What is Nano?

Nano (NANO) is a decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer digital currency that makes cryptocurrency payments simple, by offering instant and fee-less transactions.

Nano uses a special data structure which is called the Block Lattice. This technology helps to arrange blocks in a special way, with each account having their own blockchain.

Every transaction happens in the same way:

• the sender publishes a block that shows the amount that should be sent;
• the receiver publishes a block that shows the amount that should be received;
• the block must be confirmed by the network;
• the receiver publishes a block that confirms that the funds were received;
• if the receiver is offline, the funds are held in waiting, it is called pending state. While the funds are at this stage, the transaction cannot be reversed.

The structure of a block is also interesting. Each block has all the information about an account at the particular moment, and Proof-of-Work value. This speeds up the process of transactions.

At the heart of Nano, there is the Open Representative Voting consensus mechanism. This mechanism gives accounts the right to freely choose representatives whenever they prefer, and these representative accounts vote on the validity of transactions using the voting weight that has been delegated to them. These representative accounts are built on nodes, they remain online to provide an ongoing voting process to validate transactions. Open Representative Voting is designed to trend towards decentralization and to give users more control over participation in consensus.

Nodes are the core of the Nano network. There are two types of nodes:

• principal representative node
• representative node

They have different opportunities in voting and validating, and therefore different hardware recommendations. Users of this network can run their own nodes. Running a node helps to decentralize the network. However, it is important to mention that validators do not get block rewards.

To use the Nano network it is necessary to create an account. This procedure consists of two steps: user issues an open transaction and chooses an account representative. When all of the above is done the account is ready. Starting to use Nano is very easy, it does not require any costs, and it has an intuitive interface.

The lead developer of NANO is Colin LeMahieu. Since 2010 Colin LeMahieu developed an interest to Bitcoin. He was amazed by the idea of a decentralized cryptocurrency. However, he saw a number of flaws of the existing ones. In 2014 he started to work on his own project. Initially, Nano had a different name, it was called RaiBlocks. It was officially announced in 2015, then rebranded in 2018, and got the name NANO.