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Hey, guys!

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So as some of you may know, [br]I previously covered [br]IOTA in a video.

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And I was surprised to find[br]out that the community

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didn't seem to like the[br]review, even though

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I thought my information[br]was unbiased and honest.

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And around the same time a[br]project called RaiBlocks,

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which is now NANO, was[br]catching a lot of traction.

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That caught my eye, [br]because I was interested

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in the DAG technology [br]as it relates to possibly

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hedging blockchain tech, [br]but I liked the fact that

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NANO used the DAG tech in a [br]different capacity than IOTA did.

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So in this video, as the title [br]has already explained to you,

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I will be covering NANO.

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I already mentioned briefly [br]that it was called RaiBlocks,

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but I just want to say [br]that it's been officially

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rebranded and is now [br]called NANO completely.

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So let's get into[br]a little history.

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Colin LeMahieu is the[br]founder of the project

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NANO and also the[br]lead developer.

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The original whitepaper [br]and also the first beta

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implementation of the [br]project were published [br]in December of 2014.

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Surprisingly enough, [br]that means it's one of the

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first cryptocurrencies[br]to start using DAG tech.

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Other notable ones are [br]Byteball and IOTA,

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but I'll get into[br]that in a little bit.

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That fact stuck out to me [br]a lot because it felt like

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RaiBlocks, or NANO, [br]seemingly came out of nowhere.

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And to know that the project [br]had been around since 2014

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just sparked my[br]interest a lot more.

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During the time [br]the network was live

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after the genesis [br]of the project,

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it had very little[br]development going on.

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It also ran into a few[br]technical issues.

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At one point, [br]Colin actually stopped

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working on development[br]for personal reasons.

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Then around 2016 - 2017, [br]people from the community

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started to band together to try[br]to push the project forward.

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And that's actually how the[br]NANO faucet came about.

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A community member proposed [br]this idea because they thought

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it would be a good way [br]to distribute RaiBlocks

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at the time to everyone[br]with low liability.

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He also volunteered[br]to manage it.

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At that point, development [br]just started to pick back up

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and there's contributors [br]who have been joining [br]more rapidly ever since.

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That brings us to present day [br]where we've seen this rapid

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momentum and growth[br]that's come out of NANO.

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Let's talk about[br]distribution a little bit.

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So unlike a lot of[br]other projects,

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NANO did not run an ICO.

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The original distribution[br]was performed by using an

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online mining mechanism,[br]or what's called a faucet.

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Essentially it was just a [br]website you would go to,

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you would complete a Captcha, [br]and then you would receive

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a small amount of the[br]coin as a reward.

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Faucets were really popular [br]during the genesis of the [br]cryptocurrency movement.

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It gave people a way to get [br]involved in the project,

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and have a little bit of the[br]project without any liability

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or any of those pesky Know[br]Your Customer requirements.

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When NANO started it was premined [br]and all the available coins [br]were kept in a genesis wallet.

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And the private key for that [br]genesis wallet was kept

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in a safety deposit box[br]that was held by Colin.

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Then as distribution by[br]the faucet continued,

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he would occasionally have to [br]go to the safety deposit box,

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take out the private key, [br]send a transaction to the

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landing wallet so that he[br]could fund the faucet,

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and then he would put the private[br]key back in the safety deposit box.

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The faucet actually managed[br]to reach a lot of people.

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The team estimates somewhere [br]in the range of 330,000 [br]accounts accessed the faucet.

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Those accounts were hailing mostly [br]out of countries like Venezuela, [br]The Philippines, and Korea.

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The faucet became very popular, [br]for good reason, and unfortunately

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like all good things it[br]must come to an end.

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There was a lot of issues [br]with people accumulating

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NANO off the faucet and then [br]immediately going [br]to an exchange and selling it.

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They were putting a lot of [br]sell pressure on the exchanges, [br]and this was suppressing the price.

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Not to mention, there were endless [br]attempts to hack the faucet which meant

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the developers of NANO, [br]instead of appropriately spending [br]their time working on the project,

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they were focused on trying to[br]keep the faucet up and running.

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NANO actually got delisted [br]from Cryptopia because

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the faucet users were abusive[br]toward the exchange support.

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But eventually they managed [br]to get listed on Mercatox and BitGrail.

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And unfortunately, [br]because of all the issues

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that they were running[br]into with the faucet,

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they ended up deciding[br]to turn it off early.

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Only about 39% of the [br]total original circulating

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amount of NANO is out[br]there right now.

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They then publicly released [br]the address to the genesis account,

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the landing wallet, [br]and the faucet account.

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That way there's complete [br]transparency within the community,

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and I'll put those addresses [br]below in the description [br]so you can see for yourself.

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No portion of the NANO[br]coins have been kept

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from the original[br]genesis of the project,

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and all the NANO that is[br]in circulation right now [br]is the total that will be distributed.

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On to the technology.

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NANO is a trustless, low-latency, [br]third generation cryptocurrency.

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And unlike a lot [br]of other cryptocurrencies [br]that use normal blockchain,

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NANO utilizes what's called[br]a block lattice structure.

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NANO's focus is for fast, [br]free, trustless transactions [br]from peer-to-peer.

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And that's where they mainly [br]differ from IOTA because IOTA's [br]focus is more machine to machine.

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The team has stated that they are [br]more focused on micropayments

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instead of dealing with[br]the internet of things,

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but they haven't completely[br]ruled that out as a possible

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use case if people are[br]interested in doing so.

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In my IOTA video I had[br]explained what a DAG was,

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which is Directed Acyclic Graph,[br]but I'll quickly summarize again.

