Essay: An overview of cryptocurrency technology

Bitcoin
In the world of crypto, Bitcoin is the first that always comes to mind. It is a digital currency created to provide a peer-to-peer distributed decentralized currency. Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to be your own bank, to send and receive money from all over the world with no middleman involved.
Bitcoin’s many unique properties allows peers to exchange assets virtually, in a safe, fast and inexpensive manner. It puts the currency’s owner in charge, canceling interest fees and making transactions transparent. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, meaning once a transaction is done, not even the President of the United States could revert it. Transactions are also extremely fast, you could send money to your brother in China and he would receive it in a matter of minutes. Bitcoin funds are locked in a cryptographic system that is impossible to break, no one has ever been able to hack a bitcoin address.
The notorious, and anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto created the first blockchain use-case. Ever since its inception in 2009, its underlying technology has been studied and used to create new types of blockchain products. It all started with Bitcoin. It’s quickly becoming closer to a global currency than ever before.
Bitcoin’s development is led by Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir J. van der Laan, who took over the role on April 8, 2014. Bitcoin’s changes are decided democratically by the community.
Ethereum
Similar to Bitcoin, Ether is a digital currency used for operating smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a revolutionary platform which brought the entire concept of “Smart Contracts” into existence. Smart Contracts are pieces of software with rules coded into it, they are encrypted and secured in the Ethereum blockchain, making it impossible for them to be duplicated or stolen. These Smart Contracts create the possibility to exchange any asset with no middleman involved, you would be able to sell or buy property without having to spend money on a broker.
Ethereum is the name of the platform, while Ether is the token used in the network’s transactions. Larger than any other blockchain, there are now over 200,000 developers working to make companies, products, and smart contracts on the network. The founder, and icon of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has been called the “face of blockchain”. His ideas and expertise in cryptography has influenced a global community of developers.
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash was created to address scalability issues that Bitcoin currently faces. As a fork of the Bitcoin code, Bitcoin Cash is an different version of the Bitcoin Core software which aims for faster, cheaper, and more reliable to use than Bitcoin for payments. The blocksize has been increased from 1mb to 8mb in order to process larger volumes of transactions per second, ensuring no delays and speed to compete with companies such as Paypal and Visa. With the increase in block size comes and increase in centralization of mining, making Bitcoin Cash less secure than Bitcoin. Outside of mining, Bitcoin Cash has no central points of authority, meaning users will always be in control of their cash without the worries of getting their accounts frozen. Users will have the ability to send money globally at virtually no expense at a fast rate, making payments of pennies to millions of dollars highly attractive.
VeChain
The VeChain Foundation development aims to build a “trust-free and distributed business ecosystem based on the blockchain technology self-circulated and expanding”. The organization desires to create an ecosystem of efficiency and trust-less supply chain logistics, it aims to help businesses and customers enhance their transparency. Their technology could significantly reduce the wasteful information transfer systems of today.
Some industries they are targeting include a multitude of product supply chain infrastructure. You could eliminate counterfeiting in the fashion and luxury by verifying their validity through blockchain item ID’s. A food safety tracking system could stop the cycle of defective produce. The digitization of the vehicle maintenance industry could bring clarity and efficiency to supply chain distribution.
Cardano
Cardano is a smart contract blockchain platform, the first one to evolve out of scientific philosophy. Unlike Ethereum or EOS, Cardano is trying to fix some of the platform issues that have been ongoing for years, such as scalability and democratized voting. Cardano focuses on protecting its users’ privacy rights while also taking into account the needs of regulators.
Cardano is the name of the platform, while ADA is the token used in the networks’ transactions. They are challenging Ethereum’s dominance in the smart contract world by developing their own programing language similar to Ethereum, but they are focusing more heavily on being interoperable between other cryptocurrencies. They focus on transparent, open-source software development. Cardano’s multi layer platform solved blockchains’ scalability, interoperability and sustainability problems.
