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Back in 2021 crypto was The Big Thing and I figured I should learn more about it. I believe the best way to learn is to do, so I decided to create my own cryptocurrency.

Since this was just a learning project I wanted to make the actual implementation work as simple as possible so I chose to use Python. I followed the same design principles as Nano because I think they solve a lot of the issues people associate with cryptocurrencies.

Design Principles

• Feeless
  • Nodes don’t get paid for processing transactions, instead their incentive is inherent in the system due to wanting to secure their own funds.
• Fast
  • Uses a block lattice instead of a blockchain which allows transactions to happen asynchronously
  • Each transaction is its own block so no waiting for a block to fill up and be mined
• Environmentally friendly (no mining!)
  • Open Representative Voting instead of Proof of Work. Instead of mining, nodes vote on the validity of transactions.

What I learned

This project helped me learn about lots more than just cryptocurrencies - it was my first time designing any sort of distributed system and I learned a lot about what goes into it.

This includes the obvious things like networking and security, but also more subtle things like how new nodes know about the network, the race conditions that can come from this sort of setup, and the risks of data corruption in a system that processes lots of inputs concurrently.

Give it a go

If you’d like to give it a try you can download the CLI wallet here and claim some MXC from the faucet here.