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.
Komodo is an end-to-end blockchain infrastructure solutions provider. Consistently recognized as one of the world’s most innovative blockchain projects, Komodo is developing technologies at the cutting-edge of the blockchain industry. In reality, most blockchain platforms today are but a single blockchain that offers support for smart contracts and decentralized applications. This model forces all projects to share the same infrastructure, leading to congestion, increased transactions fees, and stifled growth. Whereas other blockchain platforms employ a single, shared-blockchain model, Komodo’s federated multi-chain architecture provides each and every external project with independent infrastructure and a dedicated blockchain. This multi-chain design is what makes Komodo unique among blockchain platforms. Each project is given the opportunity to create their own blockchain ecosystem via Komodo’s infinitely scalable infrastructure. Komodo’s tech enables seamless cross-chain interoperability among all federated blockchains. Every blockchain built with Komodo is also connected to 95% of chains outside the federation via atomic swap technology. Future plans are in place for blockchain bridging support, which will create cross-chain fungibility throughout the entire blockchains industry. Moreover, with Komodo’s architecture, multiple blockchains can sync up and function as a single chain. If one chain is not meeting performance needs, additional chains can be added to form a blockchain cluster. A blockchain cluster boosts performance linearly without inflating coin supply or devaluing the currency. The Komodo ecosystem is not only scalable and interoperable, it’s also secured with the power of the Bitcoin network. This is accomplished with a series of cross-chain notarizations that store a blockhash onto the Bitcoin ledger every ten minutes, providing protection from 51% attacks. Join Komodo as we continue to accelerate the global adoption of blockchain technology.