Even though Bitcoin is still the world’s leading cryptocurrency to date, it is not the only currency people should be paying attention to. Thousands of altcoins exist as of right now, yet only a select few will achieve their goals in the future. Viacoin is not your average altcoin, as it has some interesting features that make it stand out.
What is Viacoin Exactly?
While most people know Viacoin as just another cryptocurrency with a Scrypt mining algorithm, there is a lot more to this project than meets the eye. It is also one of the early adopters of Scrypt merged mining, which means one can mine Viacoin alongside other supported currencies without losing hashrate. Under the hood, the Viacoin project has some very interesting features to take note of. It’s also 25 times faster than Bitcoin in terms of transaction speed.
The Things That Make Viacoin Tick
When looking at the bigger picture, one has to admit Viacoin offers more services than 99% of the other tokens out there. First of all, it has locktime support, which means Viacoin-based micropayments and payment channels are certainly possible. This is achieved without external solutions such as Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, even though Viacoin is compatible with such implementations as well.
Similar to Bitcoin, Viacoin will have SegWit support at some point in order to improve scaling and address malleability issues. One of the features people tend to overlook quite often is how Viacoin offers a clearinghouse protocol. This decentralized settlement and meta transaction protocol is rather unique in the world of cryptocurrency. It’s surprising other currencies never explored such a feature.
Additionally, Viacoin offers a blockchain notary service, known as proof-of-publication. While blockchain-based notary services are nothing unique these days, Viacoin was one of the first currencies to natively support such a feature. Right now, there are virtually no native blockchain notary service providers other than external companies and projects. All of the aforementioned features are just part of what makes Viacoin tick, as there’s also increased Tor support, Styx implementation for anonymous atomic payments, and so much more.
The Viacoin Cryptocurrency
The Viacoin cryptocurrency – known as VIA – is a Scrypt currency which embraces proof-of-work, similar to Litecoin. It can be merged mined with Litecoin, which lets users support both blockchains at the same time through one mining pool. Miners will also receive part of the block rewards from both blockchains without having to split up their hashpower. F2Pool and Suprnova are two of the mining pools supporting merged mining as of right now.
The Road Ahead
According to the most recent roadmap, there’s still a lot to come for Viacoin. Hardware wallet support through Trezor is almost finished, and the Lightning Network Daemon should be completed soon. Rootstock smart contracts and the Styx integration should be finalized at some point this year. The VIA currency will also be supported by ATM manufacturer General Bytes later this year. Furthermore, we will see Schnorr signatures, colored coins, new exchange listings, and a lot more in the next 9-12 months.
