What Is Energi (NRG), and Should You Buy It?

Energi is a blockchain with its own NRG coin, decentralized exchange, security defense team, 24/7 support, self-funding treasury, smart contract platform, and more.

Energi (NRG) is a unique cryptocurrency project, because it's much more than a coin. It's a robust foundational blockchain, much like Bitcoin or Ethereum, with full smart contract capabilities. But before we explore the breadth and depth of its other offerings, let's dig into Energi's smart contract functionality.

Energi 3.0 has smart contracts

Smart contracts are mini-computer programs that run on a blockchain. They're useful because they execute or negotiate a contract without the need for a third party. So smart contracts don't need lawyers, brokers, or intermediaries of any kind to take effect. Smart contracts were developed to lower fees for a wide range of transactions, while also providing better security than traditional contracts.

Energi 3.0 is compatible with apps written for the largest smart contracts platform in the world: Ethereum. This means users and software developers can easily move to Energi's smart contract platform. The move got even easier with the launch of Energi's Bridge feature, which seamlessly moves Ethereum-based ERC-20 assets back and forth between Ethereum and Energi.

ERC stands for "Ethereum Request for Comment," a programming standard developed in 2015 that creates and enables smart contracts on the Ethereum network. So anything that can run on Ethereum's $405 billion blockchain can run on Energi's blockchain.

The same way app stores on mobile devices want to attract the best apps for users, Energi wants to attract the best developers of decentralized apps (dApps) to its blockchain. Energi Bridge enables that. Those software developers can take advantage of Energi's smart contract platform to continue work on their Ethereum compatible dApps while benefiting from Energi's Defense Team and its Incubator Lab, which provides technical and marketing support. Those benefits help position Energi for a potential breakout, and make it an investment worth considering.

Energi Defense Team is a unique security feature

The Energi Defense Team -- including the Energi Bureau of Investigation (EBI), its version of the FBI -- are unique differentiators of this blockchain. The sole purpose of its Defense Team and EBI is to protect the Energi community from criminal activities, hackers, and scammers. The Defense Team is made up of cybersecurity experts and veterans of the intelligence community, including the actual FBI and CIA. No other crypto has this.

Understanding Energi's four pillars

At Energi's foundation are its four pillars, the technological cornerstones that set it apart from any other current crypto project.

1. Its smart contract platform, Ethereum-compatible and ready for apps in decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
2. On-chain governance to vote on programing updates, marketing activities, and security measures. Those measures include its proprietary Recovery Tool, which enables funds retrieval for scammed users; a three-day waiting period to finalize transactions (allowing time to detect and report fraud); and 24/7 customer service support.
3. A powerful masternode network, which functions as a second tier of consensus on top of the first-tier proof of stake, ensuring the integrity, transparency, and accuracy of the Energi decentralized ledger. Its two-layer system also ensures it can scale to meet higher levels of use and demand. Energi is designed to handle tens of thousands of transactions per second in a stable, decentralized network -- that's much greater scale than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined can currently manage.
4. Energi has a self-funding treasury, which enabled it to launch in 2018 without any external funding, venture capital, or an initial coin offering. This novel treasury model ensures Energi's independence, its commitment to its user community, and its ability to pivot based on macro conditions. Every month, the Energi network releases 1 million new NRG coins, dispersed to the following areas:

• 10% is allocated to investors who, rather than trading, stake their NRG tokens to power Energi's proof-of-stake consensus model to authenticate, validate, and codify new blocks that get added to the Energi blockchain.
• 10% goes to the Energi senior leadership community as compensation.
• 40% is earmarked to the Energi self-funding treasury and is used for developer activities, marketing, customer support, the Defense Team, business development, and other expenses.
• 40% is dispersed to the individuals who run masternode servers.

Additional features

The developers launched the EnergiSwap decentralized exchange in Q1 2021. A decentralized exchange (DEX) is an automated cryptocurrency market where users can easily exchange coins or tokens. (For clarity, coins run on their own blockchains, while tokens run on another blockchain.) With DEX transactions, no third party brokers the deal, so it's known as a "permissionless" transaction. DEXs run on smart contracts. The blockchain and smart contract execute the transactions without a credit check, bank approval, or delay.

