A simple way to reflect on what you’re doing or what the people around you are doing is to imagine a graph with four quadrants. Intelligent, Helplessness, Bandits, and Stupid, a IHBS (I Hate BS) analysis framework provides excellent insight for evaluating the state of a project’s well-being through the lens of a birds-eye view.

  It can help formulate decisions on what areas require more attention, set performance goals, and organize a foundational understanding of where a project is headed.

Intelligent (Internal) (Helpful)

Irrevocability

  Neptune adopts the Proof of Work consensus model where the consumption of physical resources is exchanged to produce a block of transactions. This accounts for the security of the network and a fairly decentralized participation of miners. An attacker has to consume the same amount of energy that all honest miners for the duration of the attack. Such an attack vector requires the same coordination and use of resources to overcome the hash rate of network which is counterproductive to the harmony of the network.

Privacy

  Privacy is a fundamental human right. Privacy crypto-currencies allow users to make their transaction history public but transparent crypto-currencies do not allow users to keep their transactions private. What many fail to realize is that Privacy is crucial to a fundamental property of money: fungibility (individual units are interchangeable).

  Only Privacy currencies are fungible because the history of the units are not called into question nor are the users required to identify themselves for an exchange. On/Off-Boarding into crypto-currencies through CEXes are clearly identified individuals, companies or institutions that fall under the legal parameters of their country’s jurisdiction. The whole of the industry is one based on trust, users send non- reversible transactions to a third party and now permission is required that the exchange/withdrawal will be honored. Privacy blockchains protect your identity, right to privacy in financial transactions and protects from oppressive regimes.

Post Quantum Security

  All cryptographic security comes from the assumed hardness of computational tasks implying that no algorithm can solve the task in a reasonable amount of time. Post-quantum security simply means that this hardness assumption extends to quantum computers as well.

  The analysis of quantum algorithms presupposes the correctness of our understanding of quantum physics, the Schrödinger equation in particular. We can study, analyze and predict the behavior of quantum systems by using the equations that describe the quantum physics.

  In 1994 Peter Shor came up with an efficient quantum algorithm for a family of natural problems occurring in cryptography, namely period-finding. It turns out that both the integer factorization problem and the discrete logarithm problem (in any finite group, including elliptic curves) can be solved with black box access to a period-finder. Shor’s quantum algorithm therefore breaks cryptography that relies on the hardness of factorization or discrete.

  In terms of practical problems that affect cryptography, regeneration of public key solved by finding short vectors in lattices, finding solutions to systems of multivariate polynomials or finding isogenies between elliptic curves. While quantum computers generally do offer some speedup, the speedup for these problems is negligible.

  Neptune incorporates secure hash function that is based on arithmetization-oriented hash functions which essentially means that it works well with zeo-knowledge proofs. There is no indication that arithmetization-oriented hash functions might be more susceptible to a quantum attack than classical ones. The output size of the hash function is set to accommodate for future attack, quantum or classical. Neptune is a post-quantum cryptosystem that does not rely on integer factorization or discrete logarithms.

True Decentralization Governance

  The development of a governance body in Bitcoin Core has led to the ossification of the network; this unadaptability has stagnated real improvements to privacy and scalability with complex solutions built around a simple implementation (UTXO model) that was solvable in the Block size wars. Imagine in this tangent universe that Bitcoin Cash became Bitcoin and Bitcoin as we know it became Bitcoin Classic. Without an inherent scalability problem how would a company like Blockstream follow a Hegalen Dialetic? But we’ve seen this experiment already conducted with Faketoshi’s bloated blockchain BSV. That pretty soon the blockchain throughput capacity causes the operation cost of maintaining the network to inflate. It isn’t feasible for Node participation because the ledger’s storage capacity is too high which in turn affects the synchronization of the network and acceptable confirmation times.

   Without the weight of the industry on its back can Neptune succeed by dissolving the founding company on December 31, 2025? An immutable blockchain requires protocol rules that cannot be updated with less effort than an attack on the consensus mechanism. I think the developers at Neptune understand and acknowledge areas of improvement for Bitcoin and have clearly indicated the way forward with solutions that others can follow and adhere to the prevailing ethos.

Helplessness (Internal) (Harmful)

No Tail Emission

  Neptune argument against a tail emission policy is based on the fact that there is no asymptotical limit on the token supply. A medium with this property will store value less effectively than a medium with a hard limit. The distinction is made between people prioritizing spendability suffer inflation with an infinite supply versus people storing large amounts of wealth across large spans of time are willing to wait longer for their transactions to be confirmed where a large transaction fee is amendable to an inflation tax.

