at his startup accelerator Expa, plans to fund the Eco project with $10 million during the initial phase, Investopedia reported.
“Eco aims to fix issues that are pain points for the existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Investopedia stated. “While existing virtual currency public ledgers operate on a network of anonymous miners, Eco's underlying blockchain ledger will run on ‘verified nodes,’ thereby allowing more reliability to the monetary ecosystem. It will enable a middle path between the completely centralized currency system—like the present-day banking network—and the completely decentralized cryptocurrency system, like the Bitcoins.”
These verified nodes will be run in partnership with various universities and research institutes across the globe. Though there will be loss of anonymity, the gains achieved in terms of safety and reliability will compensate for it, Investopedia stated.
“The mining process of Eco is also different, paving way for a significant reduction in energy consumption. The present day virtual currency mining process allocates work and incentivizes miners in proportion to their computing power, which leads to the miners trying to outbid each other with more energy consumption,” Investopedia noted.