What is Nano?
The Nano coin or XNO is the official cryptocurrency of the Nano network. The latter is a decentralized and energy-efficient payment network that enables seamless crypto transactions without additional fees.
XNO aims to become a medium of exchange used in day-to-day life. Nano coin holders can use their coins to pay for goods and services as well as for trading and foreign exchange.
Besides buying Nano on major exchanges, users can also earn it by completing tasks, playing games, mining, or even doing something as simple as tracking their fitness journey.
There is a total supply of 133,248,297 Nano coins, all of which are already in the circulating supply. This is quite unusual for a cryptocurrency project. However, the fact that the circulating supply is equal to the total supply means that XNO is fully diluted.
Nano recommends users hold their Nano coins in supported, third-party wallets that can be found on the Nano Hub.
Since XNO is a cryptocurrency, its price tends to fluctuate. In order to make an informed purchase decision, check out the XNO price history or the current Nano coin price on the graph above.
What are the Main Features of Nano?
Nano is a P2P payment network that’s completely decentralized. It was initially started as a means to tackle major issues faced by Bitcoin such as scalability and high energy consumption.
As discussed in the What is Nano section, the network itself is environmentally friendly because it uses a small amount of energy compared to other crypto projects. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, Nano is a DAG-based cryptocurrency that utilizes a block-lattice data structure where every account has its own blockchain. These personal blockchains are controlled by the account owner via private keys.
The use of DAG (Direct Acyclic Graph) architecture enables Nano to execute 1,000 transactions per second without having to use up high amounts of energy. DAG is a blockchain alternative that records transactions as vertices instead of blocks.
While the Nano token was the first cryptocurrency based on DAG, it’s not the only one. Other alternatives include Byteball and IOTA. The former achieves consensus by using its main chain of trusted witnesses while the latter utilizes a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism of stacked transactions.
Secondly, the Nano network is secured through a unique consensus mechanism called the ORV where transactions are confirmed by elected representatives. It stands for Open Representative Voting and is one of the key components in maintaining energy efficiency.
DAG architecture, block-lattice data structure, and the ORV consensus mechanism are the 3 main aspects enabling Nano to tackle the issue of high energy consumption prevalent in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto projects.
The lack of fees on the Nano network increases the risk of transaction spam which is countered by a special anti-spam validation system.
Loss of Nano Coins worth $170 Million
The road to success hasn’t always been easy for Nano. In early 2018, one of the exchanges Nano coin was listed on, BitGrail was attacked which resulted in a loss of XNO worth up to 170 million US Dollars.
After the incident, BitGrail’s founder, Francesco Firano, tried to persuade Nano into executing a hard fork, however, he was unsuccessful. One of Nano’s investors, Alex Brola, ended up filing a lawsuit against BitGrail. However, in late 2018, the lawsuit was withdrawn as the parties came to an agreement.
Who Developed Nano?
The Nano crypto project was launched in 2015 under the name RaiBlocks (XRB). Its founder and director is Colin LeMahieu - a software engineer/developer with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Prior to founding Nano, LeMahieu worked at major companies such as Dell, AMD, National Instruments, and Qualcomm.
Colin LeMahieu began the development of the Nano crypto project in 2014. A year later he launched XRB through a crypto faucet. The latter refers to a type of launch where users can earn coins or tokens by completing simple tasks on the project’s website. In the case of Nano, users had to successfully clear a captcha to receive a certain amount of RaiBlock coins.
The process of rebranding the project from RaiBlocks (XRB) to Nano (XNO) was initiated in early 2018. The main reason for this change was to highlight the aspect of simplicity and speed. After 24 hours, the rebranding choice was deemed successful due to an increase of 40% in XNO price.
Nano is managed by the Nano Foundation - a not-for-profit organization facilitating the growth and development of Nano. Its core team members include:
- George Coxon - Director;
- Maulin Shah - General Counsel;
- Dimitrios Siganos, Thiago Silva, Piotr Wójcik, and Theo - Software Engineers;
- Pim Coffeng - Growth Strategist;
- Xavier Luyckx - Designer;
- Aneena Ann Alexander - Community Lead;
- Forest Horsman - Social Media Lead.
Nano Foundation receives irreplaceable support from its board of advisors who have worked with major projects such as Amazon and SEB. Advisors include Deepa Mardolkar, Andy Woolmer, and Kyler Sherman.