Ripple (XRP)
Ripple’s software enables banks to use a cross-border payments service while lowering their total cost of settlement. Ripple uses XPR, their token, to make cross border payments, typically taking 3-5 days to settle. Ripple’s goal is to make these transactions fast, secure and cheap for institutions. Ripple is a company that is aiming to improve the speed of financial transaction for banks and payment providers across international borders.
The company is currently comprised of over 150 people, making it the biggest cryptocurrency company. They have made substantial progress and continue to deliver on their roadmap promises. Multiple partnerships have been formed with Ripple to help facilitate bank settlements. They are led by CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has an impressive background which includes high positions in other technology companies such as Yahoo and Hightail. As a centralized organization, Ripple has more direct control over the direction of XRP.
Lisk
Javascript is the most prominent programming language in the developer community currently. Lisk is a decentralized network that enables developers to deploy their own side chains off the Lisk Blockchain. These side chains are fully customizable which enable users to change the parameters within the blockchain.
This project is a user intended and user developed initiative. Lisk wants to make it easier for more people to become involved in creating decentralized systems.
Lisk is similar to QTUM and Ethereum in some ways, except that the customizable blockchain can be split into their own separate side chains. This saves developers legwork from designing something from scratch. Side-chains are basically decentralized databases on existing blockchain applications, like a template someone can use to start a new project.
Lisk is being developed in Berlin by a small team and co-founders Max Kordek and Olivier Beddows, who are veterans in the cryptocurrency and development world.
Litecoin
Nearly identical to Bitcoin’s design, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer transaction blockchain, designed to be used as a currency. It is unique to Bitcoin in that is able to handle more transactions at lower costs. It is intended to be used for daily, small transactions like coffee, without having the lag and high fees of bitcoin. While Bitcoin is seen as the “gold” Litecoin is intended to be the “silver”, it is a faster and lighter alternative to Bitcoin.
The Litecoin blockchain comes from a fork in the Bitcoin blockchain. It was initially launched in 2011 when founder, Charlie Lee, was still working for Google. He is a well-known cryptocurrency expert and is backed by a strong development team who appear to be achieving what they set out to do. They have recently achieved a very notable accomplishment with the first successful atomic swap. Atomic swaps allow users to, for example, exchange 1 Bitcoin to 100 Litecoins without the need of a third party or paying transaction fees.
XLM
Originally based off of Ripple’s protocol, Stellar Lumens now runs on its own network. Stellar Lumens is a decentralized alternative and acts as a nonprofit organization aiming to connect people internationally to low cost financial services. The coins main functionality is to make international, mobile and micro-payments frictionless. Focused on the developing world, Stellar’s infrastructure aims to fight poverty by enabling users access to currency just by having an internet connection. XLM has security features that function as an anti spam tool on it’s network and caters users the ability of multi currency transactions with each other. Users will be able to do this without the seller or buyer needing to touch the currency. The network can handle thousands of transactions per second, with a 3-5 second confirmation time.
Monero
Monero is a cryptocurrency designed to be used completely anonymously, it is secure, untraceable, private and fungible. It has a reputation for being a big part of the silk road and dark-net markets used for illegal activities/products. Bitcoin’s blockchain records all transactions on a completely public ledger, so if you know someone’s address, you could identify their transaction history. With Monero you are completely under the radar. Monero is solving this problem by implementing cryptographic hashing of receiving addresses, therefore separating the coin from the address it is going to, making the sender unknown. If the previous owner of a Bitcoin you hold, used it to buy drugs, that will be forever in the transaction history of it, but with Monero neither you or no one else can find out what your token was used for before. Monero is completely private.
NEO
Referred to as China’s Ethereum, NEO is a non-profit community-based blockchain project that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a “smart economy” with a distributed network. NEO has two tokens, NEO and NeoGas, abbreviated GAS. NEO gives the rights to manage the network while users pay in GAS to deploy and run smart contracts. One example of NEO’s function would be to tokenize the title of a house into a smart asset, and then setting up that asset to automatically transfer to another person after the payment has been received. This allows the network to facilitate the renter and landlord payment with no central authority. Neo tokens can be transferred and multiple participants can exchange assets across different chains. It’s smart contract system can overcome the jamming effect caused by static fragmentation that other blockchain systems face. NEO makes it possible for cross-chain collaborations and smart contracts to perform different parts on multiple chains, either succeeding or failing as a whole.