  Monero’s counter argument is what good is scared, high-value coin that is easily attacked, censored and subverted due to low security? If anything, the low security would decrease the value, more than offsetting what increase the scarcity would provide. Monero’s supply is theoretically infinite the inflation is linear and trends toward zero as a yearly percentage, unlike fiat which is exponential.

  Neptune sides with the Bitcoin problem of stagnation where users are incentivized to not use the network and in the future usage of the network is relegated to those who have enough to pay versus those who can’t are herded into layer 2 custodial options going against don’t trust verify. Better to pay a tax to secure the network that includes everyone than to have a network so secure that hardly anyone can use it.

Bandits (External) (Helpful)

Smart Contract Implementation on the base layer

  Ethereum has already proven that there is a market demand for full programmability of smart contracts. It is reasonable to credit the significant market share that Ethereum has conquered to its technological innovation. Neptune aims to provide an answer to Frontrunning attack in DeFi with confidential transactions. On Ethereum whenever you initiate a transaction frontrunners have the opportunity to insert a transaction with preferential treatment. Neptune supports confidential transactions and a two-way peg from Ethereum ERC-20 tokens which counteracts the variables that makes Frontrunning possible:  Transparent Market and Trades, Trades are broadcasted and there is a delay between broadcast and confirmation. With Neptune for trading purposes, trade volume is not leaked because trades are undetectable because bid-feed enable traders to connect with counterparties.

Smaller scale reproduction of Ethereum Narratives

 Neptune is betting on their privacy implementations that can persuade rational traders to migrate to their platform for cost savings and increase their volume. Although Ethereum smart contract innovation is a phenomenon it is also a double-edge sword with frontrunning and MEV are deemed as necessary tradeoff for bootstrapping the decentralized finance ecosystem. The cautionary concern for Neptune innovation is the updates to Ethereum are in constant flux that adds to complexity of the blockchain where possible solutions are proposed but never realized without significant tradeoffs. As Neptune provides a clear alternative and significant upgrade to Bitcoin, the first mover advantage of Ethereum can’t really be surpassed not because Neptune doesn’t innovate but simply because the market as a whole doesn’t value privacy according to Market Cap.

Stupid (External) (Harmful)

Regulatory Market Hostile to Privacy Coins

  The regulatory landscape has funneled the industry to KYC exchanges delisting privacy coins like Monero, to the uninitiated this increases the difficulty rating just enough not to investigate further. But to the technical wizards the future is desktop and websites DEXes that are not impeded by one blockchain but at least have the integration of a few pivotal blockchains for liquidity. The Cypherpunk tribe was always a small niche and adhering to their true ethos is that crypto-currency would provide a means out of the authoritarian state with cryptography.

  The church of Bitcoin Orthodoxy has produced the BTC bro that welcomes the old financial system to pump their bags and has provided the framework for quite the dystopian future. Where is your moral conviction that Satoshi taught you by mining 1 million coins with the implication of his actions indicating that he did not print Bitcoin to enrich himself? Neptune founders clearly understand this with a premine of only 1.98% of the supply distribute to investors that allowed the development of Neptune. With no release date of the Neptune blockchain but dissolving of the founding company by Deceber 31, 2025 one can only speculate on the planned deployment. I hope the listings across CEXes and especially DEXes propagate the adoption of Neptune Cash.

Takeway:

  I have never given up on the separation of the economy from the state but the game-theory is more nuanced than a capped supply of units and the rate of distribution. I have never been more bullish on a project than Neptune but understand my perspective: I am not a trader, I am looking for a circular economy that respects my right to transact privately with true decentralization consensus and redundant security from state attacks.  The best is yet to come. Neptune attempts to hit the elevation of technological demand with full programmability, throughput scalability, privacy and post-quantum security at genesis. I am a bit skeptical of their layer 2 implementation but Alan Szepieniec, Thorkil Vaerge and Jan Ferdiand Sauer are quite the paragon in their own right. Neptune is a step in the right direction with core values I can get behind.

May the havling be with you! And Alt Season be upon us!

I trust on your journey that one day you may develop your own SWOT analysis and raise the consciousness of the crypto sphere with your insights. Mad props to Didovskiy for his template may we see his likeness again in our time.