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Directed means that new transactions[br]validate preceding transactions.

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Acyclic means that[br]it's not a circle.

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And graph refers to the fact [br]that the block lattice also [br]doubles as the ledger.

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When one wallet wants to send [br]a transaction to another, [br]that wallet creates two blocks.

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One block will go [br]on the sender's blockchain,

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and one block will go on[br]the receiver's blockchain.

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When the receiving[br]party comes online,

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and their blockchain[br]connects to the network,

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the wallet will then pocket the funds[br]and the transaction is completed.

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Transferring funds on NANO's protocol [br]creates two separate transactions.

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The first one deducts the amount[br]from the sender's wallet,

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and then the second one adds the[br]amount to the receiver's wallet.

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Each send transaction must[br]reference the owner's

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previous block in order to[br]prevent a double spend.

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NANO uses a Delegated Proof[br]of Stake system, or DPoS.

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If you don't know what that means, [br]pop over to my Crypto 101 video

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where I cover consensus protocols[br]so you can get a better idea.

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Basically, this just means that [br]users have the ability to choose

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a representative node to[br]vote on their behalf.

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The voting system is[br]balance weighted.

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And what that means is the weight [br]of the representative vote

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is directly proportional [br]to the amount of NANO [br]that's linked to their account.

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The greater the amount of NANO [br]linked to the representative, [br]the stronger the vote will be.

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There's a public list [br]of the representatives,

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and I will leave that[br]link in the description.

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It's important to note [br]that the NANO architecture

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also utilizes Proof of Work[br]in a very minor capacity.

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They use it as an[br]anti-spam measure.

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Essentially because the NANO network [br]doesn't require transaction fees,

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somebody could[br]indefinitely spam it.

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With the Proof of[br]Work implementation,

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each block requires a very[br]small amount of work.

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Five seconds to generate, [br]and one microsecond to validate.

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This would force a malicious[br]actor to dedicate

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a lot of computing power[br]to carry out an attack,

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while simultaneously [br]only requiring a very small [br]amount from individual users,

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overall preventing a[br]much bigger problem.

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NANO has desktop wallets [br]that are available to [br]Macs, Linux, and Windows.

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And there's also the[br]availability of a web wallet.

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The team is very active [br]on their Discord server [br]and within their community.

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They were a great resource [br]for me to help ask questions to get [br]some information for this video.

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Not to mention that[br]they just rebranded,

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so I think overall that shows[br]dedication for the project long term.

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So that brings us[br]to the present day.

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And the current market cap[br]sits at about USD$133 million.

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And Nano is at number[br]23 on CoinMarketCap.

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Not to mention the rebranding[br]which I touched on before.

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That just happened, well, today.

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Looking forward to[br]2018 on their Roadmap,

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they would like to create a[br]lite wallet at some point.

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They also said that they [br]would like to do some

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chain pruning on the network[br]to reduce the size of it.

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On to the Pros.

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I would like to start off by saying[br]that the team was very receptive.

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Everybody was very[br]easy to get a hold of

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and there's a lot of communication[br]going on in the Discord server.

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They were also very transparent [br]and forthcoming about [br]the genesis of the project,

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how they started, and they were [br]willing to answer questions for me,

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the things that I[br]couldn't find online.

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I would also like to point out [br]so far there's been no significant [br]drama with the team,

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and within the crypto community[br]that's a pretty big accomplishment.

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I also love the way that[br]the project started.

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I think that utilizing [br]the faucet idea

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was a great way to get people [br]involved and distribute the coin

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without anybody feeling like[br]maybe there was a risk involved.

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Another pro would be [br]their rebranding for me

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because I think[br]that the old name

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RaiBlocks was a[br]bit of a misnomer

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considering they didn't use [br]a traditional blockchain

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and they used a block lattice.

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And unlike some of[br]it's competitors,

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it doesn't have a[br]central authority

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managing transactions or[br]maintaining the network.

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So this is a fully[br]decentralized cryptocurrency.

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On to the Cons.

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I would have started off by[br]saying that they need to rebrand,[br]but they already did that.

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And in the same light, [br]as much as I like the faucet idea,

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it still is essentially[br]a premined coin.

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I mentioned this in my IOTA[br]video, so I'll mention it here.

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DAG technology does not have [br]the amount of testing let's say [br]that the blockchain does.

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So we don't know if it gets to [br]Bitcoin-sized transactions

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if the speed or the[br]efficiency of the network

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is going to be compromised.

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Another issue is if in theory [br]an attacker bought up millions

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of NANO they could carry[br]out a voting attack.

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NANO does recognize this as a[br]weakness and a possible issue,

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but they don't see it [br]as a large threat

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because of the fact that an[br]attacker would have to buy up an

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extraordinarily large amount[br]of money to pull that off.

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All in all, if you're interested

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in DAG technology as a[br]hedge for the blockchain,

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and you don't really like IOTA, [br]then NANO might be for you.

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My normal disclaimer applies to this[br]video and all of my other videos.

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Please do not take my[br]opinion as trading advice,

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and please do your own research if[br]you're going to invest in something.

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As always, I appreciate you[br]guys coming to watch my videos.

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If you disagree with me and[br]you want to tell me why,

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feel free to come on my[br]Discord and hang out.

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We're in there[br]pretty frequently.

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And also I've started making[br]podcast versions of these videos.

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Obviously, it's just audio only.

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But I put them [br]on my Patreon account and [br]they are there for contributors.

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So if you are interested, I will[br]link my Patreon in the description.

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And again, thank you for[br]coming and stopping by,

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and I will see you guys soon.