Original author: Black Mario, Binance
Original source: Chain Catcher
We can see that in addition to Helium, Render Network, Theta Network, IoTEX and other DePIN concept projects being mentioned and paid attention to by the market again, MXC, a veteran IoT blockchain project with the same DePIN concept, has also gained attention from the capital market in this round of market. It is reported that MXC recently received strategic investment from JDI Ventures, a DePIN investment fund under JDI Global, a well-known blockchain hardware manufacturer, and the amount of financing in this round is as high as 10 million US dollars. JDI Global will work with the MXC team to provide funding, hardware research and development, market influence and other support for the start-up DePIN project to accelerate the construction of the DePIN ecosystem. After the financing, MXC co-founder Aaron Wagener also attended the 2024 DePIN Global Hardware Conference held at Hong Kong Cyberport on April 8 this year, once again opening up the popularity of MXC in the industry.
With the promotion of this favorable factor, its token $MXC has also ushered in a new round of increases with the support of a new round of multiple favorable factors, and MXC has once again become the focal ecology of the DePIN track.
In fact, MXC is the earliest project in the crypto industry based on the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) blockchain, and is also one of the pioneering projects in the DePIN field. Since it was launched in 2018, the MXC IoT ecosystem has been continuously expanding horizontally and has established cooperation with local governments in many countries in municipal administration. Although MXC has not always performed well in the changing narratives of the crypto industry, on the one hand, the trend of the DePIN trend is clear and the track has great potential. On the other hand, with the outbreak of many fields such as AI, autonomous driving, and home IoT, the global IoT field has ushered in a new stage of development, and MXC must be an underestimated potential ecosystem.
This article will introduce and analyze MXC from multiple aspects to further enhance readersâ understanding of MXC.
Distributed IoT Pioneer Ecosystem: MXC
MXC is a long-established crypto project, which was initially initiated by a group of experts and enthusiasts of IoT and blockchain technology in 2017, and launched the mainnet in 2018 after releasing the white paper to the market. Focusing on MXC (Machine eXchange Protocol), it is a protocol designed to provide decentralized solutions for data exchange and communication of IoT (IoT) devices. By leveraging blockchain technology, MXC aims to solve the problems of inefficient data exchange and security in the field of IoT, and achieve seamless and secure data flow between devices. MXC hopes to build a global, low-power IoT network that enables individuals and businesses to easily connect and manage their IoT devices, while improving the efficiency and transparency of data transactions.
MXC is connected to the hardware devices off the chain, and uses the MX Protocol on the chain to collect and process data in a distributed manner, and allows the data system to operate in an orderly manner with the support of the smart bidding protocol. At the same time, through the "Proof of Participation" consensus mechanism, it can not only ensure the continuity and reliability of the LPWAN network, but also allow data providers to access the system through hardware devices and earn revenue from it.
As MX C develops, it also helped the protocol further expand and build privacy last year by building the MX Protocol on Layer3 (based on Arbitrum and compatible with zkEVM). Of course, the introduction of Layer3 is not only providing benefits to its system operation, but also broadening the narrative direction of its ecosystem.
Core Features
1. LPWAN Technology
Low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) are a key technology in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, allowing long-distance communications (typically ranging from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers) while maintaining low power consumption, making it ideal for devices that need to operate for a long time and cannot frequently replace batteries. MXC, through its unique LPWAN technology, provides a novel solution to facilitate decentralized IoT communications and data exchange.
Through the adoption of LPWAN technology, the advantages of the MXC IoT ecosystem include:
Long-range communication capability: MXCâs LPWAN technology is capable of supporting communication distances of several kilometers or more, which is particularly important for covering large urban or rural areas. Long-range communication capability ensures that low-power devices can be connected without complex network infrastructure.
Low-power design: A key advantage of LPWAN technology is its low energy consumption, which means that the battery life can last for years when the device is communicating over long distances. This is very important for sensors and devices installed in difficult-to-access locations.
High connection density: MXC's network design allows for the connection of a large number of devices over a wide area. This makes it possible to create complex IoT application scenarios such as smart cities, precision agriculture, or environmental monitoring.
Spectrum Utilization: MXCâs LPWAN technology typically leverages unlicensed spectrum, such as the bands used by LoRa (long range) technology, which helps reduce deployment and operating costs while avoiding the complexity and overhead of obtaining spectrum licenses.
In addition, the MX Protocol part of MX C is a decentralized network architecture (currently deployed on MoonChian). Anyone can deploy a LPWAN gateway, join the MX C network and start transmitting data. This open network model promotes community participation and rapid network expansion. At the same time, buyers and sellers of data established under smart contracts can automatically execute contract terms and be driven by $MX C tokens, which is essential for incentivizing network participants and supporting complex data economic models.
