Uber co-founder designs new cryptocurrency

There is going to be a new digital currency in the market, and it’s called Eco.

Eco was designed by Uber’s co-founder and chairman Garrett Camp and already has limited programming complete, according to an Investopedia report.

Camp, the article added, is searching for more field experts, scientists and researchers to get involved in his initiative, which he plans to “test-net” later this year.

The new cryptocurrency is called Eco because it refers “to the multiple facets of a monetary system – like economics, ecosystem and e-commerce.” It will be operated and developed by a new non-profit organization, Eco Foundation.

Camp and his partners at his startup accelerator Expa, is eyeing the expansion of Expa to fund the Eco project with $10 million during the first phase.

Open source platform

An overview of the project said Eco is “a global currency protocol, an open source platform that is not controlled by any single individual, organization or nation.”

It aims to make a network of international universities and reputable organizations “to help design, build and operate an evenly distributed and cooperative financial infrastructure.”

With regard Eco Foundation, the organization will supervise the design and implementation of the protocol and come out with “a new distributed payment platform with collective incentives for optimal energy efficiency.”

“Eco seeks to create the most usable digital currency platform to date, offering users an alternative to bitcoin, gold and fiat currency at Eco.com.”

Investopedia said with the cryptocurrency Camp has designed, he is now among several entrepreneurs who have joined the digital currency industry. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier revealed that he wants “to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of” trends like encryption and cryptocurrency. Businesses like Overstock, Telegram, and Kik, are planning to launch their own ICOs.

If Eco pushes through, Investopedia said: “It may change the world of virtual currencies by acting as the much-needed bridge between the fully regulated and fully unregulated monetary systems.”

Meanwhile, the Eco design proposal said the virtual money would address three issues within digital currencies:

• Verification of network nodes
• Usability of applications
• Efficiency of transactions

Eco makes “significant improvements by forming a verified network, where universities run nodes, increasing overall token supply, and creating simple web and mobile apps, and designing a system with more energy-efficient and coordinated token generation, to reduce overall power consumption.”

Under initial plans, 50 percent or 500 million tokens will be distributed to the first 1 billion “unique, verified human users on the platform (with equitable demographic and geographic representation) to allocate value created to a large community of users.”

Twenty percent will go to verified nodes (partner universities) and their network of researchers and developers while 10 percent will be held by the Eco Foundation to fund its operations and to be given as grants.

Another 10 percent will go to “active contributors and advisors” while the last 10 percent is intended for the foundation’s strategic partners around the world.

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DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation in writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.

(Featured image by Joi Ito via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0)