It looks like some new coins have been released lately which are getting some big attention in the world of cryptocurrency and altcoins. Halcyon is one of those coins , so let’s take a look at the progress they have made in their three-week lifespan.
Being launched on August 16th, Halcyon is a fairly new altcoin with an interesting anonymity system, a development roadmap, PeerSend and so much more. We will take a look at all known aspects, as well as their updates along the way.
As we have seen with quite a few altcoins which have been the light of day over the past 3-6 months, Halcyon had a very short Proof-of-Work phase. With only 20,000 blocks to be mined, and 1,62 million coins awarded through these blocks, the coin supply is fairly limited. You can debate whether or not limited coin supply altcoins are positive or not, but it creates an interesting perspective for potential investors.
Combine that limited supply with the fact there was no pre-mine, and no IPO/ICO/Pre-sale/what ever fancy term you want to call it these days, and you can see why Halcyon could be an interesting cryptocurrency. However, a lot of people are still looking for anonymity when it comes to altcoins, so let’s see if HAL provides just that.
The Halcyon developers have created a system called PeerSend, which provides trustless peer-to-peer anonymity. PeerSend is a decentralized mixing service, which sits on top of the HAL network. By allowing wallets to connect with each other, and mix transactions in the process, all traces of a transaction can be erased.
Wallets can connect to one another by generating an encrypted key which is sent in the form of a signed message. This is done in order to verify the other wallet(s) will have enough funds to engage in the mixing process. (Hence, the trustless part of the anonymous transaction).
As a side effect, the generation of this encrypted key gives every connected wallet instructions to generate new compatible addresses to send to other scramblers. Coins sent from one address will be sent to multiple participating wallets which then change their sending addresses. This process will be relayed multiple times until the coins are delivered to the recipient.
A more detailed whitepaper on Peersend and its inner workings has been released, which you can find here. Or, if you are a fan of beautiful infographics, you might want to check out this Halcyon PeerSend Infographic.
As with all anonymous systems which are developed (and not just copied from other coins), it’s never a bad idea to have an external party review it. PeerSend has been reviewed by XCurrency’s Dan Metcalf, and you can read more about his findings here.
Even though the main Halcyon website is still under development, their development roadmap is worth your while checking out. It gives you a nice interactive overview of the progress made so far, as well as what is planned for the future. You can find the HAL development roadmap here.
Halcyon technical specifications :
Total coins: 2294000 – Will Be Closer To 2m With POS
Proof of Stake Begins At Block 2000
9% POS Interest per Year
Min Stake Age 12 Hours
Max Stake Age 30 Days
As far as exchanges go, HAL can be traded on both BitTrex and Cryptsy.
For more information about Halcyon, you can use the following sources :
BitcoinTalk : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741728.0
Twitter : https://twitter.com/HalcyonDev
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