On Sunday, Feb. 10, the creators of the charitable organization Eatbch, a nonprofit food drive powered by bitcoin cash, celebrated its one-year anniversary. Eatbch has come along way since its inception feeding Venezuelans thousands of meals alongside branching out to other less fortunate regions like South Sudan.

Also read: BCH Avalanche Transactions Show Finality Speeds 10x Faster Than Ethereum

Eatbch Celebrates One Year of Helping People in Need

This week the nonprofit Eatbch is celebrating its one-year anniversary after two individuals started the charity with just a $5 donation. With this small fraction of bitcoin cash, the organization managed to give 40 arepas (a type of food made of ground maize dough or cooked flour) in just one location and the group realized the potential of this type of charity.

“After a few months, we were giving thousands of meals each week in 23 locations in 6 states of the country,” explained José the cofounder of Eatbch Venezuela. Even though the funds have helped Venezuelans a great deal, José detailed that the economic situation in the country has not improved.

“A few days ago, the Venezuelan-Colombian crossing was blocked to avoid tons of aid from entering to the country — And the Venezuelan people highly need this. Inflation has skyrocketed to unseen levels, as high as 2,500,000 percent,” José emphasized while discussing the one-year anniversary.

The Eatbch cofounder added:

According to many economists worldwide, it will reach 10,000,000 percent at the end of the year and the level of uncertainty and fear we feel right now is unimaginable — For most of the people who receive hot meals each week, we are their only guaranteed meal that they can count on.

Crypto’s Utility Phase Emerging

In addition to helping people in Venezuela, the operation also branched off into South Sudan back in the summer of 2018. The region also has one of the highest inflation rates in the world and the citizens of South Sudan have been dealing with economic turmoil and a lack of daily nourishment.

“[Eatbch South Sudan] has been doing an amazing job providing meals for thousands for people who have been escaping the ongoing war,” José remarked. Last year, the group also caught the attention of the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, who believes cryptocurrencies can give people in need economic freedom.

“In terms of crypto helping people (the utility phase emerging) this is pretty awesome,” Armstrong stated at the time.

José further detailed how the cofounders first started the nonprofit and debated on how Eatbch would operate. Many people asked the group to accept several different cryptocurrencies but the charity decided to accept just one. “Bitcoin Cash was and still is, the best cryptocurrency for us — It has the lowest fees, ensuring that we won’t lose your donations because of transaction costs,” José’s anniversary blog post emphasized.

The cofounder noted:

[Bitcoin cash] has widespread exchange support and it’s also easy to use, so we could convince merchants to accept BCH.

After finishing a year of good deeds, the Eatbch team said they are very thankful for the BCH community and all the volunteers who have helped them. Because of this growth and excitement, José said the nonprofit has gained attention from the mainstream press. The cofounder concluded that this attention is of no surprise to him because the community has impacted the lives of thousands of Venezuelans. “I thank you all deeply from the bottom of my heart for all your help and support,” the charity’s creator finished.

What do you think about the nonprofit Eatbch and its one-year anniversary? Do you think cryptocurrencies can empower global citizens suffering from economic turmoil? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Eatbch, Shutterstock, and Pixabay. 

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Jamie Redman

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Silicon Valley fintech startup Ripple goes out of its way to say it didn’t create the cryptocurrency XRP. But that doesn’t mean the company doesn’t rely on its vast reserves of the token when courting prospective hires.

One engineer who asked to remain anonymous showed CoinDesk a recruiting email from late 2018 that promised an XRP package from Ripple of worth up to $3 million, in addition to a generous salary offer.

According to the company’s LinkedIn, Ripple is looking to hire more than a dozen engineers and technical experts, including a new head of engineering for its xCurrent project, which aims to rival the legacy messaging network SWIFT at the center of the current global payments infrastructure.

Salaries may vary according to seniority, but based on conversations with two prospective recruits, XRP bonuses for engineers generally range in value from $1 million to $6 million, according to the company’s own evaluation. As of press time, XRP is trading at roughly $0.30 per token.

(Ripple declined to comment on bonus packages, including whether they are still being offered in 2019.)

One former Ripple employee, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of legal retribution, told CoinDesk he never heard of such XRP bonus packages before 2017. However, he also noted generous equity deals are standard in Silicon Valley.

In September 2018, one prospective engineering recruit, who asked to remain anonymous because he works at a company that might someday collaborate with Ripple, told CoinDesk that he also received an email from a recruiter working on Ripple’s behalf that stood out because it offered lucrative XRP packages, supposedly worth $3 million to $6 million. Both engineers currently work at top-tier tech companies in Silicon Valley, albeit the second programmer at a crypto company (thus the higher offer).

Additionally, the email claimed the global market cap of “its [Ripple’s] coin” was worth $48 billion. According to CoinMarketCap, on the day the email was sent XRP’s global market cap was closer to $13.3 billion. The prospective engineer recruit told CoinDesk he found this discrepancy alarming.

Speaking to the unusual bonus offering that caught his eye, the anonymous engineer said Ripple is “a very unpopular entity in the crypto sphere among technologists,” so he believes the company is “forced to go above and beyond to attract engineers” during the bear market.

