Happy 10th Birthday Nano! – May the next 10 years bring even more success :)

Nano (originally called Raiblocks) launched on 4th of October 2015. Today marks the day that the Nano network has been running live for 10 years.

The start of RaiBlocks

In 2014 Colin LeMahieu began development on a new distributed network with a novel architecture, called the block lattice.

During these early times, RaiBlocks moved from a first commit to Github on May 1st 2014, to the Dev Alpha version 1 on November 11th 2014, to Release Candidate 1 Version 7.0.1 on September 20th 2015. This Release Candidate was the first version intended for more general usage.

In October 2015, the Genesis Block was created, bringing into existence 2¹²⁸ — 1 raw. Fully written out this amounts to 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,455 raw. To simplify this immense number, the decision was made to move the decimal 30 places to the left, leading to a total supply of 340,282,366.9 RaiBlocks.

Distribution of the currency

Nano implemented a novel faucet system with the goal of distributing Nano as fairly and organically as possible. Users faced complex CAPTCHA tests and upon completion were rewarded a percent of the allotted coins based on the amount of CAPTCHA’s solved. The CAPTCHA faucet allowed anyone with a computer to participate, similar to Proof-of-Work mining, though instead of hashing power, users earned coins through contributing a different resource: time and effort.

The faucet eventually closed, after roughly two years, with 126,248,297 RaiBlocks distributed via captcha faucets. The initial plan had been to fully distribute all 340 million RaiBlocks, over a 5-year period. There were several reasons for the early closure. Amongst others, current holders felt like the distribution (for ~2 years) led to a constant sell pressure. Many also felt like RaiBlocks wouldn’t start being taken more seriously until distribution was done and RaiBlocks was truly decentralized.

Following the closure of the faucet, 7,000,000 RaiBlocks were sent from the Genesis account to a development fund, leading to a total supply of 133,248,297. The remaining, undistributed 207,034,069 Raiblocks were sent to the burn account.

Today Nano is one of the only cryptocurrencies with a fully distributed total supply.

Let's hope the next decade brings great success to Nano and other cryptocurrencies striving for a world where everyone can participate in a financial system, free from the control of centralized entities that can harm individuals without their input.