Mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is expensive and incredibly energy-intensive. It also often requires special hardware. Over time, these barriers to entry have centralized a lot of cryptocurrency mining to a relatively small number of nodes, overriding one of blockchain’s original tenets. Ravencoin is a cryptocurrency that works to accomplish blockchain and Bitcoin’s original vision of decentralization—but not without some hitches.
What Is Ravencoin?
Ravencoin is a fairly new cryptocurrency created from a fork of Bitcoin in 2018. It employs much of the same technology as Bitcoin, but there are some key differences. Regardless, just like Bitcoin, Ravencoin is a blockchain-powered cryptocurrency beyond government control. The main feature of Ravencoin is its ability to be mined by a regular computer. Ravencoin was first introduced as an experimental currency in November 2017 via the blogging platform Medium. In the blog post, Ravencoin’s founders connected the new digital currency with the popular TV show “Game of Thrones”: Just two months later, on Jan. 3, 2018, Ravencoin was born.
Special Features of Ravencoin
Most notably, Ravencoin is designed to be mined by your average computer. Rather than a government controlling the money supply—as governments do—a circulating cryptocurrency supply only increases as it is mined. For most cryptocurrencies, miners use special hardware to solve complicated math problems to mint new blocks, and they can even receive a fee or block reward for the work. For example, miners receive 6.25 bitcoins for each block of Bitcoin they mine and add to the blockchain. While Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder (or group of founders) of Bitcoin, intended the cryptocurrency to be decentralized, the technological know-how and advanced computing hardware required to mine it has resulted in centralization among a small pool of miners. In recent years, because high amounts of energy are now required to mine Bitcoin, mining has been further centralized in a few regions of China, where cheap electricity is abundant. Critics have pointed out that this centralization in cryptocurrency mining nullifies one of its primary uses: decentralization. A truly decentralized cryptocurrency would require many mining nodes to pull their weight. The Ravencoin blockchain attempts to solve this by creating math problems your average computer’s hardware can solve. Specifically, Ravencoin uses special algorithms to prevent the need for specialized hardware to mine the digital currency. This keeps the sophistication of the puzzles from advancing too rapidly and pushing would-be miners out. In theory, this means almost anyone with a computer can mine Ravencoin, which is the kind of accessibility that can create many nodes. Ravencoin’s creators hope their take on cryptocurrency will lead to a truly decentralized digital coin and make both cryptocurrency and mining more accessible to the general public. Ravencoin was explicitly designed to create a mining ecosystem where the specialized mining hardware used for other cryptocurrencies—called application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)—did not have an advantage. In January 2020, Tron Black, Ravencoin’s lead developer, wrote that ASIC miners had found a way to game Ravencoin’s original algorithms, giving them a leg up on computers with regular processing power. To remedy this, the Ravencoin team further modified its algorithms so that even if miners chose to use ASICs, their hardware would be forced to behave like regular computer hardware. This essentially evened the playing field—at least for the time being.
How To Mine Ravencoin
To mine Ravencoin, first create a digital wallet and generate a wallet address. Once you’ve set up your wallet, you can select from more than a dozen mining pools affiliated with Ravencoin.
Total Supply of Ravencoin
There are 21 billion coins. As of November 2, 2021, 10 billion have been mined.
Rewards for Mining and Halving History
The block reward is 5,000 ravencoins. The next halving is scheduled for approximately January 2022, when it reaches 2.1 million coins.
How to Buy/Invest in Ravencoin
Wallets
Because Ravencoin was launched without an initial coin offering (ICO), which the network’s creators say ensured a “fair launch” free of suspect incentives for either funders or developers, not as many general wallets support buying or investing in Ravencoin as a lot of other cryptocurrencies. Ravencoin is supported by its own wallet, so there is no need to get another unless you already have one. Ravencoin lists several third party wallets on its website that are supported:
Atomic Wallet CoboCoinPaymentsCrypto.comD’CentDoveEdgeExodusFlareGuardaHebeMangoFarmOwnbitSevenBSafepay SpendTrust WallettZeroZelcoreCoinUs
Transaction Times
The transaction time for Ravencoin can be as short as one minute, according to cryptocurrency exchange Bitni. For the true immutability of the transactions, Bitni says transaction times between six and 100 minutes are most secure.
