Anoncoin
Anoncoin (ANC) is a cryptocurrency with built in support of I2P and Tor. Zerocoin will be implemented in an upcoming release. Anoncoin is a peer-to-peer proof-of-work cryptocurrency that was launched in 2013 to focus on offering privacy and anonymity for its users. Anoncoin is primarily used in “Darknets” which are often associated with illegal substances. Anoncoin claims that it will be available “no matter what the authorities do”. It is probably in your best interest to avoid this digital currency.
Contents
The anonymity of cryptocurrency
In most cryptocurrencies transactions are stored in a public ledger that allows any outside party to track the history of any payment. By data-mining the blockchain, it can be possible in some cases to link a series of public addresses to an individual.By use of other information outside of the blockchain, such as digital currency transactions with real-world companies and financial institutions, or the posting of public addresses on websites, the identity and full transaction history of the user can become compromised.
Many coins support Tor and I2P. Tor is simply added by using it as a SOCKS4 proxy on port 9050 or 9150 on the coin client when running a local Tor session (for instance, even with the Tor browser bundle). I2P support is also easy to activate but requires a few more steps. In Anoncoin, after starting I2P locally, it should be configured (in /configclients on the web interface) to enable the SAM Application bridge feature. The anoncoin client can then be started with a -onlynet=i2p switch. The Anoncoin GUI also has options in the preferences panel for enabling this (although opening the client will immediately connect to the clearnet, so it is best to use the command line switch at first). A Bitcoin client with an I2P patch has been released but it is not available in the mainline of Bitcoin Core.
Coin details
The defining features of the Anoncoin cryptocurrency are:
- Launch date: June 6, 2013.
- Type: Scrypt proof-of-work hashing algorithm.
- Total coin supply: 3,103,954 ANC.
- Block target speed: 3 minutes (before block 87777 it was every 3.42 minutes)
- Block speed retargeting: Every block, using Kimoto Gravity Well (before block 87777, it was ~1680 blocks using classic BTC algorithm)
- Current block reward: 1.25 ANC per block.
- Premine: 1000 blocks (4200 ANC) that were returned to the community by community donations and a public faucet.
- Anonymity: Built-in support of I2P and Tor.
Anoncoin was originally a fork of the Litecoin source code and it now includes most aspects of Bitcoin Core 0.10. The creation of new coins is by the reward to miners for processing transactions into blocks that are added to the blockchain. Mining is performed by proof-of-work using the scrypt hashing function.
A total of 3.1 million coins can be mined into existence, which is 7 times less than the maximum supply of Bitcoin, and transactions are processed, on average, every 3 minutes. The current block reward is 1.25 ANC. The block reward distribution schedule is the following: 4.2 ANC for the first 42,000 blocks; 7 ANC for blocks up until 77,777; a 10 ANC bonus block for 77778; 5 ANC until block 306,600; and then halving of block rewards every 306,600 blocks (which is approximately every one year and nine months or 638 days). There were 4200 ANC premine by the developers, but these coins were returned to the community through the faucet and by giveaways.
Since the initial fork, the Anoncoin developers added built-in support for the I2P darknet and Tor network. By use of I2P (and to a lesser extent with Tor) it becomes impossible for anyone, including an internet service provider, to determine where the Anoncoin client is being run. Though Anoncoin transactions can still be tracked by the public blockchain ledger, the location at which a coin was spent is inherently untrackable. Anoncoin aims to rectify the problem of trackable linkages in the blockchain in the near future.