What is Status?
Since the emergence of the crypto industry, one of the main goals was to give users control back over their digital sovereignty. It started with the monetary sovereignty aka Bitcoin, and then gradually expanded into other areas. If Web2 was all about connecting people, then the mission of Web3 is to liberate users from the surveillance state.
Status strives to make private messaging a right guaranteed by the blockchain. Founded in 2017, Status was the first decentralized mobile and desktop client built on Ethereum. Early on, its founders realized that blockchain technology can be a boon for human coordination.
Imagine a messaging app where on top of the cryptographic guarantees, users dictate how the dapp adapts and evolves.
One of the key value propositions of the Status app is that it is resistant to censorship from third parties. Creating a Status app account requires no KYC, bank details, email address or phone number. What users do on the app is their business only, the protocol only ensures that the rules are being enforced. For example, users can freely transact crypto on Status – the protocol is truly neutral.
Status serves as the bedrock for an "anything app." Its creators built the security and communication protocol, creating room for developers to build their own services on top of the protocol. For example, the community voted to add ENS registration via the Status app. They also voted to integrate a Dapp Browser to track the price of DeFi tokens.
Status also has its own native token called SNT. It is a governance and gas token which puts the community in charge of the protocol. Participating in governance is as easy as voting in a poll while paying for gas fees using SNT comes with a discount. With the initial bootstrap process out of the way, Status has morphed into a mature application that can expand beyond private messaging.
Another utility of the SNT token is to incentivize users to run a Status node. This is a major factor in fully decentralizing the app, as killing all nodes becomes virtually impossible. Fighting against the surveillance state places enormous stress on a private app like Status. Luckily, the Status team designed the protocol to be resilient against state attacks from day one.
The app uses end-to-end encryption, which means that only the sender and recipient of a message can read its contents, making it more difficult for third parties to intercept or surveil communications. In a nutshell, everything from your identity to the private keys is encrypted.
As a testament to their mission, the Status app has never been hacked. Their success moving forward depends on the community's commitment to support the project.
How does Status work?
Dubbed the "WeChat for Ethereum," Status started out as a messaging app that gradually incorporated more use cases.
The Status project as a whole is working on a number of initiatives that will create a thriving ecosystem for developers building Web3 infrastructure. The simplest way to explain Status is by going through each component of its ecosystem.
Status Messaging
The integral feature of the Status app is its role as an instant messaging platform. Public chats related to the Status project itself are available in a variety of languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, etc. There are currently even public chats for general topics like dapps, cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and more. Status also has private messaging and closed group chat options.
While other messaging platforms (i.e. Telegram, WeChat, etc.) focus more on public profiles, Status autogenerates usernames and doesn’t allow users to upload profile photos. This means that people have the option to interact on the app with some degree of anonymity.
Status ENS Registration
One sweet feature of Status is that users can now register their ENS name directly via the app. ENS names replace the string of characters "0x4cbe59c51420…" with a readable name, such as "blocktalk.eth."
By locking 10 SNT into a smart contract, it’s easy to turn a hexadecimal address into a username that people can actually read and remember. By registering via the Status mobile app, you can hold on to an ENS address for a period of one year. After that, you have the option to release the ENS and get your 10 SNT back or renew for another year. This concept is kind of similar to the registration process for a traditional website domain name.
SNT Voting DApp
The SNT Voting DApp, which can be found in the Dapp Browser, provides a simple way of encouraging community participation in decision-making processes. You can easily vote by holding SNT in your wallet and by signing a transaction. There’s even an option to create your own polls within this dapp.
No SNT payment or locking is required for voting. This means only a small gas fee, paid in ETH, is necessary to participate. This dApp is being used for things like determining discussion topics at developer meetings and the naming of the Status hardware wallet.
Teller Network
Teller Network is a community-developed app for sending peer-to-peer payments. The key feature of the app is that it connects nearby users who want to exchange crypto for fiat and vice versa. In this sense, Teller Network becomes a piece of banking infrastructure for users located in developing countries.
How to make money on Status?
The primary ways of making money with Status revolve around its SNT token. The team at Status has created novel ways to use SNT within the app to gain perks and even make some money on the side. Unlike DeFi protocols where profit is the end-goal, Status should be considered for its utility as a private messaging app. That being said, let's see how you can maximize your SNT on the protocol!
Status Validator
The biggest incentive to become a validator on Status is that you can get a share of the transaction fees on the network. Unlike running an ETH node, you don't need specialized gear to run a Status validator. Status Nodes require low resource-intensive activities, suitable for maintaining requirements across mobile devices and low-end laptops. This drastically reduces the entry barrier.
To incentivize participation, Status rewarded the first 100 users who signed up to run a Status Node with $100 of SNT. As it stands, there is no clear reward scheme for validators. In the future, the community may vote to reward validators in order to strengthen its decentralization.
Status Sticker Market
We all love using stickers on apps like Telegram and WhatsApp. The team at Status has designed a Sticker Market where anyone can create and sell their own designs to users all over the world.
While it may not be a guaranteed source of profits, creating your own stickers is fun by itself.
Price Prediction for Status — Can it hit $1000?
Buying and hodling SNT — the native token of Status— is one way of potentially making money on Status.
By looking at its current price, it’s natural to think about the chance of SNT hitting $1000 per token. This can happen sooner, or way in the future, and is determined by a couple of ever changing factors.
Let’s examine the potential growth of the SNT token by analyzing its tokenomics. SNT’s current market cap sits comfortably at ${MARKET_CAP}. With {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} SNT tokens being in circulation today, that means a price of {PRICE} per SNT.
How did we come to that calculation? It’s quite easy, the price of a SNT token is equal to its current market cap divided by the number of tokens in circulation. Dividing ${MARKET_CAP} by {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} gives us a result of {PRICE} for each SNT coin.
By changing the order in the simple formula above we can use it to calculate other things as well. This helps us a lot because we can deduce the market cap of SNT at different token prices. Then, we can use the result to compare it to the current state of the network and see what would be required for SNT to hit that price.
At a price of $1000 per token, that means the current market cap of SNT would equal ${{CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000}. Remember that we arrived at this number by multiplying the amount of circulating tokens by $1000.
Now let’s shift our attention to the fully diluted market cap.
Some blockchains may have their tokenomics built in a way that only a small percentage of tokens are circulating at the beginning. This can be misleading because we don’t have the full picture and only take into account the current number of coins released in the market.
The fully diluted market cap represents the total value of a coin if all tokens were in circulation. SNT’s whole supply of tokens is {MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} SNT which means that no more coins above that number will ever be created.
Status has no maximum supply, which means there’s no cap on the maximum of tokens that can be issued.
These tokens are not created at the discretion of a specific entity. They are created automatically by the network to reward different actors that keep it secure.
How does this impact the price of SNT? Taking into account the current price of a SNT token, that would result in a fully diluted market cap of ${MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY * PRICE}. SNT coins that have been burned are not taken into consideration because they have been permanently removed from circulation.
Whether it seems gigantic or not, the number we came to above only takes into account the current price of a SNT token. Doing the same calculation but with a price of $1000 gives us a result of ${{MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000} for the SNT protocol fully diluted market cap.
These are all crucial details to know when calculating if SNT can reach the price of $1000 per token. If the diluted market capitalization is way too high, the token has little room left to grow. Blockchains in general have no cap on the value they can reach, whether that number seems possible it’s totally up to you.
The future of SNT depends solely on its growth as a network used by tens and hundreds of millions of users.
If you’re looking to add some SNT to your portfolio, the most trusted places to get some are Binance and Coinbase.
