Beginner’s Guide to Celer Network: Complete Review

With the scalability issues that have been troubling popular networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as of late, the need for a sustainable blockchain infrastructure that allows for smooth transactions over a growing platform is a need that must be addressed.

While several projects have recently emerged that claim to resolve all these problems, it remains to be seen if any of them could hold up to their promises when they reach a level of usage that matches the aforementioned giants of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries.

However, that plethora of new projects isn’t stopping Celer Network, which aims to build a highly scalable blockchain solution that will allow users to perform billions of transactions within seconds.

Celer Network Review: Market Opportunity

Having just emerged on the web as a new solution that is yet to be built, Celer Network aims to provide users with the ability to perform instant transactions through blockchain without having to resort to extensive confirmations and lengthy wait times.

Celer Network achieves this feat by enabling off-chain transactions through its larger ecosystem, which will allow users to send and receive funds without burdening the main blockchain. On paper, it is very similar to the technology that is used by Bitcoin for its new Lightning Network.

However, Celer Network does not only want to be a cryptocurrency provider but a one-stop shop and ecosystem for people from all over the world, and thus ensures that the off-chain payment facilities only remain a part of its wider selection of services.

Introducing Celer Network as an “internet-scale” platform, the Celer Network describes that the solution will be able to run as a networked system that runs atop of other blockchains, supplementing their growth in addition to enabling users to enjoy fast transactions without any lag time.

The platform also doubles as a development platform, allowing interested individuals to develop decentralized apps in order to contribute to its larger ecosystem while being operational on its off-chain solutions for the ability to be highly scalable. However, since off-chain applications are trickier to build as compared to the ones available on on-chain platforms, Celer Network will facilitate the transition for smooth operations of these apps, by a feature that it has dubbed as cOS.

Apart from cOS, Celer Network offers its users with additional features such as cChannel, a sidechain suite that will supplement the operations of the off-chain platform; cRoute, a value transfer algorithm that allows for faster transactions; and cEconomy, the foundation of the Celer Network’s overall ecosystem that will also users to utilize pertinent tokens in optimal tradeoffs.

Considering these solutions, Celer Network is going after not just a niche market but the overall cryptocurrency community in order for them to adopt its solutions for their existing blockchains so that they could leverage from executing the billions of transactions that Celer Network aims to bring to the table.

Crowdsale

The crowdsale has not been announced yet, and thus details such as token distribution and funds allocation have not been disclosed. However, the Celer Network is supposed to provide updates on this front soon.

Celer Network Review: Team

On paper, Celer Network boasts of a team of proficient individuals with each of them holding Ph.D. from revered institutions.

The four co-founders include Dr. Mo Dong, Dr. Junda Liu, Dr. Xiaozhou Li, and Dr. Qingkai Liang, who are the alumni of UIUC, UC Berkley, Princeton University and MIT, respectively.

The project’s whitepaper is technically detailed and seems to speak of the team’s prowess, which adds to the overall credibility of the project.

Celer Network Review: Opinion

While Celer Network is claiming to what many other projects have done in the past, it seems that it might have what it takes to deliver on its claims due to introducing the solutions as a compatible layer to existing and future blockchains instead of being a standalone platform in itself.

Weaknesses and Competition

We see two threats in this sector, continuous improvement of on chain solutions and a gradual rise in the off chain competition as well.

Let’s take a look at these threats.

In regard to on chain threats, the major disadvantage of this particular space is the fact that major platforms such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are working on their own scaling solutions. The communities of these respective networks understand that there must be evolution and scaling is important to bring about these necessary changes.

As mentioned earlier Bitcoin has responded to its past congestion issues by slowly bringing about their off chain solution, the Lightning Network.  The Bitcoin network also has supporters within its ecosystem like RSK, a smart contract platform which has the same level of scalability as Paypal.

Ethereum is also working hard to fix their scaling issues while keeping the principles of decentralization in mind, think layer 2 solutions  (sharding, and plasma).

In addition to this, there are quite a few players in the market who are introducing their own scalable developmental systems as well, these networks range from QTUM, EOS, Stellar, to Lisk and quite a few others.

Finally, many more on chain solutions are coming out and proposing to be scaling solution that will rule them all, some of these are still in their ICO phase while others have completed their raise and seek to get to the task of scaling.

We are left with the question of, how much significance does an off-chain solution carry when on chain platforms come with core scalability? A devil’s advocate might say that these off chain solutions will be useful in the short term.

But if the bet is that Bitcoin and other blockchain networks will succeed over the long term to justify their valuations, then that must make these currently proposed solutions ephemeral, at best.  Right?

In regard to other off chain solutions, there are competitors like the OPEN Platform, Loom Network and others that are looking at and deploying unique solutions that will help to expand utility in more ways than one.

Threat levels posed by  competitive solutions: High

The biggest weakness here is that there incumbent threats as well as a slew of upstarts seeking to solve a singular problem with minor variations and differentiation.

Celer Network Review: Conclusion

How many protocols do we need to tackle one problem? If we were to study the market we would think that we are in dire need of many, but looking at it from a logical and technical standpoint, we would see that we only need a few.

But which solutions will have a share in the market? It is quite hard to tell.

Celer has a great team and prominent early supporters from firms such as Pantera Capital, FBG Capital, DHVC and Stable, so they stack up with other projects equally from these standpoints. Do we see a significant differentiator? Their crypto economics looks very interesting, they focus on network effect and the minimization of tradeoffs.

We will also need more information on the price of the tokens and how they will be allocated to see if the offering expensive or affordable.

Overall, it is a very tough field, invest with great caution

Celer Network Rating: 3.5 - Review by