COTI to Take on Visa & Mastercard in Merchant Payments Space

2022 is set to be a pivotal year for COTI, the self-professed “Currency Of The Internet”, as it aims to cement its status as the ultimate Layer-1 blockchain network for merchant payments. 

COTI has just detailed its 2022 Roadmap. Some exciting developments on the horizon will go a long way towards delivering on its vision of a reliable, decentralized, high transaction throughput payment platform for merchants and businesses. 

The goal is to replace incumbent networks such as Visa and PayPal. While scalable, they’re also notorious for their high transaction fees, meaning there’s a big demand for lower-cost alternatives. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have often been touted as a solution. Still, the reality is that Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other well-known tokens cannot scale to the degree necessary for mass adoption. 

COTI provides the best of both worlds thanks to its secret weapon – its unique directed acyclic graph technology. With COTI, transactions are stored in the DAG, which is a graph rather than a linear blockchain. Like a tree structure, the DAG model is far more efficient at storing data and enables multiple transactions to be validated simultaneously. In other words, it’s inherently more scalable than any blockchain, enabling instantaneous transactions with zero fees. COTI claims it can handle an incredible 100,000 transactions per second, outpacing networks like Visa and Mastercard.

With DAG as its foundation, COTI is building a complete payments infrastructure that can integrate with direct merchant-facing tools without any financial intermediary. One of the most attractive features of its infrastructure is that companies will issue their own branded stablecoins, pegged to a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar or Euro. 

Businesses choose their desired fiat asset, and the coin they issue will be pegged to that price. COTI says that placing both money and data into the hands of businesses will eliminate concerns over trust and volatility that many people have when it comes to traditional cryptocurrencies. For businesses, creating their stablecoins helps to eliminate dependence on external coins. 

MultiDAG 2.0 To Go Live In Q3

COTI’s DAG model is its platform’s single most critical element, and 2022 is the year it will deliver on its expectations. Later this year, we’ll see the launch of the MultiDAG 2.0 Layer, which makes it possible to issue stablecoins and other tokens on the DAG infrastructure, a capability that’s unique to COTI. 

The plan is to release an early FoxNet of MultiDAG 2.0 in April, before the Testnet launch by the end of May. With the launch of the Testnet out of the way, COTI will then work to craft a new token standard – similar to the ERC20 token standard for coins that run on the Ethereum blockchain. Then in the third quarter, COTI said it would be ready to launch MultiDAG 2.0 on Mainnet. 

With the launch of MultiDAG 2.0 Mainnet, COTI will release updates for its bridge and Trustchain explorer to support the latest version of its DAG. 

MultiDAG 2.0 is a big deal that will enable COTI to fully realize its ambitions with the launch of its Coin-as-a-Service capability. 

“Following the Mainnet release of MultiDAG 2.0, we’ll be offering our enterprise clients to utilize our MultiDAG technology to issue stablecoins and other digital currencies on their terms,” COTI promised. 

COTI said enterprises that mint their COTI-based stablecoins will benefit from lower transaction costs and high scalability. More so, they’ll have the flexibility to issue as many tokens as they require for their business, with privacy modules and technical support offered by COTI’s team. COTI said it would announce its first-ever enterprise token with its maiden – and so far unnamed – enterprise client by the fourth quarter. The company said it has been working on this project for more than one year and that its launch will mark a huge milestone in its journey. Moreover, there will be practical benefits for COTI, as it will publish a comprehensive case study for other businesses to consider. 

MultiDAG 2.0 will also help COTI evolve its existing COTI Pay Business offering with version two, bringing new capabilities for merchants, such as the ability to use native COTI assets as payment methods for merchant and retail transactions. 

Last but not least, MultiDAG 2.0 will grease the wheels for the launch of Djed, the hotly anticipated formal algorithmic stablecoin of the Cardano blockchain. It’s envisioned that Djed will play a key role in providing liquidity to the Cardano ecosystem. Integrations with popular Cardano wallets and decentralized apps such as SundaeSwap, Aada Finance, Indigo, DOEX, AdaSwap, and ErgoDEX are already in the works. 

Djed will launch on the MultiDAG 2.0 Testnet shortly after it goes live. Along with Djed, COTI will also launch Shen – the algorithmic reserve coin of Djed that will enable users to provide the appropriate liquidity required to maintain its peg ratio in return for a share of transaction fees. 

COTI Treasury Expansion

COTI only launched its Treasury in February, but already it has been a huge hit with the community. The Treasury serves to integrate rewards from the wider COTI ecosystem in one place. Community members benefit by staking $COTI tokens into a pool, earning a share of those rewards for participating. 

In its blog post, COTI shared that more than 330 million $COTI tokens have already been deposited in the Treasury since its launch on February 1. 

While much of its focus is on working towards the MultiDAG 2.0 Mainnet launch later this year, COTI said it would continually improve the Treasury, adding new functionality throughout the year. Indeed, the first COTI-native token to be issued once MultiDAG 2.0 goes live will be the Treasury’s governance token. Holders of COTI’s governance token will be able to debate, propose and vote on changes to the Treasury protocol and earn yet more rewards for doing so. 

COTI said the governance tokens would be distributed to everyone who has staked $COTI in the Treasury’s pool via an airdrop and other community members who contribute to its growth. That’s expected to happen in the third quarter, shortly after MultiDAG 2.0’s Mainnet goes live.