Welcome to the CryptoCoinsNews weekly altcoin news update, where we examine important altcoin stories that have gone under-the-radar. This week’s article examines Litecoin‘s recent price struggles, Darkcoin‘s recent progress toward anonymity, and QuarkBar‘s introduction of adaptive coin creation.
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Litecoin Price Struggles
Since its release in 2011, Litecoin has consistently remained cryptocurrency’s silver standard. However, hundreds of new altcoins have followed in Litecoin’s shadow over the past several years. While most of these altcoins are essentially worthless, more and more are introducing innovative features to the cryptocurrency landscape. As these new altcoins have entered the market, the Litecoin price and market cap have fallen.
The Litecoin price has fallen consistently over the past 30 days.
The Litecoin price, like every other cryptocurrency, experienced a downtrend following the Mt. Gox crash. However, the Litecoin price has not recovered. In fact, the past 30 days have seen the Litecoin price fall from about $11 to less than $7. Things got even worse last week. A whale dumped about 50,000 Litecoins, which caused the Litecoin price to plummet temporarily to $2.21. The price quickly recovered, but it has not corrected its consistent decline. Currently, the Litecoin price sits at $7.70–a slight uptick over its 30-day low-point, but still far below where Litecoin investors would like it to be.
However, there is still hope for Litecoin. Despite the consistent decline of the Litecoin price, CoinGecko ranks Litecoin third in overall coin strength. According to its unique metric system, Litecoin trails only Bitcoin and Dogecoin. However, if that metric score does not soon translate into an increased Litecoin price, investors may start to get antsy.
Darkcoin Anonymity Progress
Darkcoin will soon implement DarkSend+, an update designed to patch holes in Darkcoin transaction privacy.
Litecoin is not the only major altcoin currently undergoing a significant price decline. The Darkcoin price has also struggled over the past month, in part due to struggles with the development of DarkSend, Darkcoin’s signature feature. Throughout the development of DarkSend, one criticism of has been that even though the general public cannot directly monitor transactions, the masternodes that process the transactions can track who sends and receives coins. Considering the entire purpose of DarkSend is to facilitate complete anonymity, this flaw posed a huge long-term problem for Darkcoin.
Thankfully for Darkcoin holders, Darkcoin developer Evan Duffield announced in an official blog post that his team is developing DarkSend+ to correct that flaw. The DarkSend+ update–which is slated to release in late July–will introduce increased anonymity features. Specifically, transactions will now be processed by two masternodes rather than one so that no single masternode can track coins from sender to receiver. As Duffield explains:
Masternode 1 receives an amount of DRK (input) from the sender that is unrelated to the amount intended for the receiver. From that input, Masternode 1 breaks down the total into homogeneous denominations (1, 2, 5, 10, etc.) and sends (output) each denominated chunk of DRK back to the sender’s wallet using randomly generated change addresses.
The sender’s client selects appropriate denominations from those change addresses, totalling the amount of DRK that the sender wishes to send to the receiver, then forwards those denominations to Masternode 2. Masternode 2 mixes those denominations with inputs from other users and sends the desired amount to the intended receivers. This creates a much more anonymous solution than we’ve had in the past.
If Darkcoin successfully implements DarkSend+, the Darkcoin price should rebound amid increased investor confidence.
QuarkBar Introduces Adaptive Coin Creation
The altcoin enterprise is a cutthroat landscape. If a new coin cannot distinguish itself from the myriad of other coins, it will undergo a quick pump & dump and then proceed to die. However, some coin communities remain resilient in the belief that their coin can survive.
Quarkbar is one of those rare coins. Despite an attempt by the developer to scam the community via a secret premine, the community saved QuarkBar by staging a community takeover and reclaiming the majority of those stolen coins. The CryptoCoin Revival Foundation (CRF) then chose QuarkBar as its first project in an attempt to revitalize the coin.
To increase the lifespan of QuarkBar (as well as future projects), the CRF announced the creation of a new coin distribution system named PULSE. According to the whitepaper, PULSE will simulate the way that animals conserve their heartbeats by engaging in periods of low activity. In crypto-language, that means altering the creation of blocks to adapt to the network hashrate.
Blocks are created according to a slower time flow, and when a sufficient amount of transactions occurs a special PULSE BLOCK is created. The transaction will not have to wait on the slower creation, but will be sent immediately. This enables the block creation to slow down and in effect lower mining rewards when mining power is less necessary. PULSE will enable mature coins to slow down coin creation and use the remaining to be created coins to reward necessary mining that is needed for the flow of transactions.