TRON
Today, almost all content creation on the Internet is controlled by large companies who serve as the middleman between people and it’s content. If you are a content creator and want to make money from your website, posting videos, sharing music, writing blogs, or advertisements, you must go through companies such as Google, Facebook, Youtube, Apple, or Spotify first. While these companies provide the platform for your content, they also take a percentage of the profits your content generates through streams, likes, clicks and listens. Ultimately these companies have full control over how much you earn for the content, with the ability to censor and control whatever they want based on their rules and personal preferences.
Tronix (TRX) is the official currency of TRON, which aims to be a decentralized entertainment content sharing platform eventually leveraging blockchain and peer-to-peer (p2p) network technology. TRON’s goal is to create a free content entertainment ecosystem. The developers plan to accomplish this by putting all the profit earning potential back into the content creator’s hands. For example, a content creator on YouTube can use TRON’s platform by uploading their videos to TRON where they would get paid directly for the amount of activity generated, without YouTube cutting into their profits.
Founder Justin Sun has been listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list twice. In addition, Sun is a protégé of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, China’s former Ripple representative and the founder of Peiwo APP. Sun has assembled a strong team of leaders in various technological verticals. Sun has a bigger vision than just solving the problem of centralized entertainment content. TRON functions to use the following features to better the internet which include: free and uncontrolled data, enabling content ecosystem where users can obtain digital assets from content spreading, Personal ICO with the ability to distribute digital assets and Infrastructure to allow distributed digital assets exchange (such as games) and market forecasting.
Dash
Dash, as in “digital cash” aims to be used for everyday transactions around the world. Dash builds on top of Bitcoin’s software and offers private transactions. It accomplishes them by utilizing an incentivized two-tier model called the Masternode network, avoiding the need for a trusted third party, rather than the existing single-tier model in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Dash offers a service called PrivateSend which adds privacy to transactions. Because of this, Dash transactions cannot be traced, nor is the identity of users revealed to the world. This is important because blockchain is accessible to anyone with an internet connection – a significant drawback for Bitcoin users who don’t want their transaction history and balances to be made public. Dash transactions are confirmed in minutes by the Masternodes network. Through Dash’s decentralised governance system utilising the masternode network, users can vote on issues and budgeting proposals. Block rewards are split between miners (45%), masternodes (45%) and budget proposals (10%).
Quantum
Quantum (QTUM) is an open-source transfer platform of value which focuses on mobile Dapps (decentralized apps). QTUM is the world’s first proof-of-stake smart contracts platform. The idea is for this network to be used as a value transfer protocol (like Bitcoin) and smart contracts platform (like Ethereum). They focus on mobile applications, which gives a lot of people interest considering the global shift towards mobile.
Still an early project, QTUM initiated in March 2017, after raising 16 million dollars in 5 days. The development team is small, but strong with an impressive list of backing investors. The QTUM Foundation is based in Singapore.
STEEM
Steem is disrupting the world of social media using blockchain technology. What is the connection between social media platforms and blockchain applications? Most existing social media platforms do not reward users for providing high quality content to their audience (ie Instagram, Facebook, etc.). Youtube gives content creators a small percentage of advertising revenues, but the governance and centrality makes it much more favorable for the company.
Steem has turned this idea into a platform where users are incentivized to create content with the anticipation and participation of distributed value. Actions such as liking, sharing, upvoting etc. will earn the user micro-rewards, depending on significance or scale.
Furthermore, Steem is completely decentralized meaning there is no governing body that censors or stores users information, that typically would use the data to sell to advertisers. Founded by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer who has worked on a few other successful blockchain projects such as Bitshares and EOS.
