What Is Casper (CSPR): A Future-Proof Upgradeable Blockchain

Web3 is calling, and the world and its enterprises are listening. Indeed, blockchain and cryptocurrencies have come a long way since Bitcoin entered the market in 2009.

However, despite blockchain’s disruptive and dynamic nature, we have yet to see an influx of enterprises and developers tap into the immense power of its technology.

What is Casper crypto? Could its futureproof, enterprise-grade modular protocol help scale blockchain?

Let’s find out.

Key Takeaways:

• Casper is a future-proof modular PoS public blockchain that features upgradeable smart contracts, and supports popular open-source languages like Rust and Wasm.

• Its dev-friendly, enterprise-focused architecture facilitates new use cases like tokenization and on-chain financial standards as the crypto sphere evolves.

• Its native token, CSPR, is a utility token that powers the Casper network. CSPR can be traded on Bybit as a USDT Spot pair.

What Is Casper Network?

Casper Network is a proof of stake (PoS) public blockchain with a future-proof modular infrastructure that can adapt to the constantly evolving needs of the market. Its dev-friendly, enterprise-focused architecture supports popular open-source languages like Rust and Wasm, which encourages swift adoption by both developers and businesses requiring blockchain technology.

The Layer 1 (L1) PoS protocol provides optimized solutions for businesses and developers to help them leverage blockchain technology for scaling their operations at a low cost.

Founded in 2018 by Casper Labs’ Medha Parlikar and Mrinal Manohar, Casper launched its mainnet in March 2021, alongside Casper Association, its nonprofit organization aimed at managing the decentralization and evolution of its network. Casper Network markets itself as the evolved version of Ethereum, which only shifted to the PoS mechanism in mid-September 2022. 

PoS provides practical solutions to the blockchain trilemma that’s hindered wide-scale adoption of the technology, as it allows for sharding and further decentralization of validators in terms of geographical location. By building on Casper, developers have access to features such as upgradeable smart contracts and low gas fees. In this way, they don’t need to make trade-offs between security, scalability and full decentralization as they build.

Powered by its native token, CSPR, Casper’s robust ecosystem is filled with multiple enterprises and projects across the web3 space, building products in CeFi, DeFi, gaming and NFTs, among others.

Casper Network Use Cases

Casper Network’s focus on the future positions it for multiple utilizations as the world moves toward widespread adoption of blockchain. 

Tokenization

Tokenization involves the creation of digital tokens that can represent both virtual and physical assets, so they can be easily traded on a blockchain. It also facilitates fractionalization of assets, which enables users to buy a portion of an expensive asset at a fraction of its total price, opening up the market to more buyers. Additionally, tokenization fosters the development of self-sustaining microeconomies. For instance, by tokenizing a building, the tokens can be used for various purposes like paying rent, maintenance and even renovations. 

As an L1 blockchain, Casper offers a secure and efficient platform for businesses to utilize tokenization and create new economic opportunities.

Upgradeable NFTs

Casper’s upgradeable smart contracts also extend to its non-fungible tokens (NFTs), giving NFT creators the freedom to update their smart contracts without incurring high gas fees. This spurs the continual creation of innovative NFTs, cultivating a vibrant creator economy.

Unified On-chain Financial Standards

While the tokenization of financial assets such as bonds and futures may lead to economic benefits, there’s still a need for a unified standard to achieve improved efficiency and transparency in financial transactions. 

Casper can help facilitate the adoption of blockchain technology by implementing the open-source ACTUS algorithmic standard, which provides a common framework. The combination of Casper’s blockchain technology with the ACTUS standard allows businesses to develop transparent, verifiable on-chain financial contracts. This promotes market integrity and resilience, ultimately mitigating the risk of financial crises.

