F.A.Q.
Find answers to recurring questions about Nova Network.
General
General questions about the network, SNT, and the foundation.
Nova Network is a decentralized and community-owned DAG programable smart contracts platform. Like Bitcoin, it enables a new payment system and a completely digital form of money, but with added and enhanced functionalities that enables further development and the creation of decentralized programs that can be used in a range of different applications.
SNT is a cryptographic currency – or digital currency – used to transact and pay for usage fees on Nova Network. It enables the deployment of smart contracts and helps the network to remain secure. Much like Bitcoin, SNT is decentralized and can be used by anyone, anywhere.
The Nova Network Foundation is the entity responsible for coordinating the development of Nova Network’s core technology, as well as promoting the expansion of its ecosystem. It is also the main entity behind the implementation of governance policies and proposals, including those related to SNT and community grants distribution.
Much like the technology behind email, Nova Network has no central owner. Its code is entirely open-source, and anyone in the community can suggest and implement changes to it via its decentralized governance system.
Nova Network was conceptualized and created by a private enterprise called Nova Network Inc. which has open-sourced its technology to enable community development and full decentralization. As of present, Nova Network Foundation is the entity behind the network’s development, and Nova Network Inc. no longer holds any decision-making powers in relation to the development, updating, and upgrading of the source-code of the network, which is done and maintained entirely by the community and users.
Legal
Questions relating to the legal status of SNT and Nova Network.
To the best of our knowledge, there’re currently no jurisdictions prohibiting the usage of Nova Network and SNT. However, considering that SNT is a digital currency, some countries – such as Argentina, Russia, and India – have strict regulations around the usage of this particular asset-class that needs to be observed. It’s your individual responsibility to understand any limitations around the usage of Nova Network or holding of SNT before doing so.
No. Nova Network and SNT are decentralized, which means that is no central authority or regulator behind it to check or validate your identity, or any other information about any of the users behind the cryptographic wallet addresses.
SNT is a decentralized medium used to exchange value between people, like any other form of money, and money has always been used for both legal and illegal purposes. Fiat currencies, credit cards, and banks are much more widely used to finance illegal activities, and the value and innovation brought by SNT and Nova Network are wildly beyond any potential drawbacks. It is also much more transparent than fiat currencies and other forms of money, as every single transaction that goes through the blockchain is permanently recorded and can be audited at any time, by anyone.
The protocol itself is decentralized, and can only be modified by its users, who choose which software and code they run. Assigning special rights to a specific government or local authority over Nova Network is not a practical possibility. However, organizations, governments, and other institutions may attempt regulate the usage of SNT and Nova Network extrinsically, by force, like they do with many other tools and resources that are subject to different regulations in different countries and regions of the world.
As far as we are aware, SNT is not recognized as legal tender in any jurisdiction, but it may still be subject to taxes depending on the regulations in place in your particular region. You may, for example, incur in income, sales, payroll, or capital gains taxes while receiving, selling, paying, or investing on SNT. It’s best to seek tax advice from a professional if you’re not sure about your tax obligations relating to digital currencies.
You may have some protection while transacting SNT or using Nova Network via a third-party proxy that offers such protections in their T&C’s – like an exchange for example – however, when interacting directly with the blockchain there are no consumer protections in place, as there’s no central entity or controller behind it. Nova Network and SNT are completely decentralized and the transactions taking place on the blockchain are permanent and irreversible. It allows users to transact in their own terms, and transactions are publicly and permanently recorded for future proof and auditing, which can potentially be used in a recourse against fraudulent business or individuals.
Being compatible with smart contracts means that anyone can create and deploy a fungible or non-fungible token on top SNT and Nova Network. In these cases, SNT is still required to pay for transaction fees, but the value being transacted is normally denominated in tokens rather than in SNT. Every token have their own existential purpose, that might not always be well-intended or legal. You are solely responsible for conducting your due diligence on third-party projects leveraging on Nova Network’s technology, as well as making sure that your local regulations do not restrict or prohibit you from transacting in these tokens. It is important to understand that anyone can create such tokens, and more often than not they will not have any intrinsic value attributed to them, and are just used to funnel funds from other users that are normally required to use SNT to purchase them.
Usage
Understand how and who can use Nova Network and the platforms in its ecosystem.
Anyone with a device connected to the internet. The network itself is a piece of software that powers a decentralized ledger and a virtual machine, so it is not biased or restrictive in any measures beyond the limitations of its own technology.
