What is it?

Navajocoin is a X13 based cryptocurrency featuring a POW and POS stage. It evolved from Summercoin V2 which was launched in May 2014.  As the developer was working on a new feature called the Navajo Anonymous Technology the rebranding came along which transformed SUM2 to NAV

NAV’s history

Let us briefly go over how Navajocoin was created. It isn’t a new gimmicky shitcoin with an anon dev. It is a coin that evolved from Summercoin which was released back in April of 2014. SUM was a trendy crypto which featured the all new (at the time) X11 algo , a Proof of Stake stage, and was considered to be the first season coin. However, the coin ran into some issues especially with the staking algorithm. Following what most developers of shitcoins do, the original dev of Summercoin bailed and a new developer took over. That dev team decided to dump SUM and start a new version called Summercoin V2. This coin featured the newer X13 algorithm in addition to the sought after POS stage. During the transition holders of SUM were able to convert their assets to SUM2 at a 1:1 ratio. So once the conversion has taken place the dev announced that they were working on a new project called the Navajo Anonymous Technology. This lead to a rebranding of SUM2 to the all new Navajocoin.

Features

Navajocoin features the latest X13 algorithm which adapts X11 and adds 2 more hashing algos hamsi and fugue. It is not as modern as the X15 algorithm which features 15 rounds of scientific hashing, but it is not neccesary to have that many hashing algorithms so X15 may simply be overkill. It also offers the trendy POW/POS stages. If you did not know a POW (proof of work) is the normal mining stage just like bitcoin where miner’s earn coins by solving blocks and processing transactions. With POS Proof of Stake, the resource that’s compared is the amount of Bitcoin a miner holds – someone holding 1% of the Bitcoin can mine 1% of the “Proof of Stake blocks”. Here is how Navajocoin’s POW and POS stages work, referenced from bitcointalk.org:

POW (Ended):

                                   Total Coins (by POW): 50,000,000
                                   

POS:

                                   Min age: 4 days
                                   Max age: unlimited
                                   Minted Blocks Maturity: 60
                                   Stake Interest: First Year: 20%
                                                          Second Year: 10%
                                                          Third Year + nYears: 5%

As you can see the POW stage of this coin was pretty short – only 7 days. As of now the coin is in pure POS stage, which means you earn 20% stake interest for the first year.

POS Mining

If you did not know here is how POS mining works:

Each block (every 30 seconds), a random Navajocoin is selected to be the next “miner”. There are 50 million coins so the odds of a single wallet being selected is the number of NAV in that wallet divided by 50 million. (Also, it’s possible to calculate and agree on who that node is so the transactions need only be sent to that particular wallet.) If a node with the selected wallet is running, it will collect the transactions, make a block, and send it to the rest of the network and collect the fees. If the computer is turned off, however, then the entire network will have to select a different navajocoin to make the transaction. This time, the unresponsive wallet will be ignored. The network would suffer in that the time to make a block is decreased, but the thought is that people wouldn’t leave their computers off if they have a lot of NAV because they’re missing out on all the fees that they could have collected. If you only have a few NAV, you can leave your computer off: You probably wouldn’t have collected much fees anyway.

If you are holding a lot of NAV and would like to make profit on your holdings then you should consider transferring the NAV to your wallet (if it is not already there) so you can enjoy POS earnings. You also have the option of using the chunky pool in order to mine Navajocoin/Summercoin. Essentially you would direct your hashes to a specified url using either SHA-256, Scrypt, or X11, and the pool would convert the mined coins into NAV. Here is a statement form chunkypools:

Since we are mining coins in exchange for SummercoinV2, your balance will show as ‘Convertible’ credits on the coin pages we are mining. Currently, you will receive a payout of these ‘Convertible’ credits that will show in your SummercoinV2 balance once per day

So if you have extra hashes in SHA256, Scrypt, or X11 and would like to invest into NAV you should consider using chunky pools.