Two other novel aspects of this ecosystem include the Energi Arcade, an interactive social setting for Energi users to have fun and build stashes of NRG by completing tasks and games, and Energi Impact, an educational platform with free video tutorials in personal development and self-awareness.

Additionally, the Energi team has publicly announced plans to launch "yield farming" (a way to increase the number of digital funds by lending your coins to others via interest-bearing smart contracts), as well as its intent to launch an Energi NFT marketplace. These latest enhancements almost guarantee wider adoption of the Energi platform.

While some crypto projects may have one or two of these technology drivers or community-building elements, no other has all of them at the same scale. This gives Energi a unique competitive advantage, making it a viable investment consideration.

Energi (NRG) basics

What it does: Energi is a layer one blockchain with its own DEX, security defense team, 24/7 support, self-funding treasury, smart contract platform, a gamification site for users, and more. It also has its own NRG coin crypto currency, designed to be a store of value and a method of exchange -- making it an ideal form of digital cash.

Date launched: April 14, 2018

Market cap: $89.53 million (CoinMarketCap, October 2021)

Availability: It's available on several major DEXs: Kucoin, Uniswap, DigiFinex, and its own EnergiSwap DEX. Energi offers a customized wallet you control, or you can use Metamask dApp's wallet feature.

Should I buy it?

Since its 2018 inception, Energi has built and achieved more than the vast majority of competing projects. Aside from its DEX launch, it's offered a blockchain upgrade to allow smart contracts, and its own bridge to port ERC-20 tokens over to the enhanced Energi blockchain. ERC-20 tokens are purpose-built to run on the Ethereum blockchain.

Energi seems very similar to the long-awaited Cardano (ADA) project, but Energi (NRG) has actually deployed, and is already doing all the things Cardano plans to do within 12 to 18 months. Also, NRG has a severely undervalued market capitalization of $89.5 million and is in a much better position to get to a 100-fold increase than Cardano -- such a rise would place NRG at $8.9 billion. Given all its current use cases and functionality, that valuation would still make NRG a bargain compared to Cardano's $71.4 billion market cap total.

Here are a few other benefits worth considering:

1. Passive income

Staking of NRG coins enables your idle coins to generate annual yields, at more than 15% according to StakingRewards.com at the time of writing. It also lets anyone with 1,000 NRG coins (approximately $2,040 U.S. at the time of writing) establish a masternode, which earns an annual percentage yield of an additional 17%. Lastly, Energi plans to soon enable yield farming on EnergiSwap. Those are three possible ways to put your NRG coins to work, when traditional banks are offering pocket change for savings account interest.

2. Decentralized freedom

Energi investors benefit from unrestricted access to their funds, thanks to its decentralized design. There are no intermediaries, approvals, or credit checks, due to its permissionless and transparent system. That's not always the case for other assets or fiat currencies.

3. Security against fraud and scams

Energi's Defense Team and the Energi Bureau of Investigation exist to protect users and community members. They have identified and brought to justice multiple fraudsters including the largest scammer on Discord. Since the launch of EBI, Energi says it has reduced cybercrime within its ecosystem by more than 70% -- no other project can credibly make that claim and prove it.

4. Current and pending use cases across its blockchain

Energi is a layer one blockchain with its own decentralized exchange, security defense team, 24/7 support, self-funding treasury, smart contract platform, gamification site for users, multiple passive income streams, a planned NFT marketplace and more. Its NRG coin is designed to be both a store of value and an efficient method of exchange. There are a limited number of projects that provide this high level of value at a bargain basement price.

Bottom line

Energi provides a tremendous amount of utility, value, and growth potential. It's been quietly laying the foundation as it continues to work toward its lofty ambition of becoming "the world's leading cryptocurrency platform" and is poised for a significant pump.

Its only major drawback is that it's not currently available on any centralized exchanges, such as Coinbase, Robinhood, or Gemini. But that doesn't change its tremendous potential value, which continues to build.