About

Nano is a decentralized asynchronous network focused on addressing inefficiencies in existing digital currencies and payment systems. It uses a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architecture called a Block Lattice whereby each user transacting on the network possess their own blockchain, that is updated asynchronously to the rest of the network.

NANO transactions are thereby incredibly quick, with average processing time of less than a second. Transactions on the network are also feeless; a key feature intended to benefit all users and incentivize network-wide decentralization.

History

Development on Nano (formerly RaiBlocks, XRB) began in 2014 with official mainnet genesis on October 24, 2015. The project aims to address inefficiencies in digital currencies and modern financial payment systems through high scalability, fast and feeless transactions, and energy efficient design.

NANO was distributed entirely for free by way of a CAPTCHA faucet from October 24, 2015 to October 20, 2017. Users could solve complex CAPTCHA tests and be rewarded with the network’s digital currency for their time and effort.

When the faucet was shut down in 2017, only 126,248,289 NANO of the initial planned supply of 340 million had been distributed. 207,034,069 NANO was promptly sent to an unrecoverable burn address and 7,000,000 NANO was donated to the development fund. This fixed maximum and circulating supply at 133,249,297 NANO, 39% of what was originally planned.

In January 2018, the project rebranded from RaiBlocks to Nano in reference to one of the network’s key use cases, microtransactions, as well as its lightweight design. Many community driven projects have since been built leveraging Nano ranging from NANO specific wallets, to Nano driven marketplaces aiming to make NANO the “digital money of the modern world.”