Luxcoin Review – Is LUXCOIN the New Best Coin for Mining and Investing?

Luxcoin is becoming more popular by the day. The coin price chart is an eye candy (compared to most popular coins today) and it seems that this constant growth in popularity and trust is not going anywhere soon.

If you are like me, you are probably asking yourself why people would be so obsessed with Lux lately. Is it worth your GPU computing power and money? In this article I will try to help you to answer this question.

Disclaimer: I am a mining enthusiast and this review is probably the most valuable for crypto miners and investors, not for corporation owners.

If you are like me, you only mine coins that serve a real purpose and have a solid team and community behind it. In this review, I will be talking about the project having these aspects in mind. At the end of this article, you should hopefully have a clearer idea on the raison d’être of this coin.

I will try to put it as simple as possible to make it an easy read for you. The original whitepaper, as well as most reviews of this project are filled with acronyms and jargon, which might make it a bit challenging to read for certain public.

Note: This article is an overview of the coin to hopefully help you decide whether you want or don’t want to mine it. There is also a step-by-step a tutorial on how to set up the GPUs for mining and there is also one on the wallet – how to set up and manage it.

Why mining Luxcoin? – A Very Brief Summary

1. Real product and services backing it up
   1. Solid target audience – corporations, governments and banks
   2. Active developer team
   3. Growing and supportive community
   4. Detailed roadmap and constant movement forward since the first announcement of the project
2. Coin price steadily growing
3. One of the most GPU-friendly coins to mine thank to the innovative PHI1612 PoW/PoS hybrid algorithm
4. Immunity to ASIC mining

Introduction

In the past years, the crypto community has been working on creating cryptocurrencies that would be decentralized alternatives to fiat money. The main obstacles developers had to deal with were scalability, safety and transaction speed, among others. In attempt to offer a solution, the crypto community has spawned a huge number of cryptocurrencies – each of which would feature a different approach to the task.

After almost a decade of intensive development, we can now use everything we know about the blockchain to enhance virtually every aspect of our life. Thanks to the past decade of development, we now know that decentralized ledgers are a safer and cheaper way of storing and managing all sorts of data.

Now, as many people have pointed out smart contracts and decentralized tokens are a good idea but only if there is a system that would connect different institutions such as companies and banks into one blockchain-based system.

There are already many projects that aim to implement this technology into certain areas of the daily life. For instance, South Burlington’s Clerk Office has been testing blockchain based land recording storage since January of this year. The results we have so far are inspiring, so maybe it’s time to step up the game?

Luxcore

All of the above means that we already have the technology to implement blockchain into the real world. What we need is a team of people who would do the work to create a blockchain-based system that would help to create that bridge.

This is the exact purpose of Luxcore. As Luxcore CEO Brian Oliver described the project in one sentence,

Let’s take a closer look at those components:

Luxcore Components

Some of the following features are still under development, though I will be talking about them as if they were already implemented. Later in this review, we will be taking a look at the roadmap to know which of the mentioned features are still being worked on.

1. LuxCoin

Luxcoin is an open-source blockchain token of value. It is based on the PHI1612 Hybrid PoW/PoS algorithm. This PoW algorithm is known for being power-efficient and GPU-friendly. It requires up to 10% less power to be mined compared to the average GPU-minable algo.

LuxCoin features LuxSend, which is a form of coin-mixing that provides an additional layer of privacy. The Coin-mixing service provided by the Lux Masternode network will ensure trust-less mixing of coins to obfuscate their origin, wallet details and addresses.

LuxCoin also has SegWit that prevent the receiver from modifying the sender’s transaction ID. This closes a loophole that could potentially allow malicious receivers to steal money from the sender.

Smart Contracts is the fourth main feature of Luxcoin. Thanks to PNM and LuxGate (which we will review in a minute), users will be able to deploy smart contracts for cross-network transactions. Smart contracts allow users to create conditions and pre-program different actions depending on the outcome.

2. Lux Masternodes

Any user can run a Lux masternode to add an additional layer of stability to the network. Masternodes increase the network speed and make LuxSend possible. In order to create a masternode, a user has to have 1,6120 Lux in their wallet and keep the connection to the blockchain 24/7/365. As a reward, users get 40% of the PoS block distributed randomly

Masternodes are generally meant for the long term investor who is looking for a steady return on investment.

3. Lux Wallet

Lux software Wallet serves three purposes:

1. Safely store your funds; easily back up your keys.
2. Trade and exchange your coins right from your wallet. Luxcoin is not relying on third-party exchanges.
3. Earn more LUX by assigning some of your funds to PoS mining. Luxcore PoS algorithm is different than the others. It features faster and more frequent payouts, no matter how little you have assigned to PoS mining. Note: For staking please ensure that wallet is encrypted and unlocked. PoS mining returns about 11% of the total of locked funds a year.