Ontology
Ontology aims to develop its trust ecosystem through partnerships to provide distributed services including distributed communities, data verification, data exchange, and credit across industries. It is a network of blockchains, rather than one single blockchain project, acting as a cloud storage network designed to help migrate proprietary enterprise platforms onto a distributed ledger model without compromising them. The developers hope Ontology will be the go-to source for verifying the accuracy and authenticity of things like identity or ownership. Ontology’s platform makes it easy to use, eliminating the learning curve for business of all sizes to install blockchain technology within their company without having to completely change all of their systems. Offering mass customization, applicable uses for Ontology include industries in Finance, Internet of things, payments, consumer, insurance, media, software development, asset titles, medical and government. Users can collect and manage their own identity data from various sources including public institutions, banks, businesses, family, colleagues, and friends.
Bytecoin
Bytecoin is one of the oldest cryptos in the market. It labels itself as a privacy focused decentralized cryptocurrency with source code that is open and allows everyone to take part in. Bytecoin is considered to be more accessible to home computer mining and it is based on CryptoNote. It is an alternative to Bitcoin for users that want to keep their financial privacy. Bytecoin is the first coin to offer untraceable payments, un-linkable transactions and resistance to blockchain analysis. This is important because it is now possible to send transactions quickly anywhere in the world, without fees and without trace. Bytecoin is community driven and one of the only privacy focused coins with a decentralized initiative.
Aeternity
Aeternity is an open-source decentralized platform for computing digital assets. They aim to improve upon existing cryptographic governance, scalability, scripting safety and cheaper access to world data on the blockchain.
The Aeternity platform plans to solve network scalability by keeping transactions off the blockchain and on what they call “state-channels”, until there is a discrepancy or until the data needs to be enforced. The data is processed through Ethereum smart contracts and what Aeternity refers to as “smart oracles”. They are meant to reduce costs and inefficiencies when computing data, which Aeternity argues is preventing some applications from being built.
Instead of bringing real-world data into the blockchain through consensus mechanisms inside smart contracts, they are offering a unique platform that doesn’t jeopardize security or efficiency. They are creating a consensus mechanism designed to process information from outside blockchains and within them, making the data infrastructure interconnected.
IOTA
IOTA is a transactional settlement protocol that enables you to transact sub-cent values Peer-to-Peer without any transaction fees for either the sender or the recipient. A move away from blockchain, IOTA’s distributed ledger, by contrast, does not consist of transactions grouped into blocks and stored in sequential chains, but as a stream of individual transactions entangled together. In order to make a transaction in the Tangle, two previous transactions must be validated with the reward for doing so being the validation of your own transaction by some subsequent transaction. With this ‘pay-it-forward’ system of validations, there is no need to offer financial rewards. Transacting with IOTA is fee-free.
At its core, the Tangle still has the same underlying principles as a Blockchain: it’s still a distributed database, it’s still a P2P Network and it still relies on a consensus and validation mechanism. Similar to bitcoin, Iota’s network’s security is derived from the strength of its numbers. Hence, the more the number of nodes within IOTA’s tangle, the more secure it is against attacks.
EOS
EOS is smart contract platform that attempts to solve the problem of speed, scalability, and flexibility that often become a bottleneck for blockchain-based systems. It is a blockchain-based, decentralized system that enables the development, hosting, and execution of commercial-scale decentralized applications (dApps) on its platform.
EOSIO is software designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. This is achieved through an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. EOS has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.
ZCash–
Zcash is an implementation of the Decentralized Anonymous Payment scheme Zerocash, with security xes and adjustments to terminology, functionality and performance. It bridges the existing transparent payment scheme used by Bitcoin with a shielded payment scheme secured by zero- knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs). It attempts to address the problem of mining centralization by use of the Equihash memory-hard proof-of-work algorithm. (quoted from whitepage)
ZCash shields both the amount of value being transferred and the senders, making transactions anonymous on both ends. Zcash allows businesses, consumers, and new apps to control who gets to see the details of their transactions, while using a global, permissionless blockchain.
