Cryptocurrency: Aeon’s Mobile Privacy Vision

Cryptocurrency: Aeon’s Lightweight Privacy Pivot

Today, Cryptocurrency has become a global phenomenon. Almost everyone who is in the shed of the digital age has been buying them, selling them, or simply investing in them. While still somehow geeky and difficult for people to grasp, most of the companies, governments, and banks are aware of the emerging boom of Cryptocurrency. AeonCryptocurrency is a privacy-centric, lightweight, and mobile-friendly cryptocurrency. It is considered a light version of cryptocurrencyMonero. Not light in terms of privacy but light in terms of resource usage and thus mobile friendly. It is designed to be scalable and prune-able and also gives an option to make your transaction traceable at a little extra cost. Aeon coin was forked from Monero by a Bitcointalk user named Aeon on June 6th, 2014, and later, Smooth and Arux joined him to contribute to this project. All of these three people are anonymous, but you can always reach out to them on the Bitcointalk forum. They have been quite active on Twitter, too, with the latest releases and patches.

There is no public roadmap of their development and next goals, although its Github is active with weekly (if not daily) commits. You can follow the latest updates on the Bitcoin Forum itself. Now that you know a brief about what AeonCryptocurrency is, let’s dig a bit deeper into what makes Aeon different from Monero or, as their founders say – what makes Aeon coin a Lifestyle. Key Features of AeonCryptocurrency: Mobile Friendly: 1 MB scratchpad allows Aeon Coin to run efficiently on low-end systems flawlessly and even on mobile phones. The hashing algorithm behind this cryptocurrencyaeon is – Cryptonight-Lite, which uses a smaller scratchpad for hashing, 1 MB instead of 2 MB, as in the case of Cryptonight used in Monero.

This more closely aligns with the cache size on low-end processors, especially in the case of smartphones. It’s anticipated to be mineable even on smartphones as per their roadmap. Different Proof-of-work: Aeon’s faster and lighter proof-of-work – Cryptonight-Lite, allows faster verification of the blockchain transactions than Monero in order to preserve efficiency. With the scratchpad being half in size, half the iterations are needed for hashing, thus making it feasible to be able to run on low-end processors. It prunes the blockchain to support scalability and thus also improves anonymity, thus preventing age-based attacks.

Understanding Aeon: Privacy Features, Acquisition, and Price Volatility

Ring Signatures: Another privacy-centric feature of AeonCryptocurrency is the use of ring signatures during verification. A ring signature is a group of public keys tied to each transaction in a way that makes them untraceable. People can only know the addresses that initiated the transaction but can never identify the exact starting node. Fast Syncing: CryptoNote coins have a higher verification procedure, thus leading to more orphaned blocks. Aeon Coin, on the other hand, handles this issue by increasing the block time to 4 min; thus, blocks need to be synced regularly as compared to Monero, which has a block time of 2 min. Coupled with lighter PoW, sync times can be improved by 10x or more on lower-end devices.

Optional traceable payments: Being a cryptoNote coin, all the payments are anonymous by default. But what differentiates Aeon coin from Monero is its ability to allow to make transactions traceable. You can turn off the privacy functionality for just a little extra fee. This exemplifies the user’s willingness to sacrifice some privacy for a better user experience. This feature can be used in the case of transferring to/from exchanges or for day-to-day small transactions where the extreme end of privacy doesn’t matter a lot. Where to buy Aeon?: Until the Aeon developers make Aeoncryptocurrencymineable on smartphones, enthusiasts are limited to buying it on three major exchanges, as mentioned on Coinmarketcap.com. The most preferred platform for Aeon coin currently is Bittrex, though it is also available on TradeOrge and HitBTC.

Considering its high-end privacy feature, we can soon expect it to be listed on Russian and Chinese exchanges. Buying Aeon for funds from your bank requires a 2-step process. You will need Bitcoin or ETH in order to purchase Aeon from any of the three exchanges. But in order to maintain privacy, you need to use a Peer-to-Peer solution to purchase Bitcoin and then later exchange it for Aeon. You can also set up a private transfer with someone you trust. Still, 98% of the total trade volume of Aeon coins is being exchanged via Bittrex.

