Viacoin is an open source cryptocurrency project, based on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Publicly introduced on the crypto market in mid 2014, Viacoin integrates decentralized asset transaction on the blockchain, reaching speeds that have never seen before on cryptocurrencies.

This Scrypt based, Proof of Work coin was created to try contrast Bitcoin’s structural problems, mainly the congested blockchain delays that inhibit microtransaction as this currency transitions from digital money to a gold-like, mean of solid value storage.

Bitcoin Core developers Peter Todd and Btc have been working on this currency and ameliorated it until they was able to reach a lightning fast speed of 24 second per block. These incredible speeds are just one of the features that come with the implementation of Lightning Network, and and make Bitcoin slow transactions a thing of the past.

To achieve such a dramatic improvement in performance, the developers modified Viacoin so that its OP_RETURN has been extended to 80 bytes, reducing tx and bloat sizes, overcoming multi signature hacks; the integration of ECDSA optimized C library allowed this coin to reach significant speedup for raw signature validation, making it perform up to 5 times better. This will mean easy adoption by merchants and vendors, which won’t have to worry anymore with long times between the payment and its approval.

Todd role as Chief Scientist and Advisor has been proven the right choice for this coin, thanks to his focus on Tree Chains, a ground breaking feature that will fix the main problems revolving around Bitcoin, such as scalability issues and the troubles for the Viacoin miners to keep a reputation on the blockchain in a decentralized mining environment.

Thanks to Todd’s expertise in sidechains, the future of this crypto currency will see the implementation of an alternative blockchain that is not linear.

According to the developer, the chains are too unregulated when it comes to trying to establish a strong connection between the operations happening on one chain and what happens elsewhere. Merged mining, scalability and safety are at risk and tackling these problems is mandatory in order to create a new, disruptive crypto technology.

Tree Chains are going to be the basis for a broader use and a series of protocols that are going to allow users and developers to use Viacoin’s blockchain not just to mine and store coins, but just like other new crypto currencies to allow the creation of secure, decentralized consensus systems living on the blockchain

The commander role on this BIP9 compatible coin’s development team has now been taken by a programmer from the Netherlands called Romano, which has a great fan base in the cryptocurrency community thanks to his progressive views on the future of the world of cryptos. He’s in strong favor of SegWit, and considers soft forks on the chain not to be a problem but an opportunity: according to him it will provide an easy method to enable scripting upgrades and the implementation of other features that the market has been looking for, such as peer to peer layers for compact block relay. Segregation Witness allows increased capacity, ends transactions malleability, makes scripting upgradeable, and reduces UTXO set. Because of these reasons, Viacoin Core 0.13 is already SegWit ready and is awaiting for signaling.

Together with implementation of SegWit, Romano has recently been working on finalizing the implementation of merged mining, something that has never been done with altcoins.

Merged mining allows users to mine more than one block chain at the same time, this means that every hash the miner does contributes to the total hash rate of all currencies, and as a result they are all more secure. This release pre-announcement resulted in a market spike, showing how interested the market is in the inclusion of these features in the coin core and blockchain.

The developer has been introducing several of these features, ranging from a Hierarchical Deterministic key (HD key) generation that allows all Viacoin users to backup their wallets, to a compact block relay, which decreases block propagation times on the peer to peer network; this creates a healthier network and a better baseline relay security margin.

Viacoin’s support for relative locktime allows users and miners to time-lock a transaction, this means that a new transaction will be prevented until a relative time change is achieved with a new OP code, OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERITY, which allows the execution of a script based on the age of the amount that is being spent.

Support for Child-Pays-For-Parent procedures in Viacoin has been successfully enabled, CPFP will alleviate the problem of transactions that stuck for a long period in the unconfirmed limbo, either because of network bottlenecks or lack of funds to pay the fee. Thanks to this method, an algorithm will selects transactions based on federate inclusive unconfirmed ancestor transaction; this means that a low fee transaction will be more likely to get picked up by miners if another transaction with an higher fee that speeds its output gets relayed.

Several optimizations have been implemented in the blockchain to allow its scaling to proceed freely, ranging from pruning of the chain itsel to save disk space, to optimizing memory use thanks to mempool transaction filtering. UTXO cache has also been optimization, further allowing for significant faster transaction times.

Anonymity of transaction has been ameliorated, thanks to increased TOR support by the development team. This feature will help keep this crypto currency secure and the identity of who works on it safe; this has been proven essential, especially considering how Viacoin’s future is right now focused on segwit and lightning network .

