Republic Protocol was recently added to Binance exchange and is currently sitting at a 12 million dollar market capitalization.
Republic Protocol is an open-source protocol powering dark pool exchanges. REN is a utility token that provides fuel and security to the engine.
Dark pools are currently a missing infrastructure component in the crypto ecosystem and exist for the purpose of facilitating large volume trades for institutional investors that would otherwise influence market conditions if displayed on book.
As a protocol, anyone will be able to build dark pool based exchanges or integrate dark pools into their current exchange infrastructure once the Republic Protocol team releases their sdk.
Speculation:
Republic Protocol was added to Binance during peak bear market and at a very low valuation. The main net will enter a public phase in January, allowing anyone to run a node. The token exists for this purpose. Anyone holding 100k Ren reserves the right to deploy one of these nodes.
The current supply is around 600mm ren, with the rest of the tokens being locked by a long vesting period to ensure the team works towards the future. At an adjusted market cap based on the circulating supply, ren is actually sitting at a 7.5mm usd valuation.
The Republic Protocol team also announced RenVM, which will allow people to use the ren network for private compute operations.
When the public is allowed to launch Ren nodes, this will constrain the supply and increase demand for the token, leading to a potential appreciation in price.
TA:
Only limited history is available on binance, but Ren is currently sitting around ATLs usd wise.
BTC wise, Ren has just broken this falling wedge structure to the upside and is pushing into a zone of resistance. However, the volume oscillator on the bottom of the chart indicates a shift of power from bears to bulls, signalling a potential ability for the technical pattern to play out.
DYOR as always, but I believe Ren to be a solid long term play and at least a potential short term flip based on public main net launch in January and the TA presented and the TA that is not able to be displayed on Tradingview.
Other infrastructure based protocols such as ZRX are currently trading at 100mm+ valuations, and Ren has some of the most actively developed GitHubs in all of crypto.