On-chain Ownership Rights

The process of tokenizing physical and virtual assets is recorded on-chain, which means that ownership rights are similarly represented on-chain. Hence, even if an asset is fractionalized, with ownership rights split among multiple owners, individual ownership rights can still easily be tracked and verified. Casper’s NFT-based chain of custody (CoC) solution for public patent records further guarantees security of ownership rights by creating and storing patents as NFTs.

How Casper Network Works

As a PoS network, Casper depends on validators to verify transactions and ensure the security of the platform through a network of nodes operating from decentralized geographical locations.

Using the CBC Casper consensus protocol algorithm, participating nodes can reach a consensus by generating and wiring messages regarding a newly created block.

To become a validator on the network, you’ll need to stake CSPR tokens, which helps you earn rewards for participating in the block validation.

Casper CBC vs. Casper FFG

Often, there’s confusion once you mention Casper, because some relate it to Ethereum. 

Indeed, this confusion is mired in controversy. Casper’s Highway Protocol was rooted in its CBC specification, which was built by Vlad Zamfir, an Ethereum developer, who joined CasperLabs as their lead architect in March 2019. Zamfir left shortly after, in October 2019, with claims that the company hadn’t funded his Casper blockchain research. He eventually sued CasperLabs for using the name “Casper” in their marketing in a way that misled potential investors. 

Meanwhile, Ethereum 2.0 runs on the Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (Casper FFG) protocol, a PoW/PoS hybrid consensus mechanism. CasperLabs claims that when Ethereum 2.0 upgrades to Ethereum 3.0, its protocol will operate similarly to Casper’s CBC specification. As such, the CasperLabs team often refer to their work as the ‘’final evolution of Ethereum.’’

Casper Network Key Features

As a highly scalable network, Casper is optimized with relevant blockchain-based features to help developers and enterprises grow in a truly permissionless way. Let’s look at the notable features of the Casper network as it helps shape the future of blockchain.

Energy-Efficient PoS Consensus

At the core of Casper’s architecture is its Highway Protocol. The Highway was built on Casper’s correct by-construction (CBC) specification to create an energy-efficient and flexible consensus protocol. 

Unlike classic consensus protocols such as Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), Highway provides an improved version of block validation. Networks on Highway can reach higher thresholds of finality in a non-binary way, which allows more blocks to be finalized. Additionally, Highway provides flexibility to configure security thresholds for participating nodes, even slower ones.

According to a power usage comparison report by CasperLabs, Casper’s network operating 400 nodes is 47,000% more energy-efficient than Ethereum, and a remarkable 136,000% more energy-efficient as compared to Bitcoin. These findings are shown in the table below:

Upgradeable Smart Contracts

Casper is a future-proof blockchain that enables smart contract upgradeability, which has given the network a competitive edge over other enterprise blockchains. Casper uses a package management model for smart contracts, which allows direct upgrading of contracts that have been deployed on-chain.

Such a model eliminates the need for migration processes that can be costly and complex. Additionally, it ensures that developers can quickly add new features, or address any vulnerabilities, such as fixing bugs, by providing a new smart contract version.

Previously, developers couldn’t edit a smart contract once deployed. Such contract upgrade features on Casper ensure that enterprises can build resilient products that adapt to shifting business needs and consumer trends.

Developer-Friendly

Casper Network is a haven for developers. The network is keen on making life easy for developers who build on its friendly infrastructure. Casper supports WebAssembly (Wasm), which eliminates dependence on proprietary languages such as Solidity.

Moreover, CasperLabs has developed a Solidity transpiler that automates the conversion of Solidity-based DApps into Rust, a safe and highly performing programming language.

By creating a developer-friendly building environment, Casper helps drive enterprise blockchain adoption through simplified migration into the network.

Enterprise Grade

As an enterprise-focused blockchain, Casper Network gives enterprises the freedom to choose between public, permissioned and private networks without affecting the security or performance of the blockchain.

Predictable Low Gas Fees

Casper’s advanced PoS mechanism plays a major role in ensuring relatively stable fees on the network. With its Highway Protocol, there’s less congestion on the network as it ensures block validation validity, enabling a low gas fee structure that’s transparent and consistent. 