The technology behind the network is generic and applicable to almost any existing field of business and finance. You can understand Nova Network as a giant and infinite bookkeeping ledger that is capable of storing information systematically and deterministically – numbers, addresses, transactions, titles, ownership records, etc. Applications can be built to record new information and/or access the information already recorded on chain, which can be further used to fulfil a particular business or personal need.
As any other form of money, SNT can be used to exchange value between different parties; but unlikely many other forms of money, it does it on a decentralized and unbiased manner. It also powers the blockchain it runs on, and every application or individual using it is required to hold and pay fees that are denominated in SNT.
Using the blockchain allow users to access information much more reliably when compared to regular centralized information storage solutions. It also creates a continuous and permanent ledger with records of every transaction ever submitted by any wallet address, allowing for traceability, full transparency, and public auditing. The virtual machine powering the smart contracts can perform immutable and repetitive actions with predictable results, which in turn allow for an unprecedented level of security and the development of truly decentralized applications.
Economy
Learn how SNT is created and why it has value.
The deflationary spiral theory says that if prices are expected to fall, people will move purchases into the future to benefit from the lower prices. That fall in demand will in turn cause merchants to lower their prices to try and stimulate demand, making the problem worse and leading to an economic depression. Bitcoin’s economic design makes it very prone to fall into a deflationary spiral if used as a currency, as its extreme scarcity makes users less willing to spend it now, knowing it will probably be more valuable in the future. There’s plenty of on-chain data that supports that this is exactly how Bitcoin holders have behaved in the past few years. Whilst this doesn’t invalidate Bitcoin’s value, it makes it a much more suitable store of value rather than an efficient means of exchange. SNT on the other hand has a predictable and healthy rate of inflation that supports long-term growth and less price volatility – expected from a currency – in addition to the fact that transaction costs are not prohibitive, and it is economically designed to incentivize a sustainable velocity of money.
Validators are the individuals responsible for maintaining the security and operability of the network. For every new block sealed and added to the blockchain, the protocol creates 2 SNT and distribute those as rewards to these validators.
SNT has intrinsic value because it is useful as a means of exchange, and necessary to operate and run on-chain applications. Every application deployed on its public ledger adds more value and use-cases to SNT, which in turn drives more adoption and increases the demand for the currency. It has all fundamental properties of money – durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability – in digital form, and contrary to gold, silver, and other commodities, it is easily transportable and much more accessible to the general public.
The price of SNT is determined by supply and demand, but contrary to Bitcoin and some other digital currencies, SNT is also used to interact with smart contracts and other on-chain applications.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money, or the money paid by subsequent investors, instead of from profit earned by the individuals running the business. Ponzi schemes are designed to collapse at the expense of the last investors when there is not enough new participants. This is fundamentally different from the value proposition of Nova Network, and the concept cannot be applied to its public ledger, as there’s no central authority in a position to be benefited from such practice. Furthermore, SNT does not require constant – or in fact any – additional funding to operate, and it is designed to function regardless of its fiat denominated valuation. You will get the same exact use-cases, performance, and intrinsic value out of a $100 valued SNT than you will get out of a $0.01 valued SNT.
In fiat-denominated terms, yes. History is filled with currencies that failed and are no longer used. However, most of these have become worthless due to hyper-inflation, and this will never happen with SNT – it has a predictable rate of inflation that lowers in percentage points as supply increases, and this is hard-coded into the protocol. Further to that, besides the currency value of SNT, it is also used to interact with smart contracts and other on-chain applications, so, in theory, as long as there’s an operational ecosystem behind it, its intrinsic value should never be zero.
Transacting
Questions about sending and receiving value on the blockchain.
Just a few seconds. If it takes more than that, most times it’s because you have not allowed for enough gas – or fees – for your transaction to be processed. In these situations, most wallets will allow you to revise your transaction fee and resend the transaction so it can go through.
When transacting with SNT, the notification of payment is almost instant, but it is still important to wait for it to be added into a block so you are certain that the transaction will not reverse. As of present, most digital wallets will only notify you after the transaction has already been added to a block and is final, but it is important to make sure so you don’t incur in losses due to transaction reversals or failures.
The fees vary depending on how congested the network is, but in most cases you can expect to pay no more than a fraction of a penny when transacting SNT. Smart contract transactions might cost more than “raw” SNT transactions, and the fee will depend on how much computational power that interaction will require to be successfully processed.
That will still be fine. The blockchain uses your cryptographic address to store your balance information, which doesn’t depend on your computer or any other device being online.
Yes, most compatible wallets will offer compatibility with most devices, including Android and iOS phones and tablets.