Overview

Nano is a low-latency cryptocurrency built on an innovative block-lattice data structure that offers unlimited scalability and zero transaction fees. Each account has its own blockchain (account-chain) equivalent to the account’s transaction/balance history which can only be updated by the account’s owner. Its simple protocol makes Nano a high-performance cryptocurrency that can run on low-power hardware, allowing it to be a practical, decentralized cryptocurrency for everyday use. It was founded by Colin LeMahieu as RaiBlocks in 2015 and is one of the first Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based cryptocurrency.

How It Works

Every transfer of fund requires a send block and a receive block, each signed by their account-chain’s owner. An open transaction is the first transaction of every account-chain and it is issued to create an account. The account field stores the public-key (address) derived from the private key that is used for signing.

The account balance is recorded in the ledger and rather than recording the amount of a transaction, the difference between the balance at the send block and that of the preceding block is verified. The previous balance of the receiving account is then updated according to the final balance given in the new receive block. This helps in improving the processing speed when downloading high volumes of blocks.

Before sending amount, the sender’s address should have an existing open block, and therefore a balance.The send block and the amount sent cannot be revoked once confirmed. After the receiver signs a block to accept the funds, the balance from the sender’s account is deducted immediately. The receiver must create a receive block on their own account-chain to complete the transaction. Once the block is created and broadcasted, the account balance is updated with the new balance.

Key Features

Instant transactions: Wallets pre-cache the anti-spam Proof of Work for the next transaction once a transaction is sent, making transactions instantaneous, as both the sender and receiver already have the proof of work
Zero Transaction Fees: Since the protocol is extremely light weight and running a node costs next to nothing, Nano’s transactions are processed with zero fees
Infinitely Scalable: All transactions on Nano are handled independently from the network’s main chain which fit into a single UDP packet and are recorded in their own blocks. This eliminates the block size issues and the entire network is not required to update the overall ledger together in massive blocks

Use Cases

Ideal Trading Pair: Nano is ideal for cryptocurrency traders as it allows instant and zero-fee transactions
Peer to Peer: Nano makes daily bill payments convenient
Business to Customer: Paying for the purchases in both online and offline stores is easier with Nano
Micropayments: Nano can be used to pay small amounts for digital asset rights, content subscriptions and more

Conclusion

Nano is aimed to revolutionise the blockchain industry with its innovative block-lattice architecture that allows for instant payment with no transaction fees. This will provide a solution to Bitcoin’s scalability and latency issues.

Key Links

Website: https://nano.org/

Whitepaper: https://resource2.binance.com/files/books/20180226/1519637192459.pdf