Bear recruiting

A Ripple representative told CoinDesk the company currently employs roughly 90 engineers and technology experts, with plans to hire “aggressively” in order to expand its software as a service offering plus support RippleNet mobile wallets and payout processes.

This is part of an ongoing hiring spree. The company representative said that Ripple added 100 new employees across the company in 2018, adding:

“We move fast to acquire the best talent out there – especially considering the highly competitive nature of other startups who want to hire similar candidates.”

Former Ripple community liaison Jon Holmquist told CoinDesk that developer salaries and compensation are ballooning across Silicon Valley. As such, Holmquist said any hiring challenges might be related to the broader market downturn, not Ripple in particular.

“No one wants to join crypto for the first time during a bear market. I think that’s more of an industry-wide problem,” Holmquist said. “There’s always a shortage of talent.”

The anonymous engineer disagreed, considering the other types of recruiting emails he routinely receives.

“This is for a devops role, which is generally harder to find, but these are really big numbers,” the anonymous engineer said, referring to both the salary and XRP bonus package. “It comes across a little bit desperate.”

Serial entrepreneur Dave Schukin tweeted last June that the company offered him more than $175,000 as a base salary, which appears consistent with the other offer shared with CoinDesk.

In terms of what Ripple is looking for, the company representative said they are recruiting software experts with Java or C++ language expertise and an ample dose of teachability.

“We are not necessarily looking for blockchain experts – we can always teach domain-specific expertise,” she said. “We also think it’s important that our engineers carry themselves with humility and are able to think creatively about how to solve hard problems.”

Ripple image via Shutterstock

Update (Feb. 11, 21:00 UTC): This article has been updated to clarify that the recruiting emails came from an external recruiter working on Ripple’s behalf.

Ethereum has 40 times more developers than its closest peer. But 86 percent of ETH DApps had zero users today–and 93 percent had no transactions.

Much of the Ethereum community shrugs off the fact that the price of ETH 00 has been on a (pretty much) year-long freefall.

After all, it’s not designed to be money anyway, but a developer platform with the largest number of DApps and developers in the industry.

Is it not just a little bit worrying, then, that the sweeping majority of ETH dApps are little more than tumbleweed blowing in the wind?

Low to No Adoption of ETH DApps

The main topic of conversation in the industry is always how to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. How blockchains can overcome their multiple issues, scale to onboard more users, uncomplicate their cumbersome processes, improve security, and convince users their offer is better.

But when you look at the statistics below, it’s clear that we’re nowhere near that point yet.

There are now 1375 live ETH dApps.
86% of them had 0 users today.
93% of them had 0 tx volume today.

Across all platforms there are now 1828 live dApps.
77% of them had 0 users today.
85% of them had 0 tx volume today. pic.twitter.com/jUHZYuhPTz

— Kevin Rooke (@kerooke) February 10, 2019

Of the 1,375 live ETH DApps, most of them have next-to-no users or transactions.

This is not a new problem for Ethereum, though. In fact, we reported back in July of last year that just two self-confessed pyramid schemes were the most popular DApps on Ethereum at the time.

It seems that finding a consistent user base is more problematic than some people thought. A quick glance of the top 10 DApps on DappRadar at the moment shows that the most popular ones are with gamers.

7 out of 10 of the highest performing DApps currently are in the gaming or gambling categories, with the other three being exchanges.

Despite the low usage figures, ConsenSys MD Lory Kehoe told Bitcoinist that he was still very much convinced in the longevity of Ethereum.

Ethereum is increasingly seen as the most versatile platform for enterprise solutions and the developers who are applying to work at ConsenSys know this… To give it to you in numbers Ethereum has 40 times the number of developers than our closest peer has.

The Problem Isn’t Only with Ethereum

The problem isn’t only with Ethereum, either. In fact, of the 1,828 live dApps on all platforms, 77 percent had zero users and 85 percent had no transactions today either.

The same problem spreads to EOS and Tron and the same types of dApps win out–games and gambling. The leading DApp in terms of users in the past 24 hours, at 7.8k, is Tron-based game Epic Dragons.

Exchanges are also crawling up the rankings with decentralized exchanges like IDEX. But with just 885 users in the last 24 hours, there are plenty of personal blogs that get more hits than that.

Speculation Drives Cryptocurrency Price – Not Usage

If cryptocurrency naysayers wanted more proof of lack of adoption, they need look no further than DAppRadar.

This clearly shows that despite the tremendous hype, speculation and not usage drives cryptocurrency value.

To further demonstrate that point, several major cryptocurrencies are tied to blockchain platforms, including Polymath, and aelf.

Just take a look at Polymath’s performance over the last week–yet it still has a market cap of over $28 million.

Are all altcoin investors completely delusional? Perhaps. Although, speculation may drive price, but so does the belief–and hope–that at some point in the future these dApps will actually accomplish what they set out to.

Are dApps failing to live up to the hype or is it still too early? Share your thoughts below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, dappsradar