Vertcoin (VTC) is looking to get even more vertical, having reached multiple milestones over the past few months and looking for more.
Vertcoin near the beginning of February when its value soared by over 1100% in two days. Like the path followed by most altcoins, a major correction was in order and indeed occurred. But unlike most altcoins posting such gains, it did not fall off the map. It's still hanging in there, ranking 15th in (9th amongst mineable coins)- valued at $3.9 million- even ahead of previously bigger names like Primecoin and Feathercoin. One VTC is worth $0.92.
Indeed, the coin appears not to be just another clone of Litecoin, rebranded towards some ostensibly noble cause or purposed towards a targeted ecosystem. Its major claim to value is a design aimed at resisting ASIC mining. Such mining has plagued other coins by giving its operators disproportional mining "firepower", and has called such coins' decentralized nature into question. Litecoin , having grappled with how to deal with ASICs despite its original mandate calling for resistance to them.
Some of Vertcoin's milestones, features and projects are summarized in a recent press release:
Vertigo: "A breathtakingly fast lightweight wallet client that operates without needing to download the entire Blockchain first." There's also vtc.li, "a zero-trust web wallet."
Merchants: Over 50 reportedly accept the coin for payment:
"Vertcoin can now be used online to buy gold/silver bullion, web hosting, Reddit Gold, artisan roasted coffee beans, health foods, and many other items."
VertPay: Like BitPay for vertcoins
Wallet App: For Android
Merged Mining: "Which could have huge implications for Vertcoin's future value as a cryptographic wealth backbone."
DC Magnates spoke to Vertcoin developer Paul Bradley on ASIC resistance and merged mining:
In layman's terms, what is going on with merged mining?
When you're mining you're looking for solutions to a puzzle of sorts - what hash of the next block is small enough to qualify as a block. What merge mining does is use those hashes twice, or three times or any number of times, so you still mine just as much VTC as you would have before, except now you also get MON, PLX or any other merge-mined coins that your pool has added.
Practically though, MON and PLX seem pretty small- how much value does one really gain by mining another two of several hundred coins? Are they Vert creations?
MON is a VTC project released by us. PLX is a separate project, and was released by another developer. The key thing is, as more merged chains pop up, people who want to mine that new coin get a different risk profile than they normally would. Because they are mining a stable, well known chain (VTC) simultaneously, that removes a lot of the risk....they don't have to worry they will waste their mining effort on something that never makes it to an exchange.
So the devs of the new coin get the benefit that miners are more willing to mine, and they get more Hash Rate and network security as a result.... simultaneously, VTC benefits from the same- instead of the new coin competing with us for hashrate, it complements and strengthens our network.
Do you know of any other ASIC resistant coins?
None that fit my definition of ASIC resistant, which is to say, VTC isn't an algorithm, it's a mindset and a team. What I mean is, we stand behind VTC and are ready to do whatever it takes to maintain ASIC resistance over time. There may be other scrypt-n coins that have cloned Vertcoin, but I don't believe they have that kind of support, or dedication to maintaining resistance.
Do you know of any which are designed, by algorithm to be ASIC-resistant, or at least claim to be?
Cryptonote- that's one I definitely do feel has promise....so Monero is the first, widely publicized and fairly distributed coin I'm aware of to use that. Bytecoin seems to have been around for a long time without anyone really knowing about it.
