What is Nano? Is it better than other cryptocurrencies?

The cryptocurrency market has been very volatile this year. From soaring to a peak in two months and falling flat even faster – it has seen a full economic cycle in 2021.

By mid of April, the world’s largest cryptocurrency – bitcoin– had surged to more than double the value it had on 1 January 2021. However, after Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk started speaking about it in critical tones – the digital asset started nosediving, wiping off almost all of the gains it had made on year-to-date basis. Such has been the crash that the digital currency has lost almost US$400 billion in its market capitalisation in just two months.

On the other end of the spectrum has been a rare stablecoin – Tether. The stablecoin has been more like any other national currency – limiting its movements to single-digits. As on date, Tether has been flat on a year-to-date basis. This cryptocurrency has kept itself away from all kinds of wild swings – both bearish as well as bullish.

In all this melee, the meme-turned cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, which is better known as a joke that got real, is still giving its investors a mind-boggling return of 5,107.87% since January 2021. The meme crypto has managed to sweep its investors off their feet despite its year-to-date returns being halved. At one point in time, the digital currency had surged by over 13,000%, thanks to Mr Musk’s public display of affection for the meme cryptocurrency.

Like Dogecoin, there is yet another cryptocurrency – Nano – which continues to offer its investors a very high rate of return on a year-to-date basis. Despite, two-thirds of its mid-May peak value being wiped off in less than two months, the cryptocurrency is still giving a return of 377.25% on a year-to-date basis – multiple times better than any other traditional asset class.

While people have decoded the nuances of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin, there has not been much discussion around Nano. We at Kalkine Media, bring to you all that you need to know about this currency.

What is Nano?

Initially released as RaiBlocks in 2015, the cryptocurrency is a peer-to-peer digital currency. A decentralised, open-source cryptocurrency, Nano is based on directed acyclic graph (DAG) – a directed graph with no directed cycles – architecture and released under the FreeBSD Licence. The cryptocurrency operates without intermediaries – doing so by using a distributed ledger with a block-lattice data structure. The aim of its founder Colin LeMahieu, while launching this cryptocurrency, was to address blockchain scalability limitations, which can result in restrictive fees and increased transaction confirmation times under high load. On 31 January 2018, RaiBlocks, decided to rebrand itself and changed the name to Nano – the current one.

Is Nano a good cryptocurrency?

Due to its DAG technology, Nano records balances in the accounts, which allows for a far smaller storage requirement. This is unlike blockchain, which tracks transaction amounts. Each individual blockchain can only be updated by its owner, and it reflects that individual’s balance history, sharing it with the network. Unlike the blockchains that track transaction amounts, Nano records account balances, and this allows for a far smaller storage requirement. In Nano, every individual blockchain can only be updated by its owner, and it then reflects that individual’s balance history which is shared with the network. Since Nano is completely decentralised, experts say that it is the perfect way to transfer the funds instantly without any fees. Hence, it has also been dubbed as the “perfect blockchain”.