Holo (HOT)

The Holo network will be facilitated using a token called HoloFuel, which is actively being tested and will act as an accounting system to pay hosts for their services. In 2018, the project minted an ERC-20 token, HOT — also known as HoloToken — as an “IOU” that will be redeemable for HoloFuel upon launch.

Holo is still in development and is expected to launch for open alpha and beta testing by 2021.

Who Are the Founders of Holo?
Holo was founded by Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun, both of whom are experienced contract coders. The two first started working on the project in December 2016 as a part of the MetaCurrency Project, a developer of tools and technology designed to power a future P2P economy. Holo was partially modeled after Ceptr, a cooperative P2P framework for DApps that the two had previously worked on.

Brock has prior experience coding alternative currency systems as the founder of Geek Gene, a company that developed community-building tools, including more than 100 alternative currency solutions. He also co-founded social-enterprise incubator Emerging Leader Labs and founded open-source education “starter kit” Agile Learning Centers. In March 2019, Brock was named a fellow of the New Zealand-based Edmond Hillary Fellowship.

Harris-Braun started programming full time in 1988 and is the founder of Glass Bead Software, a developer of peer-to-peer communication software, as well as co-founder of Emerging Leader Labs alongside Brock. In 2003, he co-founded Harris-Braun Enterprises, a freelance software development and consulting firm. He has also served on the advisory board of the Schumacher Center For New Economics.

What Makes Holo Unique?
According to its “green paper,” Holo is designed to act as a bridge between Holochain, which represents the world of crypto technology, and everyday users. The project highlights several innovations that it says will “enable a large shift in the landscape of crypto applications and currencies,” including the ability to host P2P apps on the internet for mainstream users.

The Holo network relies on a series of hosts that provide storage and processing power for DApps built using Holochain. Hosts either install software on their computer that runs in the background and automatically allocates extra processing power to Holochain-based DApps, or they operate a dedicated machine such as a HoloPort. In exchange, hosts are paid in HoloFuel, a token that is specifically designed for microtransactions. The design of HoloFuel is expected to allow the Holo network to process billions of simultaneous transactions.

The project’s business plan centers on building a P2P ecosystem of hosts and applications, comparing its intended effect on app hosting to that of Uber and Airbnb on the taxi and hotel industries, respectively. Holo charges a fee on HoloFuel transactions, so its revenue model is directly tied to growing the number of applications and hosts on the network.