Auroracoin is a decentralised, peer-to-peer, and secure cryptocurrency released as an alternative to the Icelandic Króna to bypass governmental restrictions associated with the national fiat currency. It was launched with the aim of becoming the ‘official’ cryptocurrency of Iceland. AUR was a pioneer in the area of country-specific cryptocurrencies. AUR was launched on the 25th of January, 2014, by an anonymous developer who went by the pseudonym of Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson. It was originally based on Litecoin, using the Scrypt algorithm with a Proof of Work mechanism, but was later updated to use a multi-algorithm architecture in 2016, forked from DigiByte. Auroracoin uses the PoW consensus mechanism, which utilises device hashing power to solve a complex mathematical problem in order to authenticate a transaction proposed to be stored in the blockchain. The difficulty of solving the problem ensures that authenticating forged transactions is very difficult unless the attacker owns an impractically large chunk of the network’s total hashing power. AUR is one of the only cryptocurrencies to use a combination of five different hashing algorithms, namely Grøstl, Qubit, scrypt, SHA-256, and Skein. While initially very popular, Auroracoin has seen little to no activity for a while, with poor marketing, and frequent dev team changes. Reasons for little growth have been various, from slow adoption in Iceland, to developers leaving and joining the project midway. However, it is expected to not go lower than the recent low, and might see a rise as AUR plans to launch a more aggressive marketing campaign in Iceland to promote the coin among the masses. Unlike most other altcoins, Auroracoin has made extensive changes to the original codebase. It has introduced security measures such as Automatic checkpointing, and protecting against known flaws present in the BTC blockchain, such as 51% block replacement attacks.
AppCoins is a protocol for the App Economy created by the Aptoide App Store, and the first ICO serving 200 million users with the goal of creating a trustworthy economy without intermediaries. The AppCoins project was designed to foster innovation in technology. To create a universal digital advertising protocol for mobile devices, the developers at Aptoide designed AppCoins. AppCoins is an application-specific token which was designed to create a universal digital advertising protocol for mobile devices. It can be used to incentivize behavior which can then be used to raise money for the development of an app. Aptoide is the 3rd biggest app store with a with over 4 billion downloads and 1 million Apps. WIth over 230,000,000 users, apps and support in 40 languages, more than 2.8 billion downloads, the cryptocoin can revolutionize how people use mobile technology and applications. AppCoins will bring in a range of standard protocols to be followed by all developers to advertise their games or apps in the app store.The “AppCoin” ERC20 token will bridge the gap between the advertisers and the users. A user earns 85% from every advertising investment that goes inside the app store. The user has to then use those coins to buy items (in-app purchases) inside the apps and games, thus, generating the return of the investment to the developers. Most industry enthusiasts believe that the immediate forecast of AppCoins price trends leans towards the downward slope. It is expected to be priced at an average price of ~$0.191 for a long while, with a few minor fluctuations.The trend is however, expected to stabilize at this point until Aptoide as a platform gains traction within the mobile usage industry. Once the ROI of the Aptoide platform starts multiplying significantly due to an increase in the number of users and developers on the network, the price will increase significantly and will correspond to good returns for investors. AppCoins is an innovative concept with a tidy site that conveys the underlying ideas well. As described above, investment in APPC is a favorable option for both developers and users. However, it is evident that the returns of the AppCoins’ solution are directly proportional to the development of the relationship of the App-store and the OEMs in the ecosystem. Thus, the amount of profit or returns gained by a trader will be a function of the ROI which the platform develops and its reputation in the crypto space.With almost 50% of the APPC coins in circulation as of July 2018, users have a good opportunity to buy them. However, it should be noted that it does not form a good investment option for a short period of time.