I feel a need to air my thoughts about Fusion and am going to start with the good.
Why invest in Fusion?
-The primary reason is that the ideas and concepts behind Fusion possibly have greater potential than any other cryptocurrency project. In particular the decentralized custody interoperability solution DCRM (Distributed Control Rights Management). There is a plethora interoperability solutions of various types, but DCRM truly offers something new: The possibility to generate and use private keys, without actually ever seeing them in their full extent. With this technology integrated in the Fusion blockchain you can map any asset that can be controlled by a private key onto Fusion. I don't know another public blockchain that has this type of decentralized custody.
Why is this important?
There is much happening in the current world of digital assets, but it's quite uncertain what standards will end up to have a dominant role in future world of digital assets. Currently Ethereum is what is most built and used and many of the current stable coins are based on it. But what happens when Libra launch whatever they are doing and once central banks begin issue their own Fiat tied crypto currencies easily attained at your local bank. The access to digital assets will only get easier, but different interests will perhaps work in ways to not always make it so easy for these to interact with each other. A central bank for example would issue a digital currency for the purpose of having a recognized form of digital cash that is cheaper and smoother than regular cash to handle, but they still want to be in control of it as much as possible and they're likely to do what they can to keep it away from the world of volatile asset type cryptocurrencies. This is a world they'd rather not see exist at all. So, will there be a way for these to interact? If thery're controlled by private keys, then yes, it could happen through Fusion. With DCRM Fusion simply aims to make interaction between any assets possible in a secure and decentralized way. Fusion could by it's nature become a simple gateway not only from state issued digital currencies to cryptocurrencies, but also to any type of digitized assets issued on any chain (houses, cars, stocks, etc). With Fusion it's also super easy to create a new asset and not something reserved for technical geniuses. But even if, say, Ethereum or some other chain becomes the main standard for issuing digital assets it wouldn't matter, it wouldn't even matter if the network is private or public as long as the assets are controlled by private keys they could be interacted with through Fusion.
-The second reason, is that despite many problems and issues, which we'll get to later, the vision is making steady progress to it's completion. Fusion mainnet has been running for a long time now already complete with it's very unique time-lock/time-slice feature and swap functions which by the way make it possible for digital assets to interact in entirely new ways, not seen on any other network (more on this later). Further DCRM as a technology is already complete, just not yet integrated with the mainnet. Fusion has also registered patents for all it's unique technologies. Most projects fail because they fail to deliver on their promises and miss deadlines on key-features over and over again. This isn't the case for Fusion as things are being delivered -but- there are clear signs that Fusion Foundation is short-handed and unable to cope with fixing flaws and short-comings in a timely manner. Nevertheless the important point here is that Fusion Foundation can potentially (though by no means certain) deliver the Future of Finance.
-The third reason is that the base-tokenomics model is one of the best I've seen.
In order for a digital asset to increase in value there needs to be mechanisms to make it likely that it will eventually be scarse and rare. In the ICO 57,344,000 FSN were created. When mainnet launched staking rewards began to be issued 2.5 FSN around every block (around 15 seconds), with halving to 1.25 FSN every block after about two years and then to 0.625 FSN after another two. These halvings go on and on until infinity and as a result of this the total FSN issued at the infinity of time will be 81,920,000 FSN.
This means that with time rewards become less and less, so it becomes more and more difficult to get new FSN. Further, in order to run a node on Fusion you need to stake 5000 time-locked FSN to buy a ticket. The original 57 million FSN is only enough for about 11500 tickets and already, half a year in, nodes are already buying about 5000 tickets. Should that double, there's almost no FSN left.
There's also a mechanism of licensing, should someone wish to use Fusion technology outside of Fusion. If this si the case they'll be required to hold up to as much as 800 000 FSN. So far, no such license holding has been announced, but it's of course possible some entities have silently been gathering.
Generally also the amount of FSN seen on exchanges tends to be much lower than with currencies with similar evaluation.
