The Hydro project held an open community vote from January 29th to February 1st, 2021. The community voted in favor of reducing the supply of Hydro tokens, and the token swap ratio will be 100:1.
Hydro enables private financial systems to seamlessly leverage public blockchains for enhanced application and document security, identity management, transactions and artificial intelligence. A case will be made for private systems such as APIs to use the Hydro public blockchain to enhance security with public authentication.

Project Highlights

Hydro enables new and existing private systems to seamlessly integrate and leverage the immutable and transparent dynamics of public blockchains, enhancing application and document security, identity management, transactions and artificial intelligence. The proposed technology is called "Raindrop" - transactions executed through smart contracts, public verification of private system access, and can complement existing private authentication methods. The technology is designed to provide an extra layer of security for financial data that is increasingly at risk from hacking and breaches. Hydro Raindrop will be made available to the world developer community as open source software so that developers can integrate Hydro Raindrop with any REST API.

Hydro aims to reap the benefits by allowing hydrogen users to interface with the blockchain, integrating in a seamless manner into the largely private hydrogen ecosystem. Operations based on public blockchains can take place before, during or after private operations. Interactions between private and public elements can be used to verify, sign, record or enhance processes within the ecosystem. This model is characterized by making the process more robust by leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology, especially where it can have the most positive impact. While this hybrid framework may not be available on all platforms, Hydro focuses on delivering value to it.

Hydro differs from many existing blockchain initiatives in that it can stand on its own and be layered around new or existing systems without requiring systemic changes. Hydro is not meant to replace it, but to enhance it. Platforms and institutions plugging into the Hydrogen API can automatically access the blockchain. The range of financial services platforms that can leverage hydrogen is vast. These platforms can power virtually any experience, accommodate any number of proprietary services, perform any private data operation, and be deployed in any environment. Hydrogen's structural modularity makes this possible, and collaboration with Hydro acts as a complementary driver of adoption.

What is "Raindrop"

Building on top of Hydro's public ledger is a blockchain-based authentication service called "Raindrop". It provides a unique, immutable, globally visible security layer that verifies that access requests come from an authorized source. Proprietary authentication protocols such as OAuth 2.0 offer varying levels of robustness and utility for a range of use cases that exist. There is little need to compete with these protocols or attempt to replace them — Hydro provides a way to strengthen them by including blockchain mechanisms as an integral part of the authentication process. This can add a useful layer of security to help prevent system breaches and data breaches.

Related link (reducing the supply of Hydro tokens): https://projecthydro.medium.com/hydro-smart-contract-redeployment-57bf0e1f3fb4