What is Nano?
Nano is decentralized, sustainable, and secure digital money focused on addressing the
inefficiencies present in existing cryptocurrencies. The efficient and lightweight nature of Nano
allows everyone, including individuals in emerging countries, to easily participate in local and
global economies with a low barrier of entry.
How does it work?
Nano utilizes the Block Lattice, a data-structure in which individual accounts control their own
blockchain. This allows blocks to be added quickly without conflict and sent to the network for
confirmation. Transactions occur between accounts with two separate actions: the sender publishes a
block debiting their own account for the amount to be sent to the receiving account; the receiver
publishes a matching block crediting their own account for the amount sent. Once a block sending
funds is confirmed by the network, the transaction goes into a pending state and cannot be reversed.
The receiver can be offline and safely leave the funds in this state until they are ready to publish
a matching block that receives the funds to their account.
Representatives and Voting
Nano accounts can freely delegate their voting weight to representatives at any time. The users have
more control over who has power with consensus and how decentralized the network is. This is a key
advantage to the design of Open Representative Voting (ORV). With no direct monetary incentive for
nodes, this removes emergent centralization forces for longer-term trending toward decentralization
of the network. As these votes are shared and rebroadcasted between nodes, they are tallied up and
compared against the online voting weight available. Once a node sees a block get enough votes to
reach quorum, that block is confirmed. Due to the lightweight nature of blocks and votes, the
network is able to reach confirmation for transactions ultrafast, often in under a couple of
seconds. Also, note that the delegation of voting weight does not mean staking of any funds. The
account delegating can still spend all their available funds at any time without restrictions.
What does it aim to solve?
Designed to solve peer to peer transfer of value, Nano aims to revolutionize the world economy
through an instant, fee-less and decentralized network that is open and accessible to everyone. The
speed of Nano transactions provides broad utility across a wide spectrum of financial applications.
With a fully distributed supply, bridging opportunities such as foreign exchange transactions and
fast cross-border transfers can be confidently facilitated over a decentralized network.
What are the features of Nano?
Simple & Easy to Use. By focusing on transferring value as efficiently as possible,
Nano provides options for users and services to easily access the empowering and cost saving
qualities of cryptocurrency. With instant and fee-less transactions, there is no calculating gas or
transaction costs - just pick an amount and send. Well designed and intuitive community wallets make
sending and receiving simple and easy to understand.
Designed for Decentralization. Each component of the protocol was created with the
long term goals of decentralization and accessibility in mind. Due to the Open Representative Voting
consensus mechanism Nano uses, nodes on the network consume minimal resources and don’t receive
direct payment for validating transactions. This setup removes the centralizing force that mining
and staking pools cause, and provides operational cost savings to businesses.
Fairly and Fully Distributed. Having confidence that buying power can’t be diluted
by any central entities is important for any true currency. Nano’s full and fair distribution, along
with its focus on long-term decentralization, provides protection from centralized forces impacting
its ability to capture, retain and transfer value.
