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anonymity alt-coins

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Andreas M. Antonopoulos 2014-08-14 14:05:06 -04:00
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@ -167,9 +167,44 @@ Gridcoin was introduced in October 2013. It supplements scrypt-based Proof-of-Wo
* Consensus algorithm: Proof-of-Work with BOINC grid-computing subsidy
* Market capitalization: $122,000 USD in Summer 2014
==== Anonymity-Focused Alt-Coins: Cryptonotes, Bytecoin, Monero, Zerocash/Zerocoin, Darkcoin
==== Anonymity-Focused Alt-Coins: CryptoNote, Bytecoin, Monero, Zerocash/Zerocoin, Darkcoin
Bitcoin is often mistakenly characterized as "anonymous" currency. In fact, it is relatively easy to connect identities to bitcoin addresses and, using big-data analytics, connect addresses to each other to form a comprehensive picture of someone's bitcoin spending habits. Several alt-coins aim to address this directly by focusing on strong anonymity. The first such attempt is most likely _Zerocoin_, a meta-coin protocol for preserving anonymity on top of bitcoin, introduced with a paper in the 2013 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. Zerocoin will be implemented as a completely separate alt-coin called Zerocash, currently in development. An alternative approach to anonymity was launched with _CryptoNote_ in a paper published in October 2013. CryptoNote is a foundational technology that is implemented by a number of alt-coin forks discussed below. In addition to Zerocash and Cryptonotes, there are several other independent anonymous coins, such as Darkcoin that use stealth addresses or transaction re-mixing to deliver anonymity.
*Zerocoin/Zerocash*
Zerocoin is a theoretical approach to digital currency anonymity introduced in 2013 by researchers at Johns Hopkins. Zerocash is an alt-coin implementation of Zercoin that is in development and not yet released.
*CryptoNote*
CryptoNote is a reference implementation alt-coin that provides the basis for anonymous digital cash that was introduced in October 2013. It is designed to be "forked" into different implementations and has a built-in periodic reset mechanism that makes it unusable as a currency itself. Several alt-coins have been spawned from CryptoNote, including Bytecoin (BCN), Aeon (AEON), Boolberry (BBR), duckNote (DUCK), Fantomcoin (FCN), Monero (XMR), MonetaVerde (MCN) and Quazarcoin (QCN). CryptoNote is also notable for being a complete ground-up implementation of a crypto-currency, not a fork of bitcoin.
*Bytecoin*
Bytecoin was the first implementation spawned from CryptoNote, offering a viable anonymous currency based on the CryptoNote technology. Bytecoin was launched in March of 2014. Note that there was a previous alt-coin named Bytecoin with currency symbol BTE, whereas the CryptoNote-derived Bytecoin has currency symbol BCN. Bytecoin uses the Cryptonight Proof-of-Work algorithm which requires access to at least 2 MB of RAM per instance, making it unsuitable for GPU or ASIC mining. Bytecoin inherits ring-signatures, unlinkable transactions and blockchain-analysis resistant anonymity from CryptoNote.
* Block generation: 2 minutes
* Total currency: 184 billion BCN
* Consensus algorithm: Cryptonight Proof-of-Work
* Market capitalization: $3 million USD in Summer 2014
*Monero*
Monero is another implementation of CryptoNote. It has a slightly flatter issuance curve than Bytecoin, issuing 80% of the currency in the first 4 years. It offers the same anonymity features inherited from CryptoNote.
* Block generation: 1 minute
* Total currency: 184 billion XMR
* Consensus algorithm: Cryptonight Proof-of-Work
* Market capitalization: $5 million USD in Summer 2014
*Darkcoin*
Darkcoin was launched in March of 2014. Darkcoin implements anonymous currency using a re-mixing protocol for all transactions called DarkSend. Darkcoin is also notable for using 11 rounds of different hash functions (blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo) for the Proof-of-Work algorithm.
* Block generation: 2.5 minutes
* Total currency: 22 million DRK
* Consensus algorithm: Multi-algorithm Multi-round Proof-of-Work
* Market capitalization: $19 million USD in Summer 2014
=== Non-currency alt-chains