Hacken (HKN) - A token used within the Hacken Ecosystem

Welcome to my first post in my series where we will look at relatively unknown low market cap coins with potential to grow. In this post we will take a look at Hacken (HKN). If you wish to follow this series feel free to follow my blog Unknown Coins.

Hacken (HKN) is a token launched in late 2017 by the East European company Hacken OU, with their ICO reaching around $7 million. It's currently valued at around $0.17, a sharp decrease from its ICO price at $1 per HKN, but the 83% decrease is in line with what is to be expected of an alt-coin since the burst of the crypto bubble. It's currently ranked 776 on CoinMarketCap with a market cap shy of $1 million, making it a very low valued coin. It's run by a team of white hat hackers with years of experience within cyber security (recently they discovered the infamous Cryptopia hack, before that they found and helped solve the vulnerability during the Parity hack, in 2018 they also found a vulnerability that 8 top-exchanges were vulnerable to).

What is Hacken (HKN)?

Hacken is an ERC20 token (not counting the newer EOS-token EOSHKN), that's used for payments within the Hacken Ecosystem. The Hacken Ecosystem currently has 4 products:

• HackenProof
  
  HackenProof is a "Crowdsourced Cybersecurity Testing Platform", which connects organisations with white hat hackers (over 1000 currently active within the Hacken Ecosystem) to essentially prevent future hacking attacks through either public or private Bug Bounty programs, which runs on a blockchain platform they call Bug Bounty Platform. It's divided into 5 steps:
  
  1. Program goals
  
  The HackenProof team, together with its client, sets up the plan for the program, with a clear budget and recommendations on what needs to be done.
  
  2. Bug Bounty Program Launch 
  
  The program is launched and the information is spread to white hat hackers from all over the world. 
  
  3. Bug Hunting
  
  The community of white hat hackers start to search for vulnerabilities. If any vulnerabilities are found a bounty in the form of HKN is payed out.
  
  4. Reporting
  
  Found vulnerabilities are submitted via the Coordination platform.
  
  5. Triage and Fixes
  
  The reports of vulnerabilities are reviewed then triaged by the HackenProof team and later passed on to the client's security team for fixing. It's up to the client whether or not they would want to disclose any reports once the issues are resolved.
  
  The current leaderboard of hackers can be found here.
• CER
  
  Crypto Exchange Ranks (CER) is a "complex multi-factor scoring platform that ranks crypto exchanges according to wallet balance, trade volume, liquidity, cybersecurity, withdrawal & limits, and public opinion". It ranks exchanges by Solvency (with Coinbase in the lead, with a wallet ballance of just above $2 billion), Cybersecurity (with Kraken at the top, scoring a 9.06) and and overall rating (with Binance in the lead). On top of this it now also offers CER Cybersecurity Certificates (as well as Solvency, Community and Liquidity Certificates), which allows exchanges to "prove their compliance with security standards by passing through security audit", which they describe would be an objective confirmation that an exchange is a safe place for user funds and personal data. In the current state of exchanges being hacked (the most recent one being the Cryptopia hack) this gives exchanges an excellent chance to stand out in the crowd and prove they really care about security. It also takes requests (here and here) for more in-depth analysis of exchanges' security, where transparency hackers will dive deep and provide a through analysis of an exchange. Yet again we see an use-case for HKN, as the transparency hackers are payed through the token.
• HackIT
  
  HackIT is an International Cybersecurity Conference, uniting technical experts with top industry leaders. It started in 2015 and will hold its 5th edition this year. Some prominent speakers include Peter Todd (Bitcoin Core developer), Moxie Marlinspike (author of the Signal Protocol, the encryption used in Skype, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp among others, as well as previous head of security at Twitter), John Graham-Cumming (CTO of Cloudflare). Several top politicians currently active within the US government, the EU as well as the Ukrainian government will also be attending this year. One of the activities is the Hacken Cup, which essentially is a live and intense version of HackenProof where top hackers will meet the security team of a company and search for vulnerabilities together.
• Tokens
  
  Hacken has currently developed 2 tokens, HKN and EOSHKN. These are the currencies within the ecosystem, and all payments are made using these. The use cases are to be further expanded during 2019. Why the ecosystem uses a blockchain technology instead of other technologies allowing for fiat-transactions is explained in their Whitepaper: "Unlike conventional cybersecurity firms, bug bounty platform
  attracts a crowd of highly skilled cybersecurity researchers with various backgrounds to find product vulnerabilities. Bug bounty platform provides transparent reporting, 24/7 analytics, and information on the current status of your bug bounty program. The platform handles all operational issues - validating submitted bugs, communicating with white hats, and organizing other operational activities."

The Future for Hacken

Hacken fills a gap within the crypto-sphere. As more and more exchanges get hacked (some examples include: $3.2M stolen from Cryptopia in 2019, $530M stolen from Coincheck and $170M from BitGrail in 2018, $32M stolen from Parity and $7.4M from Coindash in 2017, $72M from Bitfinex in 2016, $5.1M from Bitstamp in 2015, $460M from Mt. Gox in 2014), it's a natural progression for exchanges to increase their security. Hacken not only provides an easy solution, but also a proof that the exchange actually is safe through its certificates. This is not only true for cryptoexchanges, but all companies. Cybersecurity in general is getting more traction as more and more people start to realize its importance. 

The company also boasters a broad number of partners and clients from all over the world, including AirAsia, Vechain and IronFX :

In addition they've started Cyber School, a 5 month program with an extensive application process that lasts 3 weeks. It will recruit a total of 40 students (the 40 top ranking candidates), starting April 8, and is based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Tutors include Oleksii Baranovskyi, who is the person who saved over $1.4 million during the Parity hack, as well as the one who found the critical vulnerability affecting 8 top exchanges, as previously mentioned. This shows the company is not only in it for the short run, but preparing for the future and educating future top cybersecurity experts, possibly expanding their team since they promise work for all students who finish their course.

Their team includes besides Oleksii people with incredible experience within cybersecurity, such as a previous executive of the Ukraine military defense industry. A team with such an extensive experience lays the perfect foundation for future success.

If you would like to know more about Hacken (HKN), check out the following links:

Hacken's webpage
Hacken's Blog
Hacken's Twitter
Hacken's Telegram
Hacken's subreddit
Hacken's Facebook
HKN Whitepaper

The team also allows for people to book meetings with them at conferences, the most recent being at Ethereum Community Conference, Paris, France Mars 5th-7th. They also answer questions through Facebook Messenger, Telegram as well as hold regular AMAs on Reddit. 

HKN is currently being actively traded on KuCoin (against ETH and BTC) as well as Kuna (against BTC).