Adaptive coin creation is certainly an innovative idea. Will it be enough to make QuarkBar relevant? That remains to be seen, but with a market cap of less than $21,000 and a 24-hour trading volume of $17, the coin has a long way to go.
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Litecoin Price Struggles
Since its release in 2011, Litecoin has consistently remained cryptocurrency’s silver standard. However, hundreds of new altcoins have followed in Litecoin’s shadow over the past several years. While most of these altcoins are essentially worthless, more and more are introducing innovative features to the cryptocurrency landscape. As these new altcoins have entered the market, the Litecoin price and market cap have fallen.
The Litecoin price has fallen consistently over the past 30 days.
The Litecoin price, like every other cryptocurrency, experienced a downtrend following the Mt. Gox crash. However, the Litecoin price has not recovered. In fact, the past 30 days have seen the Litecoin price fall from about $11 to less than $7. Things got even worse last week. A whale dumped about 50,000 Litecoins, which caused the Litecoin price to plummet temporarily to $2.21. The price quickly recovered, but it has not corrected its consistent decline. Currently, the Litecoin price sits at $7.70–a slight uptick over its 30-day low-point, but still far below where Litecoin investors would like it to be.
However, there is still hope for Litecoin. Despite the consistent decline of the Litecoin price, CoinGecko ranks Litecoin third in overall coin strength. According to its unique metric system, Litecoin trails only Bitcoin and Dogecoin. However, if that metric score does not soon translate into an increased Litecoin price, investors may start to get antsy.
Darkcoin Anonymity Progress
Darkcoin will soon implement DarkSend+, an update designed to patch holes in Darkcoin transaction privacy.
Litecoin is not the only major altcoin currently undergoing a significant price decline. The Darkcoin price has also struggled over the past month, in part due to struggles with the development of DarkSend, Darkcoin’s signature feature. Throughout the development of DarkSend, one criticism of has been that even though the general public cannot directly monitor transactions, the masternodes that process the transactions can track who sends and receives coins. Considering the entire purpose of DarkSend is to facilitate complete anonymity, this flaw posed a huge long-term problem for Darkcoin.
Thankfully for Darkcoin holders, Darkcoin developer Evan Duffield announced in an official blog post that his team is developing DarkSend+ to correct that flaw. The DarkSend+ update–which is slated to release in late July–will introduce increased anonymity features. Specifically, transactions will now be processed by two masternodes rather than one so that no single masternode can track coins from sender to receiver. As Duffield explains:
Masternode 1 receives an amount of DRK (input) from the sender that is unrelated to the amount intended for the receiver. From that input, Masternode 1 breaks down the total into homogeneous denominations (1, 2, 5, 10, etc.) and sends (output) each denominated chunk of DRK back to the sender’s wallet using randomly generated change addresses.
The sender’s client selects appropriate denominations from those change addresses, totalling the amount of DRK that the sender wishes to send to the receiver, then forwards those denominations to Masternode 2. Masternode 2 mixes those denominations with inputs from other users and sends the desired amount to the intended receivers. This creates a much more anonymous solution than we’ve had in the past.
If Darkcoin successfully implements DarkSend+, the Darkcoin price should rebound amid increased investor confidence.
QuarkBar Introduces Adaptive Coin Creation
The altcoin enterprise is a cutthroat landscape. If a new coin cannot distinguish itself from the myriad of other coins, it will undergo a quick pump & dump and then proceed to die. However, some coin communities remain resilient in the belief that their coin can survive.
Quarkbar is one of those rare coins. Despite an attempt by the developer to scam the community via a secret premine, the community saved QuarkBar by staging a community takeover and reclaiming the majority of those stolen coins. The CryptoCoin Revival Foundation (CRF) then chose QuarkBar as its first project in an attempt to revitalize the coin.
To increase the lifespan of QuarkBar (as well as future projects), the CRF announced the creation of a new coin distribution system named PULSE. According to the whitepaper, PULSE will simulate the way that animals conserve their heartbeats by engaging in periods of low activity. In crypto-language, that means altering the creation of blocks to adapt to the network hashrate.
Blocks are created according to a slower time flow, and when a sufficient amount of transactions occurs a special PULSE BLOCK is created. The transaction will not have to wait on the slower creation, but will be sent immediately. This enables the block creation to slow down and in effect lower mining rewards when mining power is less necessary. PULSE will enable mature coins to slow down coin creation and use the remaining to be created coins to reward necessary mining that is needed for the flow of transactions.
Adaptive coin creation is certainly an innovative idea. Will it be enough to make QuarkBar relevant? That remains to be seen, but with a market cap of less than $21,000 and a 24-hour trading volume of $17, the coin has a long way to go.