The wallet also features multi-signature transactions to make operations more transparent when there are multiple parties involved. Depending on the situation, the transaction might require 1 of 2, 2 of 2, 3 of 5 or any other number of signatures. This makes it possible for several people to own a joint account and prevent unwanted transactions from happening.

Luxcore Wallet Trading

Luxcore Wallet Staking

4. Luxcore Products

The following two items can be called products because (a) they are close-source and (b) Luxcore team will be selling licenses of those features to their customers.

Those products are meant to be used exclusively by big corporations, banks and governments.

4 (a.) Parallel Masternodes

Based on the i2pd Technology and SAM Protocol, parallel masternodes are a premium feature for veteran businesses. Parallel masternodes add a new layer of security and privacy to ensure the institution a secure information gateway on the blockchain. Basically, any transactions and wallets on those masternodes are invisible for the eye of the common person.

4 (b). LuxGate

LuxGate allows different blockchain ecosystems to communicate and interact with each other. Say, thanks to LuxGate Bitcoin blockchain will be able to engage with Ethereum, Zcash, Monero and so on. The technical side of this is quite complex and as miner, you are probably not interested in knowing all the details. Moreover, LuxGate works with the aid of parallel masternodes, which means that the average miner will not be using this feature anyway.

The Main Plan

Where do Luxcore developers see this company in 5 years? From their interviews and roadmap, I came to the conclusion that Luxcore is and will remain a private project. Its aim is to develop blockchain-based products and then sell licenses of those products to corporate-level users.

They also plan on providing consulting services to big institutions. Since every institution is different on one way or another, there is no way to create a one-size-fits-all product.

There is a marketing phase 2 where they will talk on TV, especially CNN and Fox News to reach their potential customers and PNN/LuxGate users.

Luxcore as a company is planning on working with other companies, banks and even governments to help them establish PNM and LuxGate systems. Luxcore will charge for every PMN license and for any additional work they will be requested to do.

Why Does Luxcore Need Us?

So far so good, Luxcore is a private company that wants to create and sell blockchain-based solutions to institutions and banks. Why would they need us?

The answer is simple. At some extent, we can say that Luxcore products have a decentralized nature, which is why they take advantage of the blockchain.

Decentralization requires the participation of a large number of third-party people like you and me. By mining Luxcore we offer our mining gear and/or Pos wallets as unbiased judges that are validating every transaction inside the Luxcore network.

In brief, I guess it’s important to understand that Luxcore is not an open-source, community-driven project. It does rely on our mining power to remain decentralized, though the LUX tokens you mine can only be used to be held and then sold whenever you see it fit. There is no way you can access to any of LuxCore products using their tokens.

Luxcore Roadmap

Despite some technical complications Luxcore team has been facing earlier, the project is steadily moving forward. While there are some delays, the team is transparent about those and they are trying their best to complete the milestones in time.

Here are some other features that are scheduled for the near future:

What we should expect this year:

Check this section for the full roadmap.

LuxCore Team

I had the chance to chat with two of the core team members. I’ve asked them some questions regarding the project and they were kind enough to answer all of them. I could tell they are busy working on the project, though I believe they do a great job by keeping in touch with the community. If you have any questions, you can do the same – just join the project official discord group.

Here you can find the full list of team members. All of them have real LinkedIn/Github profile pages that can confirm their experience and bio.

Among the newest team members, I can highlight trupvot who is the lead developer of ccminer and the owner of Yiimp pool. If you’re into mining you are surely familiar with this guy and his work.

The project has John McAfee as advisor. In his recent tweet, McAfee confirmed that he is advising LuxCore and he added that he agrees with their vision. In fact, in the same tweet feed he said that Lux is one of his top 3 coins. This news has been received mostly positively, though some people found it a bit controversial. In response to that, the Luxcore team posted the following:

“Primarily, John McAfee is not here to bring attention to LUX, although it has definitely happened today, but to allow us to find and implement partnerships, demonstrate use cases and advise us in all strategic topics to successfully deploy what we have planned at LUXCore.”

In Conclusion

Personally, I believe that LuxCoin is a great GPU mining alternative. I’d say it’s a decent long-term investment – just mine and stockpile the coins till the day you can sell them at a higher price.

I guess Q3-Q4 of this year and Q1 of 2019 will bring the most changes to the value of the coin – right after Luxcore will implement all of the planned features. I will be posting a guide on how to mine Lux soon, so stay tuned! Also, please share your opinion in the comments section below.

Just a clarification: I have not been endorsed by Luxcore to write this review. Also, please don’t take this as a financial advice of any sort. Make your own research.