Technical Analysis: BTC, ETH, NEAR, PEPE, LTC, ADA, XVG and DOGE (July W2)

## What Is Verge (XVG)?

Verge is a privacy-focused [cryptocurrency](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-cryptocurrencies) and [blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain) that seeks to offer a fast, efficient, decentralized payments network that improves upon the original [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin) (BTC) blockchain. It includes additional privacy features including integrating the anonymity network Tor into its wallet, called vergePay, and providing the option of sending transactions to stealth addresses.

The project describes itself as community-driven, relying on volunteers and priding itself on being open source.

Verge was first [launched](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=817937.0) in October 2014 as DogeCoinDark, a fork of [Peercoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/peercoin/) (PPC). In February 2016, it was [renamed](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1365894.0) Verge in order to [rebrand](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/verge-currencies-xvg-new-branding-7b8c23a4e7e4) for easier mass-market adoption and to distinguish itself from [Dogecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/) (DOGE), with which it has no direct connection. The project is now based on the Bitcoin source code.

## Who Are the Founders of Verge?

Verge was launched in 2016 by Justin Valo, also known as "Justin Vendetta" or "Sunerok," a developer with over 20 years of [experience](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/meet-the-team-behind-verge-currency-cc61d6057b36) in network security and nearly a decade in blockchain technology. He first developed the cryptocurrency as a fun passion project to empower individuals around the world with a greater sense of privacy.

Valo has [stated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ8iUOVgqsk) that he has been programming since the age of 8 and became involved in network administration after high school, working for a Fortune 500 company. After a few years, he decided to start his own network security company.

Valo first became interested in Bitcoin in 2011, later getting [involved](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/the-birth-of-verge-currency-3f729cc6b64c) with Dogecoin after its late 2013 launch. He began working on Verge because he [believed](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/verge-currency-and-the-vergefam-community-cff57401955d) that none of the altcoins being developed at the time were adequately functional as digital currencies and that the only other serious privacy coin projects --- [Bytecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bytecoin-bcn/) (BCN) and [Monero](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero) (XMR) --- were not sufficient.

In 2017, Valo was [appointed](https://www.facebook.com/tokenpay/posts/advisor-lead-developer-of-verge-sunerok-joined-tokenpays-advisory-boardlearn-mor/148499659208889/) to the advisory board of [TokenPay](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tokenpay/) (TPAY), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

## What Makes Verge Unique?

According to its "blackpaper," Verge was [created](https://vergecurrency.com/static/blackpaper/verge-blackpaper-v5.0.pdf) as a way to fulfill Bitcoin founder [Satoshi Nakamoto's](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto) vision of a decentralized, trustless electronic payment system while also providing more privacy than is available with Bitcoin.

In order to accomplish this goal, Verge relies on a series of key privacy features. It automatically routes all traffic to and from its vergePay wallet through the Tor network, anonymizing the traffic and masking IP addresses. It also offers dual-key stealth addressing, through which senders can create one-time wallet addresses on behalf of recipients to help protect the recipients' privacy, as well as using [atomic swaps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/atomic-swap) to power trustless [peer-to-peer](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/peer-to-peer-p2p) cross-blockchain transactions.

Verge seeks mainstream adoption, and as such, the Verge Core team pursues strategic partnerships to increase its awareness and use. It [sponsors](https://vergecurrency.com/fueled-by-verge/) professional athletes and has partnered with platforms such as payments and rewards ecosystem [MobiePay](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/verge-currency-and-mobiepay-team-up-8f58f1d33853), crypto payments platform and ATM provider [MeconCash](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/verge-meconcash-press-release-cc17678d68cd), and blockchain-based online gambling platform [Crazy8Token](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/crazy-8-welcomes-verge-currency-to-the-59-billion-dollar-gambling-industy-1065356c2540), among others.

The Verge Core team often [relies on](https://medium.com/@sashakolupaev/atomic-announcement-crowdfunding-campaign-3173d1a8473d) crowdfunding and community support to be able to scale, market and pursue partnerships. In April 2018, the project [raised](https://medium.com/vergecurrency/verge-from-seed-to-revolution-fc3833333ba5) 75 million XVG ([approximately](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/verge/historical-data/?start=20180401&end=20180429) $7 million at the time) to cover the costs of integrating with a major payments processor.

## Related Pages:

Learn about [Monero](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero), the largest privacy coin by market capitalization.

Learn about [Zcash](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash), another privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

Want to know even more about privacy? Read an [in-depth exploration](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/is-cryptocurrency-anonymous) of anonymity within crypto on Alexandria, CoinMarketCap's online educational resource.

Stay up to date on the latest in crypto privacy and security with the [CoinMarketCap Blog](https://blog.coinmarketcap.com/).

#### How Many Verge (XVG) Coins Are There in Circulation?

The total maximum supply of Verge is capped at 16.5 billion XVG. According to Verge, the supply cap is [intentionally](https://vergecurrency.com/faq/) high as a way to ensure that the value of each individual token remains low, allowing users to avoid fractional payments. It also makes it more difficult for any one individual to take control of a large number of XVG in order to manipulate markets.

The cryptocurrency did not have an [initial coin offering](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/initial-coin-offering-ico), nor was there any premining of tokens. As such, the Verge development team has said it does not hold a significant amount of XVG. Rather, all currently circulating XVG was introduced through the Verge blockchain's [proof-of-work](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake) mining process, which is multialgorithmic and supports Scrypt, X17, Lyra2rev2, Myr-groestl and Blake2s.

Verge undergoes a periodic halving event that reduces the amount of XVG miners receive as a block reward by 50%. Under the current emission [schedule](https://github.com/vergecurrency/verge), rewards are halved every 500,000 blocks.

## How Is the Verge Network Secured?

The Verge network is secured through a proof-of-work [consensus](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/consensus) algorithm similar to that of Bitcoin, on which Verge's code is based. At least 51% of all full nodes in the network must agree that a transaction is valid in order for it to be added to the blockchain, and new blocks are created through the mining process, in which users compete among one another to solve complex, energy-intensive problems. However, unlike Bitcoin, Verge supports five different mining algorithms. According to the development team, this makes the network more secure, as more people are able to participate in the mining process.

In April 2018, Verge [suffered](https://twitter.com/vergecurrency/status/981578693062610950) an attack on its network that used an exploit related to the Scrypt mining algorithm to instamine a [reported](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3256693.0) 20 million XVG. In response, the project initiated a hard fork to patch the issue. While it was widely referred to as a [51% attack](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/51-attack), founder and lead developer Valo [denied](https://twitter.com/justinvendetta/status/1243002670505496576) this, saying it was actually a timewarp attack, which involves manipulating block timestamps in order to reduce mining difficulty.

## Where Can You Buy Verge (XVG)?

XVG is available to purchase on many exchanges including [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/), [HitBTC](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/hitbtc/), [Bittrex](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bittrex/) and [Huobi Global](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi-global/). It can be traded against fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar and the euro, cryptocurrencies such as [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin) and [Ether](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum) (ETH), and the [stablecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-stablecoin)  [Tether](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/) (USDT)

Are you interested in buying XVG or other cryptocurrencies such as [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin)? CoinMarketCap has a simple, [step-by-step guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/) to teach you all about crypto and how to buy your first coins.

Binance

Verge

Ledger

Trezor

Trust Wallet

Math Wallet

VergePay

Atomic wallet

$XVG is a secure and user-friendly digital currency for everyday transactions. #XVGETH is an ERC20 token for a complete ecosystem. Circa 2014

DigiByte (DGB) is an open source blockchain and asset creation platform. Development began in October 2013 and the genesis block of its DGB token was mined in January 2014 as a fork of Bitcoin (BTC).

A longstanding public blockchain and cryptocurrency, DigiByte uses five different algorithms to improve security, and originally aimed to improve on the Bitcoin blockchain’s security, capacity and transaction speed.

DigiByte consists of three layers: a smart contract “App Store,” a public ledger and the core protocol featuring nodes communicating to relay transactions.

DigiByte

Siacoin (SC) is the native utility token of Sia, a blockchain-based distributed, decentralized cloud storage platform. Sia acts as a secure, trustless marketplace for cloud storage in which users can lease access to their unused storage space. Agreements and transactions are enforced with smart contracts, and Siacoin is the medium of exchange for paying for storage on the network. The main goal of the project is to become the "backbone storage layer of the internet."

Sia was originally announced in May 2014 before being revised and re-announced a year later in May 2015. It officially launched in June 2015.

Siacoin

Launched in 2017, Dent is a revolutionary digital mobile operator offering eSIM cards, mobile data plans, call minutes top-ups and a roaming-free experience. According to the company website, Dent employs blockchain technology’s powers to create a global marketplace for mobile data liberalization.

Dent has an ambitious roadmap ahead, with plans to expand its services to new markets by the end of 2021. The company has already attracted more than twenty-five million mobile device users, and Dent services are available in more than 140 countries. Enterprise partnerships for Dent include Samsung Blockchain, The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and Telecom Infra.

Dent

NEM is a blockchain platform that was launched in March of 2015. It was one of the pioneers of the cryptocurrency industry, and sought to improve on the imperfections found on other chains at the time. It was one of the first non-turing complete chains to feature user-defined tokens (called mosaics), namespaces, multisignature accounts, and a P2P reputation system based on EigenTrust++. Its most notable contribution to the space is the proof-of-importance consensus mechanism, which sought to reward on-chain activity and deter the concentration of wealth commonly associated with proof-of-stake. Its client, NIS, is written in Java.

NEM has a global community. It sees the most utility as an alternative form of payment for businesses and vendors, and has a variety of social media apps built on top of it in Japan, such as nemgraph, a community-driven owned and operated alternative to Instagram.

In December 2021, NEM was hard forked by a pseudonymous team of cryptocurrency experts and enthusiasts alike. Titled Harlock, this hard fork signaled the community’s intent to take NEM from a shadow of its former self into the world’s leading payments platform for on-chain and off-chain media content.

Founded in 2015, StormX is one of the first global cryptocurrency-based solutions to reach worldwide markets. As a mobile app and browser extension, StormX aims to bring users cashback in crypto for most of their online purchases. With enterprise partners like Samsung, Nike and Lego. StormX also allows users to stake the native STMX token to boost their rewards.

The company has already attracted investments from Blockfolio, Litecoin Foundation and Kyber Network. StormX has successfully developed its product and has become an industry leader in the crypto cashback community. The company is also catching users’ attention by offering cashback of up to 87.5% for some purchases.

StormX

Holo is a peer-to-peer distributed platform for hosting decentralized applications built using Holochain, a framework for developing DApps that does not require the use of blockchain technology. The goal of Holo is to serve as a bridge between the broader internet and apps built using Holochain, offering an ecosystem and marketplace in which DApps are easily accessible, as they are hosted on the internet by Holo network participants.

The Holo network will be facilitated using a token called HoloFuel, which is actively being tested and will act as an accounting system to pay hosts for their services. In 2018, the project minted an ERC-20 token, HOT — also known as HoloToken — as an "IOU" that will be redeemable for HoloFuel upon launch.

Holo is still in development and is expected to launch for open alpha and beta testing by 2021.

Holo

Reef is a Reliable Extensible Efficient Fast Layer-1 Blockchain for DeFi, NFT & Gaming. Built using Substrate Framework, it provides high scalability, enabling almost instant low-cost transactions, and supports Solidity and EVM, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their DApps from Ethereum without any change in the codebase.

Reef Chain is the most advanced EVM-compatible blockchain. It's self-upgradable and has on-chain governance. Its infrastructure also allows for EVM extensions which allows for native token bridge, scheduled calls (ie. recurring payments), and smart contract in-place code upgrades. In the near future, it will support additional VMs which will allow developers to write code in multiple programming languages. The network runs on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which offers scalability and low fees.

REEF is the native token that is used for:

Fees for processing transactions and storing data.

Running validator nodes by staking REEF tokens.

Nominating which validator nodes should be part of the network.

Reef is backed by multiple leading funds and venture capitalists including NGC, QCP, Bitcoin.com, Kenetic Capital, LD Capital, TRG Capital, Krypital Group, Genesis Block, Woodstock Fund and others.

Reef Chain development tools include:

Remix and EVM integrated development environments for uploading and deploying smart contracts.

Reefscan blockchain explorer to assist with deploying validators, bonding and nominating validators, debugging contracts, and understanding network performance.

Reef command line tools that allow developers deploy applications from local environments.

Reef wallet for accessing and interacting with the blockchain

Reef

IOST describes itself as an “ultra-fast,” fully fledged and decentralized blockchain network and ecosystem with its own nodes, wallets and based on the “next-generation” consensus protocol dubbed “proof-of-believability.”

IOST

WINkLink

Ontology is a project designed to bring trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. It is building the infrastructure to provide trusted access to Web3, allowing individuals and enterprises to rest assured that through regulatory compliant digital identity solutions, users and their privacy come first.

The Ontology blockchain is a high speed, low cost public blockchain. It is designed to bring decentralized identity and data solutions to Web3, with the goal of increasing privacy, transparency, and trust. To achieve this, users and enterprises are provided with the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs, while also ensuring regulatory compliance. Through Ontology’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ontology ensures frictionless compatibility with Ethereum, the first step in the creation of the Ontology Multi-Virtual Machine and further interoperability for the chain.

At its launch, Ontology chose to forego the popular initial coin offering (ICO) model in favor of a series of community distributions and airdrops of its ONT cryptocurrency.

This helped to quickly establish both organic price discovery and a passionate community and helped the project to avoid subsequent regulatory scrutiny.

For example, for a brief period any person who signed up for the Ontology newsletter received an airdrop of free 1,000 ONT, which reached a value of $10 per token soon after the token became listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Ontology launched its own MainNet on June 30, 2018 and has been up and running smoothly since.

Ontology

Zilliqa is a public, permissionless blockchain that is designed to offer high throughput with the ability to complete thousands of transactions per second. It seeks to solve the issue of blockchain scalability and speed by employing sharding as a second-layer scaling solution. The platform is home to many decentralized applications, and as of October 2020, it also allows for staking and yield farming.

Development work officially started on Zilliqa in June 2017, and its testnet went live in March 2018. A little over a year later, in June 2019, the platform launched its mainnet.

The native utility token of Zilliqa, ZIL, is used to process transactions on the network and execute smart contracts.

Zilliqa

Apps use ICON to operate cross-chain seamlessly, build momentum and gain reputation. ICON's Cross-Chain Framework simplifies cross-chain development with its easy-to-use xCall messaging standard and connections to secure bridging protocols.

ICON

IOTA is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that features unique architecture and an open-source product suite for individuals, businesses, and institutions to use in Web3. It is built on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) called the Tangle, which can be pictured as a multi-dimensional blockchain. It enables the exchange of data and value on a decentralized platform through direct and secure transfers, executed on and immutably recorded on the network.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive into IOTA.

Together with its staging network Shimmer, IOTA aims to offer solutions to establish a secure and permissionless infrastructure that can drive the economy of the future. It enables the development of decentralized applications through automated trust in the form of Ethereum-compatible smart contracts, an advanced consensus algorithm, and thoughtfully balanced incentives.

IOTA delivers tools for creating and managing custom Layer 2 (EVM) chains, deploying smart contracts, minting native tokens and NFTs with distinctive features, and introducing digital identities to users.

Launching in 2024, IOTA 2.0 will be a protocol upgrade that rebuilds IOTA’s architecture to deliver full decentralization. You can find more about it here.

IOTA

Billed as "digital money for the modern world," nano is a lightweight cryptocurrency that is designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments, without fees, and addresses some of the major limitations of both legacy financial infrastructure, and many modern cryptocurrencies.

Development of the project began in 2014 under the name RaiBlocks, and the coin (then termed XRB) launched the following year through a public faucet, which allowed users to claim small amounts of XRB after completing a captcha challenge. Anyone with access to a computer or phone could solve captchas, and be rewarded with RaiBlocks. The number of XRB people received per solved captcha varied over time

RaiBlocks (XRB) was rebranded to Nano in January 2018, with the new name chosen to better represent the speed and simplicity the project offers to users.

It is a peer-to-peer platform that uses a unique block-lattice data structure to allow users to easily transfer value to one another without relying on centralized intermediaries.

Unlike other platforms which typically use the combined proof-of-work of a massive mining network to achieve consensus, nano instead uses a system known as Open Representative Voting (ORV) — which sees account holders vote for their chosen representative, who then work to confirm blocks of transactions securely.

ORV makes Nano extremely energy efficient, positioning it as a more environmentally friendly alternative to proof-of-work (POW)-based cryptocurrencies.

In November, 2021, aiming to bring nano to the real world and to comply with the globally-recognized standards of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) requirements, nano adopted a new ticker and a standard symbol: XNO and Ӿ.

Nano

Reserve Rights (RSR) is an ERC-20 token that will serve two main purposes for the Reserve Protocol: overcollateralization of Reserve stablecoins (RTokens) through staking and governing them through proposing & voting on changes to their configuration.

The Reserve Rights (RSR) token was launched in May 2019 following a successful initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Huobi Prime platform.

Reserve Rights

Ravencoin is a digital peer-to-peer (P2P) network that aims to implement a use case specific blockchain, designed to efficiently handle one specific function: the transfer of assets from one party to another. Built on a fork of the Bitcoin code, Ravencoin was announced on Oct. 31, 2017 and released binaries for mining on Jan. 3, 2018 with what is called a fair launch: no premine, ICO or masternodes. It was named in reference to a TV show Game of Thrones.

Ravencoin

Steem is a community-focused blockchain that creates an instant earning opportunity for the network’s users. The protocol is designed to provide an earning opportunity for customers based on their value to the network. It is designed to provide users with a platform where they can post curated content online, and get paid in cryptocurrency.

The protocol is a publicly available, incentivized blockchain database that allows users to interact with each other and earn in return. It leverages technologies from both social media and cryptocurrency to provide users with value. The network ensures the fair treatment of contributors by running a reward structure that reflects each user’s contribution.

Steemit is the first app that was built on the Steem blockchain, and it launched on July 4, 2016. The protocol aims to provide value for its community of users in the following ways:

To provide thoughtfully chosen news and commentaries.

Creating an opportunity to earn.

As a source that offers answers to users’ inquiries.

Offering a stable cryptocurrency pegged to the USD.

Steem

Qtum (pronounced ‘“quantum”)  is a proof-of-stake (PoS) smart contract open-source blockchain platform and value transfer protocol. It aims to bring together the strengths of Bitcoinand Ethereumin one chain. Qtum is built on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model, with the added functionality of smart contract execution and DApps. Recently, the platform added support for DeFi applications. As of March 2021, there are more than 20 tokens created on the Qtum blockchain.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Qtum.

The project was announced in March 2016 and held an ICO a year after, in March 2017, which brought its founders $15 million USD. The Qtum main chain was released on Sept.13, 2017. Initially, the Qtum coin was issued as a ETH-20 token, but with the launch of the mainnet, it was converted to native blockchain.

Qtum

Komodo

Ren (REN) is an open protocol built to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Ren.

Formerly known as Republic Protocol, Ren launched RenVM, its virtual machine mainnet, in May 2020, having completed a $34 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

The protocol’s native token, REN, functions as a bond for those running nodes which power RenVM, known as Darknodes.

Ren aims to expand the interoperability, and hence accessibility, of decentralized finance (DeFi) by removing hurdles involved in liquidity between blockchains.