About Anoncoin
Updated: Jul 17, 2018
Anoncoin, trading symbol ANC, is a digital cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy and anonymity for its users. Created in June 2013, it was the first coin that provided built-in support for the I2P darknet that makes it impossible to determine the IP address of the user. Anoncoin also has built in support of Tor, which can help conceal your location and keep your internet traffic private.
The Anoncoin network is maintained by decentralized miners who process transactions into blocks that are added to the public blockchain. With the creation of each block, a specific amount of Anoncoin is created that is rewarded to the miner.
There will be only about 3.1 million coins created, which is approximately 7 times less than the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The difficulty of the Scrypt proof-of-work algorithm is adjusted to ensure that a block is created about every 3 minutes.
Latest news, change of PoW and Anoncash.
October 23, 2018, Anoncoin Core 0.9.7.1 was released. This was mainly released to fix a bug in the previous version. The Anoncoin team released Anoncoin 0.9.7 on 13. July, 2018. This release set a hardfork at block 871111, changing PoW from Scrypt to GOST R 34.11-2012.
This released fixed issues with some mined blocks not being accepted, and in the process we moved to double GOST R 34.11-2012 hashing algorithm, mined with CPU/GPU. Now everyone in the Anoncoin community can mine, rather than those few who have an ASIC miner.
After this release the Anoncoin team switches focus to Anoncash. The goal of Anoncash is to be the digital analogue of cash, a next generation cryptocurrency. Join our Slack and follow as we work on the project.
Why was Anoncoin created?
Anoncoin was created not only for the purpose of strong user privacy, which was lacking in Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies at the time, but also to provide a cryptocurrency that could support an eventual crackdown from hostile governments and central banks.
As opposed to many alternative cryptocurrencies that serve only to enrich financially the developers, Anoncoin was released in an entirely transparent manner and with a fair initial coin distribution. Though there was a small pre-mine of 4200 ANC for technical reasons, these coins were returned to the community by a public faucet, bounties, and give-a-ways.
The coin is being actively developed, with a team of 4 active developers working on the project daily. The developers have a long history of working on internet privacy issues, as is attested by the creation of the non-profit organization Privacy Solutions and their work with I2P.
But aren’t other cryptocurrencies anonymous?
In most cryptocurrencies transactions are stored in a public ledger that allows any outside party to track the history of any payment. By data-mining the blockchain, it can be possible in some cases to link a series of public addresses to an individual.
By use of other information outside of the blockchain, such as digital currency transactions with real-world companies and financial institutions, or the posting of public addresses on websites, the identity and full transaction history of the user can become compromised.
Coin details
The defining features of the Anoncoin cryptocurrency are:
- Launch date: June 6, 2013.
- Type: GOST R 34.11-2012 proof-of-work hashing algorithm now, previous Scrypt.
- Total coin supply: 3,103,954 ANC.
- Block target speed: 3 minutes (before block 87777 it was every 3.42 minutes)
- Block speed retargeting: Every block, using Kimoto Gravity Well (before block 87777, it was ~1680 blocks using classic BTC algorithm)
- Current block reward: 1.25 ANC per block.
- Premine: 1000 blocks (4200 ANC) that were returned to the community by community donations and a public faucet.
- Anonymity: Built-in support of I2P and Tor.
Anoncoin was originally a fork of the Litecoin source code and it now includes most aspects of Bitcoin Core 0.10. The creation of new coins is by the reward to miners for processing transactions into blocks that are added to the blockchain. Mining is performed by proof-of-work using the scrypt hashing function.
A total of 3.1 million coins can be mined into existence, which is 7 times less than the maximum supply of Bitcoin, and transactions are processed, on average, every 3 minutes. The current block reward is 1.25 ANC.
The block reward distribution schedule is the following: 4.2 ANC for the first 42,000 blocks; 7 ANC for blocks up until 77,777; a 10 ANC bonus block for 77778; 5 ANC until block 306,600; and then halving of block rewards every 306,600 blocks (which is approximately every one year and nine months or 638 days). There were 4200 ANC premine by the developers, but these coins were returned to the community through the faucet and by giveaways.
Since the initial fork, the Anoncoin developers added built-in support for the I2P darknet and Tor network. By use of I2P (and to a lesser extent with Tor) it becomes impossible for anyone, including an internet service provider, to determine where the Anoncoin client is being run.
Though Anoncoin transactions can still be tracked by the public blockchain ledger, the location at which a coin was spent is inherently untrackable. Anoncoin aims to rectify the problem of trackable linkages in the blockchain in the near future.