Ultra ("UOS") is currently listed at ?0.09143 with a total market cap of ?25,817,220 (the result of a circulating supply of 282,510,439 which is 28% of the maximum supply). The developers call it the first entertainment platform to provide a combined gaming service. Essentially it looks to combine what you would see from Steam, a video game library that charges game developers a distribution fee for listing their game and Twitch, a video live streaming service predominantly used for people to play games and interact with live viewers.
It should be noted that Ultra's protocol is based on the EOSIO, the EOS platform. However, it has been upgraded to enable up to 100,000 transactions per second, no transaction fees, inter-blockchain communication and confirmation speeds of up to three seconds. The use of EOSIO is one that could create doubts among people but the benefit of this for Ultra is that transactions are free for users and more relevant to their goal, EOSIO smart contracts are written in C++ which is one of the primary programming languages used in the games industry.
The key deviations from the EOSIO platform are three-fold.
- Creating an account on the EOSIO platform costs around $2. Ultra have removed the account creation fee in an attempt to improve their chances at competing in this industry. They are looking to create alternative measures to avoid spam account creation by way of mobile phone verification;
- A level of control for the developers has been implemented to ensure that the Ultra platform operates in line with regulation in different countries; and
- They have disabled voting with coins. Their logic surrounding this is that their target audience will have no care about the underlying technology but only the end product. Asking them to inform, educate and vote for modifications will therefore be non-advantageous.
The platform is still in its infancy, and people are being guided to the platform's early access for testing. As mentioned above, they don't look to create unnecessary strain on people that are disinterested in cryptocurrency and therefore they allow purchases by way of UOS or via Fiat Currency. Purchases using debit cards and PayPal with fiat currency will be converted into UOS at the back end and therefore customers will have no requirement to interact with purchasing cryptocurrency.
The UOS token is actually one that has a substantial amount of utility, more than that which I have seen in a lot of different cryptocurrencies where the existence of a token is actually not that relevant. It will enable people to purchase games or digital assets, payment for advertisement and the creation of non-fungible tokens ("NFTs").
As most ecosystems require staking, Ultra is no different. However, they are able to target their market slightly differently by having developers or influencers incentivise their following by rewarding them with NFTs such as free games and exclusive content. The staking feature is inherently positive for users as they constantly increase their token stake through engagement activities.
The Ultra platform will also allow users to earn UOS by providing their CPU and GPU with one of their partners, Cudo. There is a “one click mining” solution which has already been integrated into the platform that can commit to activities such as traditional crypto mining, AI or graphic rendering, the latter of which are generally much more profitable. It will automatically select the most profitable computing demand for the user based on his hardware.
By staking UOS to provide Ultra power to smart contracts, users are helping curate the blockchain by prioritizing smart contracts that matter. For this effort, users will be rewarded in UOS, minted by the protocol. The reward will be defined by the governance, depending on the network’s needs. Details about the staking program will be presented at a later date.
The coin has a small selection of partnerships which are quite promising and could pave the way for a healthy platform. Their strategic partnership with AMD at first glance is purely marketing, however AMD will also look to distribute games to their customers that are to be redeemed on Ultra. This supposedly includes AAA games as well as a view to create exclusive content for games on the platform.
The primary focus for the industry is to be the video game library that will enable game developers to list their game on the platform which will expose it to a much larger audience as opposed to people having to find the game independently. They look to beat the competition in this space by way of having lower distribution fees than others. Their website states that the likes of Steam, Google Play and the iOS App Store all charge an estimated 30% distribution fee to developers. Ultra looks to undercut this significantly by charging only 12% to game developers. They also look to beat the horrific terms and conditions that gamers on Steam have to abide to such as the fact that customers do not own the game nor the digital assets they purchase, rather they only have the right to license the items. Ultra looks to leverage NFTs which will enable customers to purchase digital assets such as skins and have complete the rights to the item, the provenance of the item and the ability to resell the item on a secondary market. This can theoretically become a much bigger market place as having provenance of an item may skyrocket the price of a digital asset once owned by a professional gamer.
The live streaming industry is currently very difficult for traditional businesses to grow and gain a foothold in. Previous experience shows that new streaming services such as Mixer (Microsoft streaming service) and Facebook Gaming have not been able to gather market share due to the duopoly nature of live streaming by way of Twitch and YouTube Gaming which means that customers usually find new content purely off of the platform they are already on as opposed to reaching out elsewhere. It is also affected by significant loyalty to streamers which means that if a streamer was to change platform, a significant percentage of viewers would continue onto the new platform with the streamer. This means that that the platform that Ultra has integrated in their platform, THETA Network, will have a significant dilemma and a number of challenges it will have to overcome to become relevant in the streaming space and add inherent value to the Ultra platform.
It can be bought on a number of exchanges including BITMAX (UOS/USDT), Bitfinex (UOS/USD) and KUCOIN (UOS/USDT), albeit the latter two have much less transaction volume than BitMax.
I like this! I really do. As someone who has spent a lot of time playing games and watching streams whilst working, I think that Ultra's mission is one that would really benefit the users of the platform, both gamers and streamers alike. My view that good technology results in good investments means that this is a coin that I think could actually be quite positive to hold in your portfolio. However, it would've been nice to see a roadmap for 2021 have been released by now and I think that is the one thing to wait on before committing to any action.
I would appreciate any and all feedback while I get this going!
Whitepaper: https://api.website.ultra.io/uploads/225c4c5ae4fc4d41b418a538df00ad3e.pdf