Onion technology used in TOR has also been included in the routing of transactions, rapid payments and instant transaction on bi directional payment channels in total anonymity. Payments

Viacoin’s anonymity is one of the main items of this year’s roadmap, and by the end of 2017 we’ll be able to see Viacoin’s latest secure payment technology, called Styx, implemented on its blockchain.

This unlinkable anonymous atomic payment hub combines off-the-blockchain cryptographic computations, thanks to Viacoin’s scriptin functionalities, and makes use of security RSA assumptions, ROM and Elliptic Curve digital signature Algorithm; this will allow participants to make fast, anonymous transfer funds with zero knowledge contingent payment proof.

Wallets already offer strong privacy, thanks to transactions being broadcasted once only; this increases anonymity, since it can’t be used to link IPs and TXs.

In the future of this coin we’ll also see hardware wallets support reaching 100%, with Trezor and Nano ledger support. These small, key-chain devices connect to the user’s computer to store their private keys and sign transactions in a safe environment. Including Viacoin in these wallets is a smart move, because they are targeted towards people that are outside of hardcore cryptocurrency users circle and guarantees exposure to this currency. The more casual users hear of this coin, the faster they’re going to adopt it, being sure of it’s safety and reliability.

In last October, Viacoin price has seen a strong decline, probably linked to one big online retailer building a decentralized crypto stock exchange based on the Counterparty protocol. As usual with crypto currencties, it’s easy to misunderstand the market fluctuations and assume that a temporary underperforming coin is a sign of lack of strength. The change in the development team certainly helped with Viacoin losing value, but by watching the coin graphs it’s easy to see how this momentary change in price is turning out to be just one of those gentle chart dips that precede a sky rocketing surge in price.

Romano is working hard on features and focusing on their implementation, keeping his head low rather than pushing on strong marketing like other alt coins are doing. All this investment on ground breaking properties, most of which are unique to this coin, means that Viacoin is one of those well kept secret in the market.

Minimal order books and lack of large investors offering liquidity also help keep this coin in a low-key position, something that is changing as support for larger books is growing. As soon as the market notices this coin and investments go up, we are going to see a rapid surge in the market price, around the 10000 mark by the beginning of January 2018 or late February.

Instead of focusing on a public ICO like every altcoin, which means a sudden spike in price followed by inclusion on new exchanges that will dry up volume, this crypto coin is growing slowly under the radar while it’s being well tested and boxes on the roadmap get checked off, one after the other. Romano is constantly working on it and the community around this coin knows, such a strong pack of followers is a feature that no other alt currency has and it’s what will bring it back to the top of the coin market in the near future. His attitude towards miners that are opposed to SegWit is another strong feature to add to Viacoin, especially because of what he thinks of F2Pool and Bitmain’s politics towards soft forks. The Chinese mining groups seem scared that once alternative crypto coins switch to it they’re going to lose leveraging power for what concerns Bitcoin’s future and won’t be able to speculate on the mining and trading market as much as they have been doing in the past, especially for what concerns the marketing market.

It’s refreshing to see such dedication and releases being pushed at a constant manner, the only way to have structural changes in how crypto currencies work can only happen when the accent is put on development and not on just trying to convince the market. This strategy is less flashy and makes sure the road is ready for the inevitable increase in the userbase.

It’s always difficult to forecast the future, especially when it concerns alternative coins when Bitcoin is raising so fast. A long term strategy suggestion would be to get around 1BTC worth of this cryptocoin as soon as possible and just hold on it: thanks to the features that are being rolled in as within 6 months there is going to be an easy gain to be made in the order of 5 to 10 times the initial investment. Using the recent market dip will make sure that the returns are maximized.

What makes Viacoin an excellent opportunity right now is that the price is low and designed to rise fast, as its Lightning Network features become more mainstream.

Lightning Network is secure, instant payment that aren’t going to be held back by confirmation bottlenecks, a blockchain capable to scale to the billions of transactions mark, extremely low fees that do not inhibit micropayments and cross-chain atomic swap that allow transaction across blockchain without the need of a third party custodians.

These features mean that the future of this coin is going to be bright, and the the dip in price that started just a while ago is going to end soon as the market prepares for the first of August, when when the SegWit drama will affect all crypto markets. The overall trend of viacoin is bullish with a constant uptrend more media attention is expected , when news about the soft fork will spread beyond the inner circle of crypto aficionados and leak in the mainstream finance news networks. Solid coins like Viacoin, with a clear policy towards SegWit, will offer the guarantees that the market will be looking for in times of doubt.

INVESTMENT REVIEW

Investment Rating :- A+

Short Term Investment Risk/Reward Ratio :- 3/7

Long Term Investment Risk/Reward Ratio :- 1/9