If you think that the most valuable cryptocurrency token in the world operates on the largest blockchain network, you are not alone, but you would also be leaving out a New Kind of Network, which is now bigger than Bitcoin. NKN is the token issued by a blockchain project that has been around since 2018, and which now boasts the distinction of being the largest network of its kind in the world.

In terms of popularity, NKN lags behind and does not usuallt make news headlines, but we should not ignore the fact that its exchange price has climbed by more than 1,000% over the last 30 days. What is even more surprising about NKN is that this is not a token that seeks to take on Bitcoin, Ripple, or Dash with regard to monetary circulation. NKN tokens represent economic rewards for people who are willing to share their internet bandwidth, and the smart contracts that determine these rewards run on the 67,000 nodes that comprise the NKN blockchain network.

To understand how NKN works, it helps to know how Bitcoin currently operates: Its blockchain is decentralized and based on mining. The miners, and any number of companies that support their mining processes, are mining on a large network. What's interesting is that the only thing that matters in the Bitcoin blockchain is how efficiently it can function, and this is where the miners come in. The NKN project does not work in this fashion; instead, it relies on the contributions of users to support blockchain apps such as nConnect, a mobile messaging app that aims to compete against WhatsApp by providing true privacy and communications security.

NKN miners are doing more than just presenting proof of work to clear transactions and earn the possibility of getting newly-minted coins. These miners are contributing their networking connections and bandwidth in order to make the NKN project more successful. Blockchain analysts call this kind of projects "Web 3.0," which is a new computing paradigm. Whereas Web 2.0 focused on user-generated content and browser-based applications, Web 3.0 highlights data transmission and secure networking on a peer-to-peer basis.