Hi @JoyRaptor, good questions!
Quick answer
Because we are different
Longer answer
There are quite a few reasons, but let me highlight just the most important ones
Motivation
For us, privacy comes first. Blockchain technology allows us to build privacy products for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the whole token economy. Bringing value to users comes first - project market cap comes second.
Approach
Over the past few years, we’ve seen some amazing developments, but some things have largely remained the same. 99.9% of newly created blockchain projects sell promises to their community, and building takes a backseat to marketing.
For example:
REN protocol you mentioned - here is their ICO page: https://icodrops.com/republic-protocol/ the fundraising event ended on February 3, 2018.
They ran marketing campaigns around the project for 2 years before they showed the first demo of the bridge to Bitcoin. This strategy seems to have worked for them. I am looking forward to following their progress.
Ren’s first-year road map:
Incognito doesn’t sell promises.
We didn’t do an ICO because we didn’t think it was right to ask investors to pay before any code was written. Marketing didn’t begin till we had something to show.
In that same ethos, we simply build what are hopefully useful products, and bring them to users. If it’s not good enough, you guys tell us and we improve and release it again. This cycle never stops. Simply because we want to build the best privacy applications and deliver the best privacy experiences.
Incognito’s first-year road map - Incognito Core Dev 2020 Live Roadmap
@JoyRaptor some thoughts regarding the competitors.
If you haven’t read it yet, check out this article - Bitcoin Is A Platypus(Dec 2017). There have been a lot of discussions over what Bitcoin is, and what it’s main competitor is. There wasn’t a clear answer - and so it was compared to the Platypus.
Coming back to Incognito
The is no single project which competes with incognito in all directions. From one point of view, there are competitors in each direction, from another point of view, these can be an advantages and opportunities:
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Incognito DEX - could be a privacy-focused, cross-chain alternative to Uniswap. It is blockchain agnostic, it’s private, and it’s also inclusive - we will soon be Integrating Uniswap into the pDEX.
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Incognito wallet. Is it correct to compare it with Wasabi (bitcoin mixer) or TornadoCash (ethereum mixer)? If so, the current Incognito privacy set is considerably more robust than a plain mixing approach.
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Incognito Node. Have you ever tried to power any blockchain network? If I ask my grandma to connect to Incognito Network, she will do it within 15 min (including box unpacking). It’s definitely a significant improvement compared to current solutions.
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Privacy (PRV). Sometimes, users compare PRV to Monero. If you compare the utility of PRV and XMR you’ll find that PRV has more use cases. And we could make noise saying that we are the new Monero.
Instead of spouting clickbait, we build DeFi for XMR and the monero community. Incognito wallet supports XMR, Incognito DEX supports XMR with liquidity pools ≈$200k, and you can lock XMR into pools and earn 9% APY on it.
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Privacy for smart-contracts. This is a unique technology. This tech allows us to integrate privacy into the whole DeFi ecosystem and bring Kyber, Uniswap, Compound and more - into the Incognito App.
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Sidechains. This can be a dirty word to some, but we believe we are building the perfect Bitcoin and Ethereum sidechain. For Bitcoin, we can easily compete with the Lightning network, for the Ethereum network, we can compete with Matic, OMG, and others.
From this point of view, I would say that Incognito is a Platypus - like everyone and not like anyone at the same time. With a very simple goal - to build privacy for the whole token economy.