Bitcoin originally opened up a world of possibilities with its public ledger, providing an innovative payment network and a new kind of money. However, this revolutionary digital currency is facing significant scaling issues, as transaction times and fees have caused severe network limitations. These issues can be crippling, and while there are solutions in development like the Lightning Network, many upstart blockchain projects are actively vying to build a bitcoin-replacement.

One such project is the recently re-branded Nano, a trustless, low-latency cryptocurrency that utilizes a block lattice architecture where each account has its own blockchain, achieving consensus through delegated proof of stake voting. These features enable near-instantaneous transactions with zero fees, and all transactions are handled independently, eliminating any block size issue. With these features, the Nano project hopes to offer a real alternative to bitcoin as a digital currency for both P2P and merchant transactions.

Interested in Nano? Here’s a quick rundown of the project:

Platform & Development

Essentially, Nano has created a cryptocurrency designed for scalability that features zero fees and instantaneous transactions. These are the fundamental elements that make up the Nano cryptocurrency:

Block Lattice Architecture

Nano leverages a block lattice architecture where each user account has its own blockchain, called an account-chain. These chains are essentially equivalent to an account’s transaction/balance history, and they only are updated by the account’s owner. This allows each account-chain to be updated immediately and asynchronously to the rest of the block-lattice, resulting in quick transactions.

To create an account, users simply need to issue an open transaction, which is always the first transaction need to issue an open transaction of any account-chain and can be created upon the first receipt of funds. Given that blocks are only added by each account holder, fund transfers require two transactions: a send transaction and a receive transaction.

Zero Fees

Nano uses what is called a delegated proof of stake consensus algorithm, which uses real-time voting combined with a social system of reputation to achieve consensus. Delegates only need to verify transactions if a problem arises, which results in far less energy consumption when compared to proof of work models. Ultimately, this low-energy consensus model allows for transactions with no fees.

Transaction Scalability

Nano can process more than 1000x transactions per second when compared to bitcoin (7 vs. 7000). This is accomplished through an efficient transaction lookup method that scales logarithmically with data size, in addition to the fact that pruned nodes only need to keep the latest block of each account-chain. These features reduce lookup time and ultimately increase transaction scalability.

Nano, while useful for peer-to-peer transactions, is currently being designed to become the main digital currency for merchant transactions. Towards this goal, Nano aims to be able to adapt to any vendor need and use-case, providing a plug and play system for easy adoption. Nano’s instant transactions are ultimately well-suited for merchant interactions.

Nano provides a living roadmap, and it features several upcoming milestones, including releases related to adoption, wallets and the Nano protocol. It’s also important to note that Nano recently underwent a re-branding event, where it changed its name from Raiblocks.

Team

The Nano team, led by Colin LeMahieu, has proven to be competent, even in the face of adversary, which has been abundant supply in the first part of 2018. First, Nano was slapped with a class-action lawsuit for misrepresenting the reliability of crypto exchange BitGrail, from which around 17 million NANO ($187 million at the time) were stolen in mid-February. Additionally, Binance halted Nano trading in late April 2018 due to what they described as “blockchain issues.”

Token Financials

Nano (NANO) currently has a market cap of ~$1 billion with a circulating supply of 133,248,289 NANO and a total supply of 133,248,290 NANO.

Final Take

The Nano project is actively competing with a number of top cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin and NavCoin to name a few. Given its unique block lattice architecture and devoted community, Nano has the opportunity to overcome recent adversary and drive significant value creation in 2018 and beyond.

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Disclaimer: The author(s) of this article may have a position in one or more of the cryptocurrencies mentioned above. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.