Casper Network Upgrades

1. Peregrine — Released in the first half of 2024, the Peregrine update improves the efficiency of Casper by reducing block time from 32 to 16 seconds. Introducing a 99% refund on unspent gas fees also makes transactions more cost-effective. 

2. Juliet — The first upcoming upgrade after Peregrine will introduce a new, more secure networking layer that shields the Casper network from denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

3. Condor— The second update after Peregrine, Condor (formerly known as Casper 2.0) is a major upgrade comprising multiple new features such as gas refunds, a brand-new consensus mechanism with flexible block times called Zug, zero-gas transactions, wallet enhancements and more.

What Is the Casper (CSPR) Token?

CSPR is the utility-enabled native token for the Casper Network. It plays the following critical roles in the Casper ecosystem:

• Used for staking to become a Casper node validator

• Used for rewarding validators, who help secure the network

• Used for paying network fees

At genesis, 10 billion CSPR were created. However, CSPR has an inflationary supply rate of about 8% each year. Its inflationary tokenomics encourage staking or delegating of CSPR tokens to secure the network, and also to support actual economic activity on it.

The genesis distribution of CSPR is as shown below:

Casper Crypto Price Prediction

As of Feb 28, 2024, Casper (CSPR) is priced at $0.0412, which is 96.9% lower than its all-time high of $1.33 on May 12, 2021 and 86.1% higher than its all-time low of $0.2241 on Jun 18, 2022.

Unfortunately, technical analysts anticipate sluggish growth for CSPR. Although analysts at DigitalCoinPrice believe that CSPR won’t pump hard in the short term, they believe it might hit $0.10 in 2025, though remaining under $1 even till 2033. Similarly, Price Prediction’s technical analysis shows slow growth for CSPR, forecasting it to approach $0.10 in 2025 and $1 by 2032.

Is Casper Crypto a Good Investment?

Despite the initial hype surrounding the CSPR token’s release in 2021, Casper has since struggled to maintain a strong foothold in the market. This struggle persists even though the market has bounced back from a prolonged crypto winter from mid-2022 to the end of 2023. 

However, Casper’s future-proof blockchain infrastructure allows for constant improvements, and if its subsequent upgrades unfold as planned, the final upgrade for 2024, Condor, could potentially renew investor confidence with its array of innovative features. 

In such a dynamic and rapidly evolving market, it's crucial to conduct your own thorough research before making any investment decisions. By staying informed and knowledgeable about a project's progress alongside broader crypto market trends, you can make more informed choices about whether to invest in Casper or any other token.

Where to Buy Casper Crypto(CSPR)

CSPR tokens can be bought on Bybit as a Spot pair (CSPR/USDT). 

Bybit is currently hosting three events, with a total prize pool of 3,800,000 CSPR, to celebrate its CSPR Spot listing:

• Token Splash/Deposit to Earn: Through Mar 6, 2024, 9AM UTC, the first 4,000 new users who complete a deposit a minimum of 2,000 CSPR, or deposit 100 USDT and trade 100 USDT worth of CSPR using their Bybit account, will each receive 500 CSPR. 

• Trade to Earn: Through Mar 7, 2024, 11:59PM UTC, trade at least 200 USDT worth of CSPR on Spot to earn up to 20,000 CSPR, based on your CSPR trading volume. 

• Bybit Savings Event: Through Mar 7, 2024, 11:59PM UTC, stake CSPR to earn an APY of up to 99%.

Conclusion

The blockchain landscape is always evolving, and Casper blockchain aims to create a network that will evolve with the technology. Its dev-friendly features, energy-efficient model and predictable gas fees are a good combination to attract enterprises, developers and blockchain enthusiasts. As its future upgrades roll out, users can anticipate additional benefits, such as gas refunds and zero-gas transactions, further enhancing the Casper platform's appeal and usability.

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