Enjin Coin is part of Enjin's suite, a company offering a network of interlinked, blockchain-based gaming products. Central to this ecosystem is the Enjin Network, a social gaming hub that lets users build websites and clans, communicate, and manage virtual item stores.
Enjin empowers game developers to transform in-game items into tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Enjin Coin, which is an ERC-20 token, provides value to the digital assets created on its platform, allowing these items to be bought, sold, and traded with real-world worth.
Announced initially in July 2017, Enjin Coin officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2018.
Enjin Coin (ENJ) acts as a digital store of value, used to underpin the worth of blockchain assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Each asset minted with the Enjin Platform includes ENJ, a crucial minting element that is locked within NFTs and subsequently withdrawn from circulation. Using ENJ for minting blockchain assets offers several advantages to both creators and users:
* Provides a reserve value
* Ensures transparency and scarcity
* Grants immediate liquidity
* Offers utility in games and applications
* Acts as an anti-inflationary measure
* Enjin's "melting" feature allows users to dismantle their blockchain assets at any time to reclaim the ENJ value embedded within.
The Enjin blockchain ecosystem is designed to deliver software products that simplify blockchain development, trading, monetization, and marketing for everyone.
Founded in 2009, Enjin has deep roots in the gaming sector, with its first product, the gaming community platform Enjin Network, attracting 20 million users over ten years.
In 2017, after a successful ICO, Enjin positioned itself as a top blockchain ecosystem developer, offering a comprehensive set of tools that make it easy for anyone to mint, manage, trade, distribute, and integrate blockchain assets.
Witek Radomski, co-founder of Enjin, wrote the code for one of the earliest non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and co-authored the ERC-1155 Ethereum token standard.
Built on a strong on-chain foundation, the Enjin ecosystem allows game developers and businesses of all sizes to utilize tokenized digital assets in their acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization strategies. The ecosystem is powered by Enjin Coin (ENJ), a cryptocurrency that backs the value of blockchain assets.
Who Started Enjin Coin?
Enjin originated as a gaming community platform in 2009, founded by Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski. Blagov took on the role of CEO, guiding the company's creative path, while Radomski became the chief technical officer, in charge of the technical development of its products. Blagov describes his expertise as being in creative direction, marketing, and software project management and design.
Radomski first suggested integrating blockchain into Enjin after becoming interested in Bitcoin (BTC) in 2012, eventually advocating for the company to accept it as a payment method. After exploring Ethereum and smart contracts, he decided to create his own blockchain-integrated software. Radomski is also the creator of the ERC-1155 token standard, a new standard for tokens issued on Ethereum. It was introduced in June 2018, finalized in June 2019, and supports the minting of both fungible and nonfungible tokens.
What Distinguishes Enjin Coin From Others?
According to co-founder Radomski, Enjin Coin stands out because every token crafted with the Enjin Platform, the company's blockchain asset development platform that launched in February 2020, is directly supported by ENJ, endowing in-game items with real-world liquidity. Similarly, Blagov envisions a future where millions of gamers use digital items supported by Enjin Coin without even realizing it exists.
Enjin Coin employs a series of smart contracts, where game developers send ENJ to create new, custom fungible or nonfungible ERC-1155 tokens. These tokens are exchangeable on the Enjin Marketplace, which was introduced in September 2019, or can be converted back to their foundational ENJ at any point. As more unique tokens are created, more ENJ is extracted from the ecosystem, increasing its scarcity.
According to its whitepaper, Enjin Coin utilizes a mix of both on-chain and off-chain processes. Upon transaction completion within the Enjin ecosystem, a Trusted Platform contacts the users' smart wallets, and the website or game is instantly updated with a placeholder or non-tradable version of the digital item until the Ethereum blockchain validates the transaction.
How Many Enjin Coin (ENJ) Tokens Are Circulating?
Enjin Coin has a capped maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. However, as more ENJ is locked into in-game digital assets, the number of tokens actually in circulation will reduce.
Enjin Coin was initially available for purchase during a presale event in September 2017, where 400 million ENJ were sold for a total of 38,800 Ether (ETH), valued at $12 million at that time, with an additional 100 million ENJ given out as bonuses. In total, the presale accounted for 50% of the total supply. An initial coin offering followed in October 2017, making 300 million ENJ — 30% of the total supply — available for purchase. The ICO raised 75,041 ETH, valued at $18.9 million then. Unsold tokens from the ICO were locked for six months for subsequent community initiatives and marketing use.
10% of the total token supply was set aside for the company for community initiatives, beta testing, marketing, and strategic partnerships, with another 10% held for team members and advisors. Team member tokens were locked for the first six months and vested over 24 months, while advisor tokens were locked for two months and then fully released.
How Is the Enjin Coin Network Kept Safe?
As an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, Enjin Coin's on-chain transactions are validated and secured by the Ethereum network, which employs a proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Miners compete to add new blocks, and a majority of all network nodes must confirm a transaction for it to be added to the blockchain.
The smart contracts underpinning Enjin Coin have undergone numerous audits, including examinations by Ethereum developer Matthew Di Ferrante in September 2017, smart-contract auditor and developer ZK Labs in early 2018, and Castillo Network in July 2019.
In October 2020, Enjin launched a bug bounty program through the information security company HackerOne.
Where Can You Purchase Enjin Coin (ENJ)?
Enjin Coin is available on various cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Bithumb, Uniswap (V2), and Balancer, among others. It can be traded against fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar and the euro, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, and stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). You can engage in both spot and derivatives markets for buying and selling.
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