What is NANO?
Originally launched a few years back in 2014 as RaiBlocks, the vision that drives Nano is a digital cash that offers feeless near instant transactions. Although Bitcoin was the first digital currency, its transaction times and fees are not currently sustainable for a mainstream digital cash option.
How does Nano work?
Nano is unique in that it uses a block lattice data structure. What this means is rather than having transactions recorded in blocks on the main blockchain, each wallet has its own ledger. The main blockchain simply tracks account balances and the number of transactions. This is what allows it to be a lightweight and quick network. Rather than utilizing fees to pay miners to keep the network running, Nano allows nodes to vote on who can add a block to the chain. The overall goal is to make a network that performs much closer to something like Visa but remains decentralized and still cheaper.
The consensus mechanism that keeps Nano running is called Open Representative Voting, or ORV. Representatives are accounts that are configured to be nodes on the network and are always online verifying transactions. The representatives that any wallet delegates to is in charge of ensuring each delegating account has the correct balance. Nano specifically avoids giving out rewards for delegation or running nodes to promote decentralization on the platform and is how it avoids transaction fees.
The heavy hitters in this space such as Bitcoin have limits on how many transactions can occur per second, usually seven per second. Nano is estimated to be processing over 1000 transactions per second. Having said that, there is currently no known limit to how many transactions it can and it is hard to find any real numbers for it.
How do I get started with Nano?
Rather than using an ICO at launch, Nano utilized CAPTCHA coin faucets to distribute coins. Six years later, the opportunities to earn are still pretty simple.
By taking advantage of the lack of fees, there are a lot of interesting ways you can get in on the coin’s ecosystem. There are ways to play Quake 3 in your browser and earn Nano based on how many kills you get. WeNano is an app where you can claim Nano from user made Spots in the real world or create your own Spots for other users. And still, Nano faucets exist online and on Android. A more complete list of earning opportunities can be found here.
Aside from earning a small amount of Nano, it is available to purchase at many different exchanges. But be aware that some don’t allow for withdrawal from their platform (Crypto.com is the first that comes to mind for me).
The recent attack on the network.
Unfortunately, the network had some troubles recently. There was a DoS attack on the network that sent transactions to a screeching halt as it tried to recover. A more detailed look can be found on their Medium here. This sent the value of the coin down for a little bit, but it has since recovered. It took a significant amount of time for the team to recover from this attack, which is unfortunate. But I think it showed that they are ready to respond to any issues the network experiences. The ability to recover from such an attack shows the coin has some resilience and now has increased security from before.
My closing thoughts on Nano
In my opinion, the feeless nature of Nano is what makes it one of the best options to be a real digital cash. On top of that, having the ability to process transactions at a much faster rate is a real game changer here. Nobody wants to potentially wait hours just to get paid for a product. Even if Nano doesn’t become a full fledged currency, I could see it being used as a form of micropayment for smaller services. I’m very optimistic about a future where we use cryptocurrency as actual payments vs fiat. And while it’s difficult to say exactly which coins are going to bring this future to life, I think Nano offers a lot of opportunities.