OMG
OmiseGo’s slogan is “Unbank the Banked”. Founded in 2013 off of Ethereum’s Blockchain, Omise aims to revolutionize financial dynamics in Southeast Asia. They are targeting individuals and businesses by improving the speed of which the financial system flows, essentially. With a planned online exchange, OmiseGo seeks to speed up the way in which money is spent, and received domestically and globally. They’re focused in Southeast Asia, but have global initiatives planned. As many Southeast Asian countries plan on going cashless in a near future, OmiseGo can play a big part in providing safe, cheap and efficient monetary transactions. They have been building partnerships with companies in the regions and recently partnered with McDonald’s and Credit Saison. Omise has a strong team of 150+ employees, and founder Jun Hasegawa has worked with Google for 16+ years.
The OmiseGo platform has been endorsed by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, Co-founders of Ethereum. A very promising project indeed.
Tether
Tether is a cryptocurrency token issued on the Omni layer which is built on Bitcoin’s blockchain on. Tether was initially created to provide an alternative to holding US Dollars on an exchange. Originally, one would have to attach their bank account to an exchange to deposit or withdraw US Dollars. Tether also provides exchange users with a stable currency that one can hold if they do not want to be in the market. The fixed exchange rate reduces the uncertainty and volatility compared to other crypto assets. Tether has also been used to exploit exchange arbitrage opportunities. This has added liquidity to the markets and reduced the difference in exchange prices. There has been a lot of whistleblowers calling out the legitimacy of Tether but it continues to add to the evolving infrastructure of the cryptocurrency markets.
Binance Coin
Binance is one of the strongest and largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. They developed a cryptocurrency that helps users make quick and easy trades at scale. Binance is capable of processing as many as 1.4 million orders per second. They are keeping up with growing demand, and has support on nearly all devices, including a web platform interface. This high processing rate is due to Binance’s proprietary trading engine that solves the problems that other exchanges are not being able to keep up with demand. Binance also stands out from competition with its high liquidity and low trading fees, even without taking the discount for using BNB into account. Binance Coin (BNB) is a utility token. With the Binance Coin, holders of the token have benefits for using the Binance Coin on the Binance exchange. It is also an ERC-20 token that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. The activity on Binance should be reflected in the price of the Binance Coin.
NEM
NEM or New Economy Movement is the first “Smart Asset” blockchain. Smart Assets give users the ability to modify and customize blockchains for their own unique Smart Contracts. NEM is especially beneficial to businesses, its unique platform is a great tool for businesses to manage their assets. XEM is NEM’s unique token, and it is the second most used token in Japan. Differently from Bitcoin, XEMs cannot be mined. All of the tokens have been distributed among NEM’s clients and the only way to obtain XEMs is through transactions. Another unique feature of NEM is that it has one of the cheapest transaction costs among digital assets, exchanging XEM is much cheaper and faster exchanging Bitcoin for instance.
Bitcoin Gold
Bitcoin Gold is a hard fork of Bitcoin.The primary goal of Bitcoin Gold is to simplify the mining process by making it easy for anyone to mine Bitcoin with just basic hardware. The effect of this change will be to enable a whole new class of individuals and businesses to participate in mining this new branch of the Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Gold uses a Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm, different than the one used for Bitcoin, and an entirely different mining infrastructure, ensuring that Bitcoin Gold is not in competition with Bitcoin over resources. The purpose for this is to make Bitcoin mining decentralized again.
Wanchain
This technology aims to connect blockchains together. They are isolated now, but Wanchain aims to connect these blockchains together. Wanchain wants to eliminate counterparty risk by allowing blockchains to connect through the Ethereum blockchain through smart contracts. This would allow users of Wanchain to exchange digital assets on the Wanchain blockchain across other blockchains. If there are multiple blockchains continue to coexist, Wanchain could play an important role in a continued motion towards decentralization.