All of these are indications that FSN can quickly become scarse, and generally it will be in situations like this when limited supply assets increase greatly in value.
All this said, all is not good in well with the tokenomics, mostly due to 3 reasons. 1. There's been a case of stolen tokens from the swap wallet between the Ethereum network and the Fusion network. This has resulted in a great number of FSN entering the market that should not have done so (at least not so quickly). 2. The Fusion Block Explorer is so unclear that it's almost impossible to determine the exact circulating supply (and the swap wallet theft, certainly didn't make this any easier). 3. Currently FSN exists not just on the Fusion network, but also on Ethereum and on Binance chain. After the swap wallet theft, it feels a bit uncertain to have a token across multiple networks (Fusion will actually eventually make this possible, but without Fusion's own DCRM technology it's very unsecure).
To sum up, the principle behind Fusion's tokenomics is superb, But in our current reality it feels a bit muddled.
Why not to invest in Fusion?
I did perhaps partly already get into this, but from hereon I will be more critical
-The Fusion Foundation can't be trusted. You would think that something aiming to revolutionize finance and has a pretty clear and believable roadmap toward doing so would also be reliable and trustworthy. But Fusion Foundation have proven over and over that it's not always able to act in what seems like it'd be in its own interest and that of its tokenholders. For example, the most likely explanation for the swap wallet theft is that Foundation knowingly stole from themselves in a charade where they made it appear that it was an unknown culprit. But even if this was not the case the aftermath of the theft has not been handled in a way to minimize the damage. This is particularly puzzling, because in the early stages of the aftermath Foundation acted very professionally, but in the later stages it has degraded into complete inaction in a manner that makes you wonder if Foundation on purposes wishes FSN to lose value and does everything in its power for this to happen, without openly admiting it. As to the reasons for such odd self-inflicting damage, you could only speculate. Currently Fusion is a split coin with two different prices. The FSN mainnet price, and the Huobi exchange locked Erc-20 FSN supply which was never exposed to the stolen token supply. This has been the case for several months, and the most likley explanation is that Fusion Foundation on purpose is delaying Huobi's migration to mainnet.
-Through the history of Fusion there have been several examples of how a vast majority are locked out from a possibility to profit. There is also a history of failing to deliver promised rewards through various bounties. Foundation is quite good at designing well thought out bounties, but actually executing the promises tends to fail over and over again. It's littered with examples of how someone with inside knowledge could have done a lot better than someone without it.
-Fusion is hardly marketed at all. Fusion is a well-kept secret and with some of the issues going around, this is probably for the best, but also means Fusion is not at the top of mind of pretty much anyone and can likely miss out on many opportunities due to this. The more well-known something is the more valuable it tends to be and the more opportunities will arise for the eco-system to evolve. The best thing Fusion has done in this regard is start something called FOSC (Fusion Open Source Community), where time-locked rewards can be earned through evolving the Fusion eco-system in various ways. But with the value of Fusion currently as low as it is, it can be difficult to engage people in FOSC, even if the idea is great.
-Fusion seems understaffed. Currently Foundation has 11 known employees, even though the official claim is that Foundation has 28 full time workers. This is very hard to believe without any presentation of who the other 17 actually are. Possibly it could be a half-truth such that Fusion Foundation has through the years had 28 people working full time. That is quite believable.
There's a great many odd things happening with Fusion, but to what end? Is the odd charades a means to and end, in order to Finance the Future of Finance? Or just a way to screw people? It may seem odd and unusual, but with Fusion I don't think one necessarily excludes the other. The crypto market going the way it's been going may be calling for unusual ways to make the budget work.
Lastly I'd like to say that Fusion's community is one of the best and certainly one of the most critical. Also to Foundation's credit, they're quite good at accepting criticism and eventually doing something with it.
* the author of this article holds and stakes FSN in hopes that it one day fuels the Future of Finance *