An Aeon Coin desktop wallet was also being released by a third party in January 2018, but it has no legal connection to Aeon. Currently, this wallet is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Though a mobile wallet is in the production pipeline as per the Aeon development team and their roadmap, it’s still delusive when it will be released. Aeon Coin Price Performance: The price of AeonCryptocurrency has seen abrupt ups and downs in the last few years. The price of the coin was relatively flat in its first year of existence. It experienced its first upsurge at the end of August 2016, reaching its local high of $0.195. The next spike was noticed in September 2017.

Then again, just like the entire cryptocurrency market, Aeon coin was on a bull run in December 2017 and January 2018, reaching its all-time high of $9.04 in early January. Since then, the price has fallen significantly, and as of now, it’s all the way back to $0.54. With the project having a small market cap, it is difficult to establish any correlation between these price movements. With no discernible news about the upcoming development related to this project, it is not completely wrong to state that coordinated pump n’ dump has led to volatility in price.

Aeon’s Potential and Challenges: Mobile Mining, Privacy, and Ties to Monero

Aeoncryptocurrency needs to see an increased user base and usage to get some uplift in the price. Where does it stand now?: AeonCryptocurrency has a current market Cap of $9.676 Million with an overall ranking of #376. It has an algorithmic score of 2.4 out of 5, as per Coincheckup. The maximum supply of Aeon coin circulation is restricted to 18.4 million, with a block time of roughly 240 seconds. As per their initial roadmap, Aeoncryptocurrency was supposed to be used via mobile app, and they also claimed that it’s even possible for miners to mine these coins on mobile devices. But currently, all these claims are hypothetical as it is impossible to mine coins on a mobile phone.

Though Aeon has started gathering a small following, the users have started doubting that Aeoncryptocurrency is just a test bed for Monero. In fact, the lead developer of Aeon is also a Monero contributor, which also backs this claim up to an extent. From the exchange and trading perspective, Aeon is looking to cover a broader market, but if it delivers on its mobile-mineable privacy coin, it can see a massive surge. This will lead to more adoption by exchange platforms and a huge surge in users, and thus may also lead to a tectonic shift in price. It has also been stated as one of the best privacy coins to invest in 2018 by a very trending, informative, and reliable cryptocurrency YouTube channel, Altcoin Buzz. Aeon is looking to decentralize the whole currency system, due to which it’s not wrong to say that they won’t be popular or praised by the powers that be.

In fact, there is a high probability that they will be considered the enemies of the most centralized governments, especially the privacy-driven U.S. government. Maybe this clarifies the reason behind their anonymity so that they can avoid any potential future problems before they are established well enough to be able to fight back. To sum up, Aeoncryptocurrency is a lightweight, privacy-centricMonero, just like the way Litecoin seeks to be a lightweight Bitcoin. It is an interesting project and also catching the eyes of the users, but it has been so wrapped up in privacy, anonymity, and unclear roadmap that there is no way to know so far that it is even a real project or just a test environment for Monero.

But for now, the features and future promises Aeon has been portraying, it’s not wrong to say that Aeoncryptocurrency is a decentralized lifestyle in today’s world. Future: Anyone with a computer can have a hand on Aeon for now, but in the near future, it’s expected that anyone with a smartphone will be able to not only use Aeon but also mine it. This will not only open up the whole world of possibilities for the blockchain but also will result in a massive surge in users and, eventually, the price. Aeon is also going to benefit from the increasing popularity of Monero as it will encourage users to willingly accept the privacy coins that fly in the face of traditional governments and banks. But it’s for sure that Aeoncryptocurrency cannot be universally accepted till they deliver their promise of being Mobile-friendly.

References

1. Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
2. van Saberhagen, N. (2013). CryptoNote v2.0.
3. Antonopoulos, A. M. (2014). Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies.
4. Popov, S. (2016). The Tangle – IOTA Whitepaper.
5. CoinMarketCap. (Year). Aeon Price Charts and Historical Data.
6. Coincheckup. (Year). Aeon’s algorithmic score report.
7. Aeon’s official GitHub repository.
8. Bitcointalk Forum threads discussing Aeon and its development.
9. Altcoin Buzz. (2018). YouTube channel’s review of top privacy coins.
10. Narayanan, A., Bonneau, J., Felten, E., Miller, A., & Goldfeder, S. (2016). Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction.