FYI, long post warning.
On December 2012, The CryptoNote whitepaper was published and was set out to create a new foundation of cryptocurrencies that would address the privacy and distribution issues that has plagued bitcoin since its inception. Unlike Bitcoin, CryptoNote's transactions cannot be traced through the blockchain that reveals who is the sender or receiver. The approximate amount of a transaction can be known, but the origin, destination, or actual amount cannot be learned. CryptoNote also uses a memory bound function named CryptoNight, which cannot be easily mined with a Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners. Combined with the fact that all CryptoNote currencies are not bitcoin forks, this allows a more equal form of distribution and decentralization.
Because the CryptoNote Foundation encourages developers to clone the technology, Multiple coin experimentations such as transaction confirmation time, total number of coins and proof-of-work logic are tested and developed. Because of these experiments, The CryptoNote platform are in several cryptocurrencies in various stages of development, support and usage. In this article, I will be explaining the most common CryptoNote coins and what sets each of them uniquely apart. Each of these coins will be introduced in order of their release date.
The first and original privacy cryptocurrency, it was launched in 2012 and gained little attention except the controversial accusation of a 82% pre-mine. Started in the age where altcoins were shunned, Bytecoin was ignored in the past and likely be dwarfed by newer and fancier coins in the future. However, with the recent resurgence of altcoins and a interest in private transactions, Bytecoin has been gaining much interest as investors are looking for privacy and a bargain.
The most popular of all CryptoNote coins, Monerocoin was created around April 2014. As a way to distance them from the pre-mine controversy of Bytecoin, Monero chose not to fork from their predecessor. Instead, Monero started from scratch while tweaking their emission curves to better match today's technological capabilities. In its development, Monero has their own controversy in regarding web development ethics of crypto jacking. By creating an in-browser miner, unscrupulous web developers can covertly mine Monero from website visitors. While these actions are frowned upon and newer tools prevent this, this shot of notoriety did bring this obscure coin into the mainstream. Today, the development team continues to improve on security, privacy and scalability for a community who demand privacy be the default and not an option.
Started in May 2014, XDN is perhaps the most interesting of all CryptoNote coins due to the it’s many name changes and unique features. Upon release, Ducknote had strong developer support and a clean graphical user interface to boot. 4 months later, they changed the name to DarkNote to highlight its new features such as end-to-end encrypted messaging and a proof of stake that allows deposited XDN to earn interest for a fixed amount of time. By the the middle of 2017, They rebranded again to be called DigitalNote and plans to improve its messaging capabilities and to implement Proof of Activity as another way to expand its emission and distribution ways.
Created by a Turkish developer by the name of Orhan R., QuazarCoin was created around 2014 from scratch with a focus on privacy and usability optimization. It has an easier emission curve meaning it is easier to mine but beyond the usual privacy features and ASIC resistance, it is a very quiet and unassuming. Unfortunately for this coin, the official developer disappeared in early 2015. However, this "dead" coin to this day is still being mined and traded. A small but passionate community has devised plans for a revival but until a lead developer is willing to take the helm, this star may never shine to its full potential.
The first merged mining Cryptnote coin was released in 2014 and was a very interesting experiment. The ability to mine both Fantomcoin as well as Bytecoin, Monero or even Quazarcoin shows how interconnected they can be together and allows miners to diversify their altcoin holdings without mining each coin separately. Unfortunately, the difficulty ramp increased greatly considering few people have no reason not to mine this in addition to their favorites. And just like Quazarcoin, developer communication appeared to stop at early 2015 but the community continues to quietly mine and trade. In August 2017, the DigitalNote developers hosted Fantomcoin's GUI wallet on their github depository meaning that there may be more just an illusion that this coin is dead.
In early June 2014, AEON was released to the world as an experiment to see of open-source techniques would help benefit in the cryptocurrency development. Sadly, in only four months, the developers left the project due to real life issues and that’s how the coin died. End of story.
Not Really. Because it was an open-source project, the community rallied and carried the project forward. As time passed, AEON evolved to become a lighter and faster version of Monero. They even allow the users the option to use a traceable transfer for non-sensitive transactions that is faster and lower in fees making it ideal for mobile platforms. As user FabledWyrd stated "I believe there were people who said they would like to buy their house with Monero and their coffee with Aeon."
Created in June 2014, the Italian "green coin" was set out as an experiment that increase block rewards together with increased difficulty. In addition to this, it can also merge mine with Quazarcoin, Bytecoin and Monero giving miners more options compared to the infinite supply of coins said to be made with MCN. Unfortunately, with only 1 mining pool for most of its life and Poloniex exchange support ceased, this coin slowly faded to what could have been one of the most fairly distributed coins.
Dashcoin is just a simple fork of Bytecoin with a difference that is a automatically mutating anonymous cryptocurrency. The advantage of the fork is using a mirror image that will lower the barrier of creation at the start. But, in order to keep it secure while lower maintenance costs, DashCoin creates a self-mutating copy of itself. With active developer support, a small but vocal community, the problem with DashCoin is the problems never end.
From getting it confused with DASH to the involuntary fork of Dashcoin Minergate, DashCoin is perhaps the most cryptic of cryptocurrencies. Until these confusions are resolved one by one, it would be hard to explain its value proposition when its identity itself is in question.
In July 2014, Infinium-8 was the latest CryptoNote coin that released to the world. Much like MonetaVerde, Infinium-8's block reward increasing together with its difficulty to mine that encouraged fairer distribution. With an infinite supply of coins, this provided miners plenty of opportunities to mine out their fortunes. However, the big difference is the lack of merge mining which is strange considering if this was a copy, it should at least bring another new feature which it does not. Unfortunately, with no exchanges willing to accept INF8 and the fear of infinite supply that could drives inflation, this coin is effectively dead as of August 2014.
While there were many other failed CryptoNote projects, the developers had the foresight that allowed others to easily create, modify and release their version of the ideal coin. This level of collaboration shows how some worked together, some worked apart and ideally the best of ideas will rise to the top. I hope this article shed some light on not only the CryptoNote family but also their unique value propositions. Please upvote and subscribe. Thank You!