Navajo Anonymous Technology

The dev team released a whitepaper which described their plans for the anonymous transfer system that is going into beta testing on July 14th. In their whitepaper they mention Optional Decentralized Anonymity in cryptocurrency which is a feat yet to be achieved. We have seen Stealthcoin using tor nodes, Shieldcoin who’s dev also released a whitepaper regarding anon transactions, all hopping onto the ODA train in the race to a successful implementation of anon transactions. According to the Navajocoin whitepaper:

To achieve ODA, we will be introducing a new concept to cryptocurrencies which we will call Subchains and whose application is to be stretched far beyond anonymity

Let us take a look at how these subchains work and what the dev team is proposing. The idea here is to use Subchains in order to make the inputs and outputs of a transaction in such a manner that neither the recepient nor the sender can be corrolated, linked to each other, or even traced back on the blockchain. Here is a brief infogram taken from the official whitepaper:

Above, the blue arrow shows the regular unencrypted transaction which gets broadcasted on the network and all the information gets stored on the blockchain just like with bitcoin. The red arrow shows the anonymous transaction which begins with the sender choosing a specific node to channel the transaction through, this begins the anonymous transaction phase. The selected node is the gateway to the subchain because from hereon it will set  the destination to the next stage forming a “chain”. The selected node will send the transaction through 2 gateways. first the Navajo “Magic” Gateway takes the information then uses double encryption to send it to the Choctaw “Star” Gate, which then forwards the transaction to a Destination Initialization Mechanism. The NMG and the CSG are the two main players in facilitating an anonymous transaction.

They run on an independent subchain and are of  course fully decentralized. The NMG is the decryption mechanism and the  CSG is the gateway back to the main chain.  (whitepaper)

The Navajo “Magic” Gateway received the encrypted transaction infowhich includes the destination address and the amount. It decrypts it and then sends it off to the CSG which in turns verifies its integrity before broadcasting the transaction on the main chain. So what appears on the main blockchain is only the destination address and the amount. The reason is because the only part of the transaction the is being broadcasted on the main network is the one going from the CSG to the receiver. Since the only information the anonymizing node relays to the NMG is the destination address and the amount that is the only information that is available to the CSG which is responsible for broadcasing the transaction on the main network.

So, in turn the anonymous transaction cannot be traced using the blockchain because there is not enough information about it. It cannot be traced via the sub chains either because all data transfer is encrypted and the players responsible for the encrypted data transfer are decentralized. Furthermore, in order to counter other attacks of tracing similar amounts and linking senders and receivers Navajocoin cam up with the idea to introduce a random variable fee AND an option to split the sent amount among several different addresses.

Efficiency also plays a role in the system. Since it only takes 3 confirmations for the coins to be sent and received using the anonymous transactions there is no disadvantage to use this feature. Because the anonymizing feature uses subchains it does not  bloat the backbone of the system.

Some may say that Navajocoin’s anonymous transaction implementation is similar to Darkcoin’s Darksend feature.

uses a decentralized ‘node’ system that has some similarities to Darkcoin‘s node-based ‘Darksend’ system. (coinssource)

However, Darksend does not feature subchains or double encryption and their decentralized nodes are essentially pools.

Here is how Darksend works. DarkSend uses a pool of transactions, currently POOL_MAX_TRANSACTIONS is set to 3. This means it will wait for 3 transactions before “darksending” them. Being that you can only send 1 transaction through the pool at a time, you will need to wait for someone else on the network to send another darksend transaction. If you don’t want to wait, you can send multiple darksend transactions with multiple clients. The way Darksend is setup is it still uses the public ledger to broadcast the transaction but it obfuscates the source by having a decentralized node. It does not have an equivalent to a NMG and a CSG.

On Wallet Messaging

Another feature that the Navajo Anonymous technology is going to introduce is a decentralized messaging system. It will allow users to chat right from the Navajocoin wallet. The messaging system will use subchains to transmit the messages so once again the backbone of the network will not be affected. The on Wallet Messaging service will tie nicknames to addresses. An available balance will be required to chat in order to prevent spam because it is a decentralized network after all. To combat spammers the devs decided to implement a mute feature where a node will be able to sop listening to a certain nickname for a specific period of time.

Market

Navajocoin is currently trading on Bittrex, Poloniex, and Bter.

As we can see Nav has been rising steadily on Bittrex. The release of the beta-testing on July 14th should pump the price even higher and unless something goes wrong and the beta release fails.

Hopefully NAV will keep rising after the 14th unless it pulls a Shieldcoin type move. The volume on NAV-BTC is also rising which is obviously a good sign. Keep an eye out for this coin because after all it has gone through a successful POW stage and made a smooth transition unlike Stealthcoin – which forked multiple times upon the arrival of the POS stage because the dev forgot to set seed nodes. Hopefully this time the dev did not copy paste code like Shieldcoin’s dev then NAV should reach lunar levels.

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