Mainnet Impacts On A Crypto Companies’ Reputation

Main networks or mainnets, for short, are complicated and time-consuming developments. Yet, many blockchain projects aim to launch their own mainnet to prove their ability in supporting their innovations and solutions. Within the cryptocurrency industry, mainnet launching is big news.

Highlights

• 44% of people ‘most likely’ associate blockchain with cryptocurrency.
• Most people are more familiar with ‘mainnets’ than ‘testnets.’
• 67% of people tend to trust a blockchain company that launched their own mainnet.
• 44% perceive a company without mainnets as incapable.

Mainnet launching events have also been hyped-up by the media and for various reasons. Mainnets serves as the statement of the project’s capability to facilitate a blockchain project from ideation to implementation. Moreover, it is a milestone used as a metric to consider when investing in cryptocurrencies.

Aligned with this topic, Real Research’s survey focused on people’s perception of mainnet launching events and how this achievement affects the reputation of the project. As for the result, mainnet launching significantly matters.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Association

When Bitcoin rose to fame, the term blockchain has slowly gained attention around the world. Since then, blockchain technology has long been a related word with cryptocurrencies. And people perceive the association evident as well.

According to the poll that asked: How likely do you associate blockchain with cryptocurrency? The majority said ‘most likely’ (44%)  and some ‘somewhat likely’ (30%) to associate the two. Others admit that they tend to associate by answering ‘sometimes’ (17%). Those who can clearly set these two concepts apart are below average — those who answered ‘unlikely’ (7%) and ‘never’ (2%).

This poll clearly sees the close relationship of cryptocurrency and blockchain on people’s perception. Most of the respondents see the two terms as more related than not. Blockchain does power up and supports digital currencies; however, it is not limited to cryptocurrency alone. It can serve as the underlying technology for various systems within different industries.

Mainnet Technical Awareness

Before diving deeper into technical terms, we asked whether people are aware of the terms mainnet and testnet. Almost half answered ‘yes’ (41%). Others only know one of the two, and it is either ‘only mainnet’ (27%) or ‘only testnet’ (16%). Results showed that more people are familiar with mainnet than testnet.

When it comes to cryptocurrency relations to mainnet, understanding the difference between a token and coin is somehow important. Technically, A crypto token is a digital asset that operates on an open-source blockchain network. On the other hand, a crypto coin is powered by one’s own mainnet.

In a poll that asked whether people are aware of the term difference, about half (50%) affirm and answer that they are aware. Meanwhile, almost half of the respondents (39%) said they know their differences but are not fully aware of the difference between the two asset types. Only a few (10%) admit to not knowing about the difference between the two.

In terms of crypto trading or holding, for the people, the difference between token and coin assets did not greatly matter. Based on a poll, those who prefer to trade crypto tokens (39%) stand close to those who prefer to trade and hold crypto coins (41%). The difference between the two is not really significant. Moreover, almost a quarter (17%) expressed that the digital asset type — token or coin — doesn’t matter for them in trading.

Mainnet Effects on Investor Perception

As for investment, a crypto company’s reputation is important to gain investor’s confidence. And based on the results more people tend to trust a blockchain company if they have launched their own mainnet for the reason that they prove to have a capable technical team and have the potential to progress (67%).

For the second reason, people believe that having an established mainnet shows that the company has the technology to offer and not a scam (23%). Others that have below 10% of the voters don’t think having mainnet influences their perception of a company. Some chose other factors that affect a company’s image and it varies: operations and mission are more important (5%); cryptocurrency profitability (3%). For a few, they just see all crypto companies as untrustworthy (2%).

Despite the insignificant difference in token and coin preferences in trading. Respondents still showed that they would ‘most likely’ buy, hold, and trade digital assets based on its own mainnet (44%) while said ‘somewhat likely’ (28%). As the poll result shows, the likelihood is better as opposed to those who answered ‘sometimes’ (19%), ‘unlikely’ (6%), and ‘never’ (3%).

Lastly, in a direct question, we asked whether people perceive crypto companies who forks from other blockchains as incapable. To our surprise, almost half of the respondents (44%) agree and feel a company is incapable when they cannot develop and launch their own blockchain network. Many also understand that the lack of blockchain developers might be the reason why the company uses open-source blockchains (32%).

Interestingly, almost a quarter of the respondents (23%) think the opposite for varying reasons. Some focus more on the developed decentralized solutions more than the underlying blockchain network (17%). For others, they only care about the cryptocurrency and not the technology (5%). For the remaining few (2%), they focus on the company’s goals and don’t see using open-source blockchain in a negative way.

Methodology

Insights derived from Real Research’s “How Mainnet Impacts A Crypto Company’s Image” survey fielded in November 2020 to 3000 respondents aged 19 to 59 in China, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.