#XNO ready to jump
What is Nano (NANO)?
Billed as “digital money for the modern world,” Nano is a lightweight cryptocurrency that is designed to provide secure, near-instant, fee-free payments and addresses some of the key limitations of both legacy financial infrastructure and many modern cryptocurrencies.
Development of the project began in 2014 under the name RaiBlocks, and the coin (called XRB at the time) launched the following year with a giveaway where users received small amounts of XRB after completing a captcha challenge. Users were not limited in the number of requests, so they essentially sold their time for XRB.
In January 2018, RaiBlocks (XRB) was renamed Nano (NANO), with the new name chosen to better highlight the speed and simplicity the project brings to users.
It is a peer-to-peer platform that uses a unique blockchain data structure to allow users to easily send any amount to each other without relying on centralized intermediaries.
Unlike other platforms, which typically use proof-of-work from a large mining network to reach consensus, Nano instead relies on a system known as Open Representative Voting (ORV), in which account holders vote for a chosen representative who are then responsible for confirming blocks of transactions.
ORV makes the Nano extremely energy efficient, positioning it as a greener alternative to proof-of-work (POW)-based cryptocurrencies.
Who created Nano?
Nano was founded by Colin LeMahieu, a seasoned developer and engineer with extensive experience working at renowned technology companies including Dell, AMD and Qualcomm.
He calls himself an inventor, and his interests range from space technology to physics and ecology. He has long been well known in the crypto industry. In 2017, he began working for Nano and became the CEO of the Nano Foundation, an organization created to develop and implement Nano, a position he still holds today.
Colin LeMahieu is also the author of the vast majority of commits to the Nano GitHub repository.
In addition to LeMahieu, the Nano Foundation has more than a dozen other employees, including George Coxon, an evolutionary anthropology graduate and experienced account manager and the foundation's current chief operating officer (COO).
What's special about the Nano?
Like we said, the Nano is designed to be fast. So fast, in fact, that most Nano transactions reach absolute completion in less than a second. In comparison, many other major cryptocurrencies take an order of magnitude longer.
This speed makes Nano suitable for commercial payments, as merchants and retailers no longer have to worry about transaction delays when accepting payments.
Moreover, transactions on Nano are completely free. Since representatives are not financially compensated for their network security efforts, no transaction fees are required. This makes Nano an ideal solution for processing microtransactions, as users no longer have to worry about potentially expensive transaction fees being charged when making small payments.
These features are provided by its unique architecture. Unlike many cryptocurrencies, which are built on top of a distributed ledger known as a blockchain, Nano is instead built on top of a similar, yet distinct ledger technology called a directed acyclic graph (DAG).
This structure is extremely reliable and allows Nano to process up to 1,000 transactions per second (tps) without the need for a power-hungry mining network to maintain its integrity, making Nano an eco-friendly form of digital payment.