2. Smart bidding and decentralized data market
In the traditional IoT field, there are two main problems: one is the competition for frequency band resources, and the other is how to distribute and share the data generated by the IoT.
MXC proposes a decentralized data market concept that aims to promote the free flow of data and value discovery. By running on MoonChain, MXC can ensure the security and transparent transaction of data, allowing data producers, consumers, analysts and other parties to exchange data in a fair and open environment. This not only opens up new profit sources for IoT data, but also helps unlock the huge potential of data and promote the development of intelligent decision-making and intelligent services.
On this basis, MXC introduced a unique intelligent bidding system that allows devices in the network to dynamically adjust the bidding for channel usage rights based on data transmission needs and network conditions. In the case of a large amount of IoT data and link resource conflicts, MXC uses the intelligent bidding protocol to allow sensors to bid for network resources to ensure the transmission of critical data.
Sensor owners (in offline IoT scenarios) can purchase network resources through market bidding
Gateway owners (mainly data providers in the network) may earn revenue by utilizing their idle resources.
Unlike current network mobile operators, this price is determined by market competition.
This mechanism not only optimizes the allocation of network resources, but also creates profit opportunities for network participants, encouraging more users to join the network, thereby further expanding the network scale and improving network quality.
3. PoP consensus mechanism
MXC Network uses the Pro of Participation (PoP) consensus mechanism, an innovative blockchain consensus algorithm that aims to provide secure and efficient data exchange and communication solutions for its Internet of Things (IoT) network, ensuring the continuity and reliability of the LPWAN network. PoP focuses on the actual participation and contribution of participants, rather than just based on computing power or currency holdings.
Based on the PoP consensus mechanism, the contribution of network participants (such as data providers, data consumers, network operators, etc.) is evaluated by their activity and participation in the network. This includes factors such as the online time of the device, the frequency and quality of data transmission, etc., ensuring rewards for those participants who truly add value to the network.
Based on the size of the user's contribution, the system automatically distributes rewards, which can be MXC tokens or other forms of incentives. This reward mechanism promotes a healthier and more active network ecosystem. In addition, by rewarding users who truly participate and contribute to the network, the PoP consensus mechanism increases the cost and difficulty for malicious attackers to control the network, thereby improving the security and stability of the network.
Currently, users can access the network through the M2 Pro Miner hardware device launched by MXC, which is an Internet of Things (IoT) miner designed specifically for the MXC network. MXC miners work by connecting to the on-chain part of the MX Protocol, providing a connection point for the surrounding IoT devices to collect and transmit data. In this way, mining participants (miners) are able to earn $MXC tokens in return. This process not only supports the development of the MXC ecosystem, but also provides a relatively passive source of income for miners. Currently, users can easily manage the health of the miners through the AXS App, further expanding the scope of application of the MX Protocol.
4. Layer3 chain MoonChain
For MX C, as more and more devices are connected to the network, how to keep the network running efficiently and manage thousands of communication flows becomes a challenge. Currently, MX C is also seeking to ensure scalability and efficiency while seeking privacy by building MX Protocol on Layer3.
Currently, MXC is building a Zk EVM-compatible Layer3 chain MoonChain around Arbitrum, and building the IoT platform MXProtocol as a DePIN dedicated chain. By using ZK-Rollup zero-knowledge proof technology to build an EVM network, it can further ensure the security and stability of IoT node data transmission. MXC is also the first Layer3 blockchain ecosystem built on Arbitrum.
Relatively speaking, Layer3 can not only obtain a series of support from Ethereum, Layer2 and other chains, but also has more advantages in scalability. It is reported that the cross-chain interaction between MXC zkEVM and Ethereum takes less than 1 minute, and the block time is 10 seconds. At the same time, $MXC tokens, as gas tokens for network transactions, are expected to improve interaction efficiency and reduce transaction costs. After the Cancun upgrade is completed, the transaction costs of Layer2 and Layer3 are expected to drop significantly again.
At present, MoonChain zkEVM has produced 401,894 blocks, with a total of 130,000 accounts and 317 tokens released. The network is in a stable development process.
In addition, the introduction of ZkEVM not only brings privacy to MXC, but also lays the foundation for building a large number of native dApps around the IoT system. From the early IoT infrastructure, MXC is also expected to further develop into the Web3 IoT application ecosystem. It is reported that dozens of DePIN projects are currently planned to be deployed on MoonChain.
Current status of ecological development
1. Business Development
MXC is one of the earliest projects to study blockchain IoT, and has made many progresses since it was launched in 2018. Judging from its current business situation, its main cooperation direction is to improve smart cities. By integrating blockchain technology into it, it can achieve efficient and stable operation of all aspects of the city. There are many more similar scenarios, such as the governance of forests, oceans or villages.
