You all know about BitcoinCash, but do you know about Nano?
Nano is a coin with a unique model and blockchain architecture called block-lattice structure which means that each account has its own blockchain.
It is a fee-less and fast cryptocurrency that is fully distributed and consumes a fraction of energy to run compared to other cryptocurrency.
On paper that sounds amazing a cryptocurrency that is instant and fee-less, if you send 21 Nano the other person receives 21 Nano. There is no mining as there is no fees and the coins are fully distributed.
So... what's the problem?
The spam attack
Just a little while ago someone or group of some people attacked Nano currency by simply making a large amount of small transactions that bloated the network and congested it to a point it came screeching to a halt.
That went on for months until the v22 was released for the nodes to update.
What's keeping the network going
Nodes, are basically the representatives in the system that verify transaction and the idea is that they do it for free because if you have a stack in the system you tend to look after its wellbeing.
It's not that hard to see why that's a bad idea.
Apart from Nano foundations exchanges like Binance have there own node and keep it up, however then there are concerns of centralization where it can possible for the exchanges to control most of the network and have influence over its uptime. In theory then if you can control if the network is working or not can effect the price as well.
Bitcoin Cash is low-fees and fast
Even after v22 fix of the Nano nodes many transactions are delayed for hours, whereas the transaction on BitcoinCash are instantaneous.
BitcoinCash as a robust and secure blockchain that has very low fees and the efficiency top notch.
Currency Network issues
Currently there is another network issue that has effected the Nano blockchain, which is on the Nano stored of Exodus a 3rd party wallet. The Nano held in the Exodus wallet are at present essentially stuck due this this issue.
The problem
The problem of Nano is the feature of this coin as well. Being fee-less means there is no incentive of mining and the security of the network is relied upon the goodwill.
While running a node because you have stake in the well being of the network is a solid argument, but it is not cheap to keep a node running 24x7 especially for the average person.
And when there is a crisis like the spam attack and node updates and management, it could be hard for someone to maintain that node and keep it going.
Little fees, a small price to pay
BitcoinCash is almost as fast as Nano, if not faster. The fees are very little but are there, this secure the network with seamless exchange of the cryptocurrency across many official and 3rd party wallets.
Nano is noble in trying to make digital transfers fee-less but I would gladly pay a couple of cents to insures that the transaction goes through than have a no fee transfer that may get stuck or worse locked in a wallet.
Seems like the author did not do any actual research:
True, there has been a spam attack, but the network didi't "screech to a halt". It merely got slower, meaning it took maybe a few seconds for transactions to confirm instead of less than a second. There have been a few transactions that were delayed for a long time, but after a while they were confirmed as well. As the author correctly mentioned, with V22 the spam attack was halted. With V23, NANOs spam resistance will be increased even more.
There are plenty of incentives to run a node, see here:
https://blog.nano.org/the-incentives-to-run-a-node-ccc3510c2562
https://senatusspqr.medium.com/how-nanos-lack-of-fees-provides-all-the-right-incentives-ee7be4d2b5e8
The current average transaction time (final) is 0.4 seconds, while Bitcoin Cash takes 10 Minutes for a single confirmation. Regarding efficiency, NANO uses literally millions of times less energy with energy usage per transaction being about 0.000112 kWh while Bitcoin (and by extension Bitcoin Cash, since it uses the same POW algorithm) uses about 1800 kWh per transaction.
This is like saying the entire internet doesn't work because your browser has crashed.
See 2., also you can run a NANO node for probably about 20$ per month. As the recent spam attack proved, the natwork slowed down but still functioned, making this entire point invalid.
This is just false, see 3.
If anyone reading this actually wants to try NANO and see for yourself, you can download the https://natrium.io/ wallet and get some NANO for free at https://www.trynano.io/ or https://freenanofaucet.com/