Digital money for the modern world

Nano is decentralized, sustainable, and secure digital money focused on addressing the inefficiencies present in existing financial systems.

Uniquely designed to provide simple peer-to-peer transfer of value, Nano empowers individuals with the most efficient and accessible digital money possible, connecting them to the global economy with minimal impact.

Nano provides an intuitive experience that feels like digital currency should - no fuss, no fees, no waiting. This is what an accessible and easy-to-use digital money experience should feel like.

Easy-to-use and Feeless

Nano is simple and easy-to-use by design. By focusing on transferring value as efficiently as possible, the Nano network is able to offer feeless transactions and provides options for users and services to easily access the empowering and cost-saving qualities of digital money.

Eco-friendly

As the world continues efforts to reduce pollution and energy consumption, many digital money networks have resorted to wasteful designs to secure their networks. Nano is smartly designed to address this issue by not relying on power-hungry mining for security, but instead uses a lightweight and efficient consensus protocol called Open Representative Voting (ORV) for minimal energy usage.

Instant

Digital money should be quick and easy-to-use. Whether buying goods at a store, transferring money across borders or making payments online, Nano transactions are completed in under a second so you no longer have to wait. And these are fully settled payments on the network, businesses no longer have to wait for credit card or banking network approval.

The Nano protocol specifically avoids reliance on mining. This is a design decision which eliminates the unnecessary expenditure of energy and centralization forces mining activities cause. The distribution of Nano has been completed, resulting in a maximum supply of 133,248,297 NANO.

Nano utilized a novel CAPTCHA faucet system with the goal of distributing Nano as fairly and organically as possible. Opened on October 1, 2015, the faucet required users to complete complex CAPTCHA tests in order to earn coins. The faucet allowed anyone with a computer to participate by contributing time and attention, instead of the less sustainable mining with other projects.

This choice to distribute by faucet helped Nano be more accessible to those who didn’t already have the money to buy mining hardware or invest in an ICO. This unique approach was a great way to distribute Nano to people who had never used it before and helped spread coins more broadly across the world. In addition to Europe and North America, this method helped build active communities in Central and South America, including large groups in Brazil and Venezuela, and within Southeast Asia, most notably in Indonesia.

The Nano Foundation empowers individuals with the most efficient and accessible digital money possible, connecting them to the global economy in a sustainable way. To achieve this mission we focus on strengthening, supporting and spreading awareness of the Nano network. This network is based on the Nano protocol and provides open access to anyone in the world wanting to transfer value instantly, without fees and in an eco-friendly way.

For the Nano protocol we are guiding development efforts to ensure the specification is as complete and robust as necessary for it to be functioning as global digital money. We help build a reference node implementation for those wanting to participate on the network and plan to continue these efforts in the future. For specifics on changes to the protocol and node, see the Upcoming Features documentation page.

We plan to continue transitioning the level of responsibility we have over various components of the network to a broader set of businesses, organizations and individuals. This follows the open source spirit Nano was originally founded on and over time helps increase decentralization and security for the network as a whole.

The Nano ecosystem has a wide range of third-party wallets, with each providing its own unique balance between functionality and security. A list of featured wallets can be found on our Get Nano page.

Nano is currently traded under the ticker symbol $NANO and is widely available on many popular exchanges around the world. Please consult CoinMarketCap Markets for NANO for more details.

The Nano network includes a set of unique and efficient features to provide instant payments which require very little energy, are easy-to-use and provide the scalability needed for true digital money.

The structure of the ledger is called the Block Lattice and allows each account to have its own blockchain, rather than sharing one single chain everyone is competing to add blocks to. With this setup only the account owner can add blocks to their own chain, providing security while allowing many transactions to occur at the same time on the network.

The consensus mechanism, called Open Representative Voting (ORV), also provides useful differentiation from other networks. Consensus is reached through representatives voting on the validity of individual blocks shared on the network. The voting weight for each representative is assigned to them by the account owners and is in proportion to the Nano in those accounts. Account owners can still use funds without restrictions as no staking is involved and the representatives have no control over funds, they just get voting rights from them.

If you are interested in more details about the features of the Nano protocol, we recommend checking out our documentation, starting with What is Nano?

Nano uses a unique and efficient consensus mechanism called Open Representative Voting (ORV). The process uses voting to get confirmation on the network instead of mining and the nodes on the network that create votes are called Representatives.

It is designed to allow people who have a Nano balance to pick whatever Representative they want to vote on their behalf without giving control of their funds or requiring staking. People who hold Nano get to decide who generates consensus instead of mining companies, and this makes it easy to redistribute voting weight across the world. The voting process is very efficient and is a big part of what allows Nano to be fee-less and use very little energy.

More details about Open Representative Voting and other designs of the Nano network can be found in our comprehensive documentation.