At present, the demand for MXC products mainly comes from B-side customers such as governments and public institutions, which are located in more than 200 countries. Partners of the project include: Deutsche Bahn, Bosch, Berlin Technology Bureau, Carnegie Mellon University, Canadian Tires, Enlink, Korea National Grid, New York Citiesense, Japan M2 B, etc. Potential scenarios include the chaining and transmission of data such as parking spaces, trash cans, street lights, pedestrian and vehicle traffic, etc. At present, MXC has achieved business income and profitability.
Currently, there are more than 63,000 devices connected to the MXC network, with more than 60TB of data accumulated, and MXC's IoT network has successfully covered 20% of the world's land. MoonChain currently also provides IoT data services for many entities. A recent example is that Moonchain can collect water quality, animal activity and feeding system information through sensors installed in Yangcheng Lake hairy crab farms. Miners can get mining rewards by processing this data.
2. Ecological incentive plan
ISO Program
MXC has previously launched the ISO program, which is dedicated to promoting the large-scale implementation of the Internet of Things and blockchain. By supporting the construction of IoT projects on MXC Polar, developers can use DataDash and the community as a launchpad, use MXC to raise funds, launch tokens, allow MXC mining network detection, and have miners certify sensors and mine tokens.
Projects can issue their own native tokens, and miners can mine project tokens, invest in high-quality network resources in promising projects, and receive project token incentives. Developers can use their own sensors to link to Moonchain, and miners on the network will be able to identify and authenticate these sensors.
Through the ISO plan, MXC can attract a large number of IoT sensors to join the network and earn revenue, while the data in the MXC Polar Network is further enhanced. In particular, with the further growth of the MoonChain Layer3 ecosystem, the plan will be further promoted and provide developers with a more convenient development and operation environment.
3. Token Market
Currently, $MXC tokens have been listed on Coinbase, Binance.US, KuCoin, crypto.com, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bithumb, Uniswap and Bitpanda, etc. At the same time, they can also be traded in MXC Swap on the zkEVM chain.
4. Financing
MXC completed a US$2 million Series A financing in February 2018. Investors included Atlantic Labs, Pre-Angel and Distributed Capital, and the post-investment valuation was between US$10 million and US$20 million.
In February 2024, MXC announced that it had received strategic investment from JDI Ventures, a DePIN investment fund under the well-known blockchain hardware manufacturer JDI Global. The amount of this round of financing was as high as 10 million US dollars. At the same time, JDI Global and MXC also reached a consensus on some cooperation. They will jointly provide funding, hardware research and development, market influence and other support for the start-up DePIN project to accelerate the construction of the DePIN ecosystem.
Future development potential
In fact, the DePIN market has already met the prerequisites for an explosion. On the one hand, we see that the hardware industry is mature enough and the product selection is extremely rich, and low-cost construction solutions have appeared in the DePIN network. On the other hand, with the development of modular blockchains and the in-depth adoption of technologies such as ZKP, the underlying infrastructure is able to form a high degree of match with DePIN business needs and can provide support for a large number of high-frequency businesses, which was not available in the past few years.
Similar to RWA, DePIN is also seen as an important bridge that deeply links the Web2 world with the Web3 world, and because it involves a wide range of fields, this track can carry trillions of dollars. As the earliest blockchain project involved in the DePIN field, MXC has not only been implemented on a large scale, but also launched MoonChain to serve more related DePIN projects and DePIN applications, and is expected to further become a pioneering ecosystem in the DePIN field of the Internet of Things.
In the explosive DePIN field, MXC is not only expected to attract market attention as the overall track explodes and the ecological map continues to expand, but the ecosystem also maintains a good partnership with popular DePIN ecosystems including io.net and Aethir. This means that MoonChain is expected to achieve a more organic combination with these leading DePIN ecosystems, and the success of these partners will also feed back to MoonChain.
From the perspective of the IoT track, most scenarios can currently establish actual connections with hardware devices, and areas such as the pan-IoT smart terminal market are experiencing explosive growth. With the accelerated development of the global digitalization process, the number of hardware device connections in the IoT field is expected to exceed 100 billion in the next few years. From the perspective of market size, according to the forecast of International Data Corporation (IDC), the global IoT market size will be close to US$1.55 trillion in 2026, with an average annual growth rate of 12.20%.
As an IoT DePIN network, MXC has the potential to support many IoT scenarios and has been put into practice in many fields. Therefore, the huge growth of the IoT market alone is expected to provide sufficient impetus for MXC's subsequent business market development.
At present, the market value of MXC token is only $31.32M, which is seriously underestimated as an imaginative DePIN market project. In fact, whether from the bull market effect of the crypto market, the explosive growth of the DePIN market, or the continuous expansion of the MXC ecological business and the growth of the MoonChain system in the future, $MXC will become a rigid demand and promote potential market destruction, which is expected to promote the potential value growth of MXC. Therefore, in the short or long term, the expected future market value of $MXC has a high imagination space.
