Anoncoin

Anoncoin (code: ANC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by and technically nearly identical to Litecoin (LTC), Anoncoin creation and transfer is based on an open source encryption protocol and is not managed by any central authority. Anoncoin is intended by its developers to improve upon Bitcoin and offers three key differences for the moment. Faster transactions, darknet support and coin control. Each Anoncoin is subdivided into 280,000,000 smaller units, defined by eight decimal places.
Besides from other clients, Anoncoin got native I2P support as well as the normal TCP/IP transport layer. As of 0.8.7.3 (not released yet) Anoncoin has implementated coincontrol as well.
Differences from Bitcoin
Anoncoin offers three key differences from Bitcoin, which its developers hope will make it better than Bitcoin.
*The Anoncoin network aims to process a block every 3.4 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes, which its developers claim allows for faster transaction confirmation. The network difficulty adjusts according to hashing power available, as the aim is for a block to be mined every 30 seconds.
*Anoncoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm: a sequential memory-hard function first conceived by Colin Percival. The original intended benefit of using scrypt was to avoid giving advantage to GPU, FPGA and ASIC miners over CPU miners, which occurs in the Bitcoin protocol. However, this turned out to be an incorrect assumption: GPU mining in Anoncoin's implementation of scrypt is currently ten times more efficient than CPU mining. FPGA and ASIC implementations are more expensive to create for scrypt than for SHA-256, which is used in the Bitcoin protocol.
*The Anoncoin network will produce 4.2 million Anoncoins, which is much less than Bitcoin.
Transactions
A peer-to-peer network similar to Bitcoin's handles Anoncoin's transactions, balances and issuance through scrypt, the proof-of-work scheme (Anoncoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point a block is created, the process of finding these hashes and creating blocks is called mining). The issuing rate forms a geometric series, and the rate declines by 1% every week (every 20,160 blocks).
Anoncoins are currently traded primarily for both fiat currencies and Bitcoins, mostly on online exchanges. Reversible transactions (such as those with credit cards) are not normally used to buy Anoncoins as Anoncoin transactions are irreversible, to avoid the danger of chargebacks.
Addresses
Payments in the Anoncoin network are made to addresses, which are based on digital signatures. They are strings of 33 numbers and letters which always begin with the letter A, for example, ALoveQ9dBZVAbnSHHAooYZum7KZrxzCXkD.
Confirmations
Transactions are recorded in the Anoncoin blockchain (a ledger held by most clients), a new block is added to the blockchain roughly every 3.4 minutes (whenever a small enough hash value is found for the proof-of-work scheme), a transaction is usually considered complete after 6 blocks, or 25 minutes.
History
Introduction
Anoncoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on June 6th, 2013. It was a fork of the Litecoin-Qt client, differing from it only in having a modified block generation time, different hashing algorithm, and slightly modified GUI.
The genesis block was made by Meeh on 2 June 2013, with the following content as timestamp: "02/Jun/2013: The Universe, we're all one. But really, f*** the Central banks. - Anonymous 420".
The coin has been in active development, and have had four major upgrades in its short lifetime. The current version of this client (as of 12th Oct 2013) is v0.8.5.5.
Media Mentions
More recently Anoncoin has been covered in the news as a Bitcoin alternative after the arrest of the Silkroad owner.
Software Development
The Anoncoin Developers have a new release 0.8.5.5 in the works which include graphical updates to the Anoncoin wallet. Developers are Meeh, K1773R and BroTroxer.
Anoncoin Communication
Anoncoin has presence in two places on the web for communcation, specifically chat. The first is on IRC at I2P or freenode.net, channel #anoncoin. The second is the Forum, at the Anoncoin Forum.
Major markets
* Crypto-trade currency exchange
* Cryptsy Anoncoin currency exchange
* Vircurex Exchange Anoncoin currency exchange

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See Also

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