How Hathor Network could transform India
Blockchain is an innovative technology which is changing the landscape of the financial industry with the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. But the impact that this technology can have is profound and is not limited to just finance. As blockchains became more widely adopted, it became clear that there are a lot of problems that could be solved with this novel technology. This article talks about how India, a vibrant country with a lot of brilliant young talent could use Hathor Network, a highly scalable blockchain platform to address some of the problems which could enable it to achieve its goal of developing a digital society.
What is Hathor Network?
Hathor Network is a PoW-based novel distributed ledger architecture using both DAG and blockchain data structures intertwined. Hathor Network ensures scalability without compromising decentralization and security. Hathor also has many advantages over other blockchains such as:
Zero Fees
Instant Transactions
Nano Contracts
High scalability (200+ tps)
Easy token Creation
How can India benefit from the Hathor Network?
Remittances
According to a report from the World Bank, India received $83 Billion in remittances in 2020.The average fee taken for these transactions is around 2.9% and due to this a lot of money is spent on fees paid to entities and it takes several days for the money to arrive. This clearly is not an efficient and economical way for Indians to send money back home and this can be solved with the help of Hathor. Hathor Network charges zero fees for asset transfers and the transactions are instant as the network is highly scalable. Users can transact without delays and without any centralized entity which will allow users to send money abroad without any hassle.
The Creator Economy
According to the Statista website, India has the second largest number of social media users with an estimated 448 million users in 2021.There are thousands of social media influencers with millions of followers but there is a fundamental challenge that most face: monetization. Social Tokens are an important use case of cryptocurrencies which allows influencers to monetize their content thus increasing their fanbase and generating revenue. Social tokens will play a major role in the creator economy amassing trillions of dollars in market capitalization. The Hathor Wallet allows users to create their own tokens with just a few clicks without having to spend any money on transaction fees. These tokens can be transferred to other wallets for zero costs. Indian influencers could leverage this feature of the Hathor Network to kickstart their revenue generation with no expenditure.
Creating custom tokens on Hathor Wallet is simple and it takes only a few clicks. Users have to specify the Token Name, Symbol, Supply and they get to create their own token. For every 100 tokens minted, 1 HTR needs to be deposited. The deposited HTR can be retrieved by melting the tokens.
Digital Art
Non-fungible Tokens is the most popular use case of blockchain technology which has achieved mainstream adoption with the boom of digital art. NFTs allow artists from any corner of the world to sell their artwork to a global audience without any intermediaries.
But many of the artists are unable to participate in the digital world mainly because of the expensive gas fees which go into minting these NFTs. Hathor Network solves this problem as it lets users mint NFTs without paying high fees and does not require any coding knowledge. 9Block is an NFT platform built on the Hathor blockchain which is helping Brazilian artists to sell their art by creating a marketplace. A similar platform for Indian artists would allow them to mint tokens for negligible costs and sell them thus empowering more artists to get a fair price for their creations. These NFTs are also sustainable and environment-friendly since Hathor is working towards reducing its carbon footprint through Hathor Green.
Payments
India has the world’s largest digital payments userbase with an estimated 25.5 Billion digital transactions ahead of countries like China and South Korea. Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe are the leading digital payments apps which are used by millions of Indians in day-to-day transactions. While these apps provide a fast and quick way for funds to be settled, they do have one major shortcoming : Counterparty Risk. Since these apps use centralized servers and payment gateways to settle transactions, they become susceptible to denial-of-service attacks which render the service unavailable. There is always the risk of losing funds since these transactions are handled by centralized entities and they are not transparent. On the other hand, Hathor Network allows users to settle funds for zero fees instantly in a trustless and transparent environment. Blockchains are decentralized and distributed meaning they are not vulnerable to DoS attacks and are not regulated by a single entity. All the transactions are public and cryptographically verifiable which provide a ‘guarantee’ that transactions will be settled, something which centralized payment gateways can never achieve.
Decentralized Finance
According to the 2017 World Bank Report, it is estimated that around 190 million Indians (13.65% of total population) do not have access to financial services such as banking. This means that a sizeable amount of the population cannot take part in economic activity which deprives of opportunities to lead a better life. One of the major reasons for this is that banks ask for documentation in order to open a bank account which becomes a major hurdle for those who are uneducated and those who live in rural areas. Decentralized Finance(Defi) fixes this by providing a way for individuals to participate in lending and borrowing and the requirement is a smartphone with access to the internet. With Hathor, this becomes simpler because by default, the network is designed to be user-friendly. The smart contract implementation on Hathor known as Nano Contracts provides an easy way for even non-technical users to develop simple Dapps without having to code.
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain are the future and Hathor Network will play a major role in mass adoption because it focuses on user-friendliness and has a robust architecture capable of scaling to meet the needs of the network. India can benefit immensely from the blockchain revolution and it will play a key role in developing Digital India.