Achain is a public blockchain platform that enables developers of all levels to issue tokens and create smart contracts, decentralized applications, and blockchain systems. Achain is committed to building a global blockchain network for information exchange and value transactions. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Achain utilizes a modified version of DPoS — RDPoS (Result-delegated Proof of Stake) to establish node consensus. Shortly, DPoS suggests that all coin holders vote for the validator nodes that will produce the next blocks. On the project website, only info about CEO Tony Cui is listed. Cui has a few significant accomplishments, including winning the Future Star award from the Zhongguancun Alliance and being listed in the 30 under 30 on CYZONE, a famous venture capital magazine. On LinkedIn, 51 people are listed as employees at Achain. Most of the team is based in Beijing. Achain also has a few key industry partners. It has even co-organized a “Blockchain Technology Open Course” with Tsinghua University, which is widely recognized as one of the world’s top universities. The roadmap for Achain development is fairly detailed. However, most goals listed are development-oriented rather than marketing or design. Still, it’s important to note that focusing on making the protocol interoperable and building a technology that is more accessible to mainstream adoption could also be considered a marketing-oriented part of this project. There are three major phases with projected completion dates listed. These include Singularity (completed Q1), Galaxy (ongoing), and Cosmos (complete at the end of Q4). One thing to note is that dates for these phases are not consistent between the homepage and the whitepaper. This could be simply due to a scenario in which phase names remain the same while new goals and timeline dates within those phases continue to change. In January 2019, the project will update the website to reflect roadmap goals for the new year. Looking at the current landscape of blockchain projects, Achain certainly offers the possibility of much-needed technical innovations. The ability to easily create an Achain fork, as well as, the protocol’s unique RDPoS consensus algorithm make this a promising project. It will be interesting to see how Achain builds upon its accomplishments, and how the project team continues to develop a long-term strategy for improving the protocol’s technical capabilities and increasing participation in its ecosystem.
Turtlecoin is a privacy coin that is forked from Bytecoin. Because of this, turtlecoin has Bytecoin’s privacy aspects to it called RingCT. This coin is more of a meme coin, but there are a lot of serious tech advancements as well. For example, they have a 30-second block time. They also plan on having simple smart contracts sometime soon, since they say they already started development. They have 35 developers on the team and they also plan on somehow making the blockchain smaller to sync faster, but this is TBA on the roadmap, and the details of this are not out yet. Turtle coin uses the cryptonight_lite_v7 algorithm so it is ASIC resistant. Born on the 9th day of December 2017, TurtleCoin faced a backlash from a couple of online forums, not because it had such a funny name, but since its initial single command line and included TRTL giveaways. Luckily, TurtleCoin of about three months later is grown a lot and has various versions compatible with Apple, Windows and Linux OS. Turtlecoin could be the ideal project to get involved in while it is still in the initial stages. There is more potential for return on investment with a microcap coin than there are with established altcoins. Moreover, you do not have to hand over tokens in an overhyped crowd sale to be a part of this. All you really need to do is download the mining software and get hashing. The coin is one of the easiest to mine as was the developer’s intention. Moreover, given the exciting roadmap that the team has ahead for the project, the future prospects also look quite promising. Private smart contracts and no sync blockchains could push the coin towards mass adoption. Fast With blocks being created every 30 seconds on the Turtlecoin blockchain and transactions taking just seconds, sending and paying with TRTL is a breeze. Easy Having an extremely active development team and a lively, helpful community, you can start using TRTL in minutes, no matter your familiarity and/or expertise with cryptocurrencies in general. Mining TRTL is also very easy to get into with simple, detailed how-to guides. Safe With its beginnings as a fork of Bytecoin, Turtlecoin offers the same degree of privacy and anonimity with its use of ring-signatures. Just like using paper cash, paying with TRTL allows you to spend your money the way you want. Being completely open source, the TurtleCoin project is growing daily. We actively encourage the community to jump in with fresh ideas, no matter your skillset or level of experience. Just hop into the discord and say hello!