What are Altcoins? Guide to Bitcoin Alternatives

Introduction

An altcoins is another cryptocurrency to the outdated and more popular ones, namely bitcoin, litecoin, and ethereum. Currently, they are on the rise due to the cryptocurrency market’s volatility, which carries many risks. With an altcoin, the transactions are much faster, it tends to be less volatile in general than bitcoin, and it could be said that it has a higher level of stability. Furthermore, alternative cryptocurrencies influence the process and scope of the blockchain.

Dash

Dash is an open-source cryptocurrency and altcoins that was forked from the bitcoin protocol. It was designed to carry out transactions faster and with a SWIFT administrative structure to solve the shortcomings of bitcoin. It is slightly different from other major currencies because it relies on “organized, autonomous decentralization.”

EOS

EOS is the original cryptocurrency that powers the EOS blockchain protocol. IO, which operates as an innovative contract platform and decentralized operating system. Developers can use EOS. IO to build apps,  and owning EOS coins means using server resources​. The platform’s goal remains to provide a decentralized development niche, intelligent contracting capability, and decentralized storage of enterprise solutions that solve the scalability difficulties of other mainstream blockchains like bitcoin and ethereum. The operating system is hosted through “block producers” who, like bitcoin miners, maintain the blockchain and are rewarded in EOS as an incentive.

NEO

NEO is a platform that enables developers to digitize and automate asset management through smart contracts. The cryptocurrency community has referred to NEO as the “Chinese Ethereum.” The Chinese government backs it as part of its strategy to establish itself as a leading blockchain industry, which is a significant factor for an altcoins.

Stellar Lumens

Stellar is a payment system that uses its token – lumens. It is a midway for international transfers, making cross-border payments more efficient. Initially, the Stellar altcoin was fork from ripple but has since implemented its network, the “Stellar Consensus Protocol.”

Stellar’s payment system is maintained by a decentralize server that hosts the ledger that controls network data and transactions. The individuals and entities that service these servers are reward with lumens.

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Cardano

Cardano is the home of the ADA cryptocurrency, which can be use as an altcoin to send and also receive digital funds. Digital currency allows for quick and direct transfers guaranteed to be secure through cryptography.

Cardano develops an innovative contract platform that seeks to offer more advanced features than any other previously developed platform. The protocol features layered blockchain software that is flexible and scalable and has been design with academic and commercial standards as its core ideology. Cardano uses a democratic governance system that permits the project to grow over time and sustainably self-finance.

Tron

Tron is a decentralize blockchain-base operating system and application platform. The main objective of the Tron Group (Tron Group) is to demonstrate that the internet should be use as a good for everyone instead of as a lucrative tool for a small core of businesses. Tron allows digital content creators to sell directly to consumers instead of dealing with their apps or content through the “app store,” thus putting control back in the hands of the creators.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based decentralize cryptocurrency platform that executes smart contracts on schedule. Without the possibility of third-party outages, censorship, or interference. It came about as an effect of a controversial hard fork on the Ethereum blockchain in 2016. Following which the Ethereum (ETH) mainline created a new network that transitions to a new consensus mechanism called “Proof-of-Stake.” The older network was rebrand as Ethereum Classic (ETC), which retains the pre-fork version of the Ethereum blockchain without abandoning the philosophy of blockchain immutability.

Algorand

Algorand is a project that aims to solve the crypto “trilemma” of scalability, security, and also decentralization. It uses a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and allows users to create smart contracts to build decentralized applications (dApps).

Algorand aims to expand the potential use cases for cryptocurrency by offering faster transaction speeds and needful fewer confirmations on the blockchain before transactions are final.

Uniswap

Uniswap is a decentralized finance (Defi) protocol that allows users to trade crypto assets that operate on the Ethereum blockchain. Rather than maintain a central order book, uni swap users can lock equal amounts of two assets into a smart contract that functions as a liquidity pool.

As a return for maintaining liquidity, users are reward with several trading fees and a newly minted UNI, the native token of the blockchain. Uniswap is based on Ethereum, which does not include tokens that trade on other blockchains.

Conclusion

Altcoin” refers to any kind of cryptocurrency additional than Bitcoin. Ethereum is the most general altcoin, and people use the full name (Ethereum). When talking about the more extensive blockchain network but Ether (ETH) when talking about the coin itself.

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