Akoin
Upon reading the Akoin whitepaper I see a project which seems to be focused on giving something back primarily to Africa. The mission of giving back to Africa is a mission I can support but what do I think about Akoin in particular as a facilitator of that mission?
So far Akoin from reviewing the whitepaper is not technically novel. It will rely on the Stellar network in particular which likely will work for these purposes but I question whether this will be enough. When compared to MPESA and similar projects I do think it's more advanced and overall better. The project will support Dapps so we will have the potential to improve upon the project as a community which is good. The platform relies a lot on atomic swaps and will have KYC which in my opinion is a good thing provided this KYC gives full access to the tools of capitalism.
Akoin reminds me a little bit of Facebook's Libra project in it's ambition. I do have some questions or skepticism though and wonder if participants will be able to access decentralized finance in all it's capabilities? Will participants be able to access for example stabletokens? Will participants be able to access stabletokens which pay compound interest? What about high risk high reward opportunities?
If Akoin gives participants full access to the best of the crypto ecosystem through the atomic swap maybe we could see ways to connect it to more of the ecosystem? It looks good so far from what I can see from the whitepaper it's a good start.
My thoughts on this are that the mission to integrate Africa into the global crypto ecosystem is worthwhile. The previous attempts were not that great because a lot of people attempting it didn't seem to understand Africa as well as the Akoin project team seems to. That being said I do think it will be a challenge to pull it off not because of the technology but due to politics.