NANO –
Nano is a low-latency cryptocurrency built on a block-lattice data structure that offers unlimited scalability and doesn’t charge transaction fees. Nano is a protocol with the purpose of being a high-performance cryptocurrency. The Nano protocol can run on low-power hardware, intended to be a practical, decentralized cryptocurrency for everyday use. Nano’s block-lattice architecture is set up so that every user has its own blockchain, delivering near instantaneous transaction speed and unlimited scalability. Each user has their own blockchain, allowing them to update it asynchronously to the rest of the network, resulting in fast transactions with minimal overhead. Transactions keep track of account balances rather than transaction amounts, allowing aggressive database pruning without compromising security.
ICON
ICON aims to hyper-connect the World. Banks, Universities, hospitals, insurance providers, and investment providers in South Korea. It is a self-proclaimed blockchains for all blockchains. This networks of networks allows blockchains to use the ICON Nexus portal to establish a communication network. ICON’s intent is to have the respective blockchains to be independently govern. The ICON system would be used when collaboration across blockchains is needed. This would allow of intermediaries to be cut out of the exchange or collaboration process creating a more interconnected world.
Ethereum Classic
Ethereum and Ethereum Classic used to be the same blockchain platform. In June 2016, after a hacker stole close to $50 million dollars from their funding, the organizations split between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Both ETC and ETH run on the same protocol and have similar functions, but they have some specific differences. Ethereum Classic maintained the same blockchain and values of Ethereum before the hacking occurred, while Ethereum built a brand new blockchain, bringing most of users and miners with them. Ethereum Classic is a more conservative version of Ethereum that facilitates running smart contracts by offering the benefit of decentralized governance.
Verge
Verge is a cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy and untraceability. It is an entirely open source project that is community led. For instance, no company or organization behind Verge, its creators used their usernames to preserve their anonymity. While Bitcoin was successful at creating a decentralized currency, they are also focused on transparency. Verge uses highly advanced blockchain technology to keep all of its transactions anonymous and untraceable.
Even though all transactions are anonymous, Verge has a public blockchain that allows users to see coin distribution, number os users and other statistics while keeping all transactional data anonymous. Verge also plans to be the first privacy-focused cryptocurrency with smart contracts functionability.
EXTRAS:
Digibyte
DigiByte is one of the oldest open-source blockchains, coming into existence in January 2014, founded by Jared Tate. Jared has a military background and saw blockchains being potentially used for cybersecurity. DigiByte focuses on digital payments and smart applications in the cybersecurity industry. It is already highly decentralized with over one hundred thousand servers, computers, phone, nodes, etc. worldwide.
Digibyte utilizes five secure and advanced mining algorithms to prevent mining centralization which is common in Bitcoin and other single-algorithm blockchains. It also has increased scalability and implementations of various technologies that work to counter cyber threats.
Zilliqa
Zilliqa is a blockchain platform which focuses on solving numerous problems when scaling public blockchains. With Zilliqa’s netowrk, the number of transactions increases at a linear rate to the number of nodes.
This is important because as nodes increase, so will its ability to handle high transaction volume. Ziliqa has successfully run a test on their network where they were able to achieve 1,200 transactions with only 2,400 nodes. This is proof of their ability to achieve their goals.
Zilliqa was also the first network to successfully integrate “sharding” into a public blockchain. This is useful when improving the rate of scalability, bandwidth, and performance in blockchains. Sharding splits nodes in smaller nodes, “shards”, which then can be used to conduct micro-transactions in each block within the blockchain. This technology also makes it more energy efficient to mine.
Decred
Decred or “decentralized credit”, is a digital currency that uses a community based governance model to determine the future of it’s blockchain protocol. The core mission of this project is to solve issues with blockchain governance. Bitcoin has had many problems with the community not being able to agree upon protocol changes, such as block sizing and hard/soft forks in the blockchain. Decred employs a hybrid of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mining to decentralize the decision making process. The team behind Decred is made up of developers who volunteer their time and choose to remain pseudo-anonymous. This is intended for a decentralized implication in their image, but not fully understood. Community members can still interact with them via telegram, reddit, etc.