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.
Project PAI is an open-source blockchain project developing the world's first blockchain-based platform for intelligent 3D AI avatars. Personal AI (PAI) looks, talks and behaves like the individual user and, when secured and authenticated on the blockchain, allows for unprecedented customization, utility and personal data control. With communities worldwide and adopters including leading U.S. AI company ObEN Inc., Project PAI is rapidly advancing its vision of allowing everyone in the world to participate in the new global humanistic AI economy. Project PAI's independent blockchain platform is intended to allow users to create, own and manage their digital identity and the associated data, letting users participate in a new global humanistic AI economy where they are the owners of their own digital identity and data. The listing on HBUS marks another step in Project PAI's growth throughout the U.S. and global market. Project PAI's vision is to create a platform where everyone can create their own Personal AI, intelligent digital avatars that look, sound and behave like them. With PAI, users can have more personalized digital experiences, including using their PAI for social media content or interacting with the PAI of their doctors, teachers or even their favorite celebrities across a number of applications in retail, entertainment, travel and more. The core technology for the avatars is powered by Project PAI early-adopter ObEN, a leading artificial intelligence company based in Los Angeles, California. PAIs are secured and authenticated on the Project PAI blockchain. The intention is to always allow the user to be the owner of their own data and if they choose to contribute that data to improve applications or AI algorithms on the PAI blockchain, they can be compensated for their efforts in PAI Coin. In addition, as an open-source public blockchain, companies and developers can create their own apps and tokens on the PAI blockchain to build more interactions for the Project PAI community. Already this year, Project PAI has launched both its mainnet and github. A third-party-developed digital wallet for PAI Coin, called PAI Up, is also available globally on both iOS and Android. The project has recently expanded into the Southeast Asia, U.K. and European markets, following solid presence in China, Japan, Korea and the U.S.