Namecoin is a domain name registry service and was the first coin to fork Bitcoin. Similar to registering a .com or .io domain name, you register a .bit domain on the network. This domain is censorship-resistant and impervious to activity tracking. Governments and large corporations control traditional domain name services (DNS) servers. This control is how the Chinese government, for instance, can block websites that go against their beliefs. To prevent this level of censorship, Namecoin uses blockchain technology to distribute its DNS amongst the users on the network. A pseudo-anonymous founder by the name of “Vince” created Namecoin in 2011. Since then, Vince has disappeared, but a core development team has kept the project alive. The project has several developers listed on the official website and benefits from the contributions of numerous anonymous developers as well. Namecoin has been fully functional for a few years, now, and the development team posts updates several times a month. Namecoin was the first cryptocurrency to use Auxiliary Proof of Work (AuxPoW) for its consensus. By using AuxPow, Namecoin and Bitcoin can be mined simultaneously. In this consensus, the child blockchain depends on the proof-of-work of parent blockchain, which means If a new block is created on Bitcoin blockchain, it will also be added to the Namecoin blockchain. NameID is another technology brought by Namecoin. It serves as an open service for securely registering human-readable names in a decentralized way. NameID is a combination between Namecoin and OpenId, where users can easily convert their Namecoin Identities into OpenIDs. This makes NameID a solution to Zooko's triangle, which states that there are three desirable properties (Human-meaningful, Decentralized, and Secure) for name participants in a network protocol and any participant can only inherit two properties at a given time. Namecoin is among some earliest cryptocurrencies. During its existence in the market, it has seen a high volatility on some occasions, which can be attributed to many reasons. Namecoin has been around in the cryptocurrency market much longer than most cryptocurrencies today; however, despite this, it has not gotten much attention until recently. In 2014, it was among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, which is now changed due to the introduction of hundreds of new cryptocurrencies. Namecoin was abandoned by its creator which can be seen as a red flag by many. The project is currently being developed with the support from its community. The current team has been actively taking the project forward and also provides regular updates on social media channels.
According to its whitepaper, Aeron aims to be the new standard of aviation safety powered by the blockchain. Maintained by a group of aviation professionals, Aeron wants to reduce air transport-related accidents, which it says currently numbers around 3302 per year. One of the major causes of such accidents is the lack of real experience among pilots, since unsecured flight log data from them is susceptible to fraud and forgery. Also, due to 'pay to fly' experiences, corrupt flight schools, negligence of aircraft operators, the primary data driving any decision is affected. Aeron is built upon a robust and cryptographically secure database that makes it unique compared to other online travel companies, travel search services or internal applications made for flight officials. With this technology, falsification of data can be kept at a minimum. Additionally, as you would expect from a blockchain-backed application, key information is safely stored and is accessible to everyone with 100% transparency. Except that it now comes secured by a multi-sig authentication system that prevents any type of security breach. According to Aeron's Whitepaper, 'The pilot’s application is used by a pilot for personal flight logging. The company application collects and verifies data from aircraft operators, maintenance organizations, flight schools and fixed base operators'. Aeron (ARN) is an ERC20 compliant Ethereum based token, with a fixed supply of 20,000,000 ARN. When the token was launched, a fixed amount of tokens were created and after which no more tokens are to be minted. About 60% of the supply is estimated to be in circulation. The supply should decrease over time when ARN tokens as taken out of circulation. Once Aeron receives ARN tokens in exchange of services, the coins will be again released in to the network. According to its whitepaper, Aeron plans to have a user base of 300000 by the end of 2020. This would encourage it to embed new features on its platform. With the help of multi-app functionality and block technology, the company envisions to have an “airline in the pocket” of sorts within two years. While its price has fluctuated like most other cryptocurrencies, it delivered more than 15x returns within a short period between November 2017 to January 2018. As of July 2018, the price is nearly back to its November levels, at $0.57.