In the 1990s, email made communication instant and free regardless of distance or amount. You could send a message to Tokyo or a file to Berlin without calculating costs per kilobyte. It just worked.

Money still operates like postal services in the 1980s. A few countries built instant payment rails, Faster Payments in the UK, Zelle in the US, SEPA Instant in the EU.

But try sending that £50 to someone in Nigeria or Vietnam and suddenly you are back in Western Union territory: 7% fees, two-day waits and the requirement of visiting a physical location. While accepting payments as a small business means paying 1.5-3% per transaction. In addition to these issues, what if your bank decides to debank you, or if you're among the 1.3 billion adults worldwide without a bank account? These ‘instant’ systems only work within their walled gardens, propped up by the banking infrastructure they supposedly bypass.

There's another problem, although much less visible, even when your bank transfer feels instantaneous, it is running on energy-hungry infrastructure of data centres, clearing houses, and verification networks processing billions of transactions daily. That £50 you sent? It powered through institutional machinery that's been consuming electricity since the 1970s.

Email didn't just make sending letters faster, it removed the postal system from the equation. What if money could experience the same revolution? Nano is digital money that can be sent anywhere in the world in under half a second, with zero fees, using less energy than a blink of an LED. Bypassing banks, crossing all borders and transferring solely under the control of the individual. 

Why Efficiency Matters Now

Technology follows similar principles to biological evolution. Systems that waste resources are filtered out. The difference is that while biological evolution takes millennia, technological evolution can happen in decades or years when the pressure is intense enough. Right now, the pressure is immense.

The climate crisis is putting evolutionary pressure on every human system. We're being forced to ask which of our technologies work in a resource-constrained world? Which can adapt, and which will collapse under their own inefficiency?

Data centres already consume 1-1.5% of global electricity. With AI's growth, this could reach 3-4% by 2030. We can't afford to add more energy-intensive systems. Every inefficiency in our existing infrastructure, including how we move money, becomes a liability.

The systems that survive aren't always the strongest or most established. They're the ones that can do more with less.

Why "Solved" Payments Aren't Actually Solved

Domestic instant payments are impressive. The UK's Faster Payments Service processes over 5 billion transactions annually. For those of us with stable bank accounts in stable countries, money has never moved more smoothly. But this convenience hides a crucial reality: these systems aren't solutions, they're privileges.

Although the existing solutions work well enough inside their own walled gardens, people face issues when trying to operate beyond these limits. Popular financial platform, Revolut charges up to 5% or a $10 flat fee (whichever is greater) for transfers to non-Revolut accounts, plus weekend conversion fees. Global remittances, money sent by migrants to families back home, cost an average of 6.49% per transaction. That's £34 billion extracted annually from people who can least afford it. A Kenyan domestic worker in London sending £200 home loses £12.50 to fees before their family sees a penny.

There exists this 'permission problem', wherein your Faster Payment only works because your bank allows it to. Lebanese citizens who watched their banking system collapse starting in 2019 know exactly how "instant" their payments felt when banks refused to process withdrawals. Or Cypriots who woke up in 2013 to discover the government had taken 47.5% of their deposits overnight. Or Canadian truckers in 2022 whose accounts were frozen without judicial process. These weren't authoritarian regimes, these were developed Western democracies with 'robust' financial infrastructure.

The infrastructure problem runs deeper. Every Faster Payment, every Venmo transfer, every SEPA transaction relies on the same energy-intensive centralised banking system. Visa's network processes 65,000 transaction messages per second at peak times, requiring vast server farms running 24/7. One transaction uses approximately 0.0008 kWh, infrastructure that requires constant power, constant maintenance, and constant intermediaries extracting value at every layer.

Despite this extensive system, 1.3 billion adults globally remain completely excluded from the formal financial system. For them, these instant payment systems might as well not exist. When we talk about ‘solved’ payment problems, we're really talking about solved payment problems for the privileged minority with stable banking systems in stable countries.

The Macro Context: Why This Matters Now

Climate displacement, the forced or voluntary movement of people due to climate change impacts like floods, droughts, and sea-level rise, is already here. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre recorded 32.6 million new internal displacements due to disasters in 2022 alone. By 2050, as many as 1.2 billion people may be displaced by climate change. These are people who need to move wealth across borders, often without documentation, often without banking relationships. When your village floods, you don't have time for correspondent banking.

As climate displacement accelerates, the number of people needing borderless, permissionless financial infrastructure will explode. As geopolitical tensions fracture global systems, the fragility of centralised banking becomes existential.

De-globalisation is fracturing the systems we've taken for granted. Supply chains that worked for 40 years are being dismantled for ‘national security’. Trade relationships are being weaponised. Capital controls are returning. Yet people's lives remain cross-border. They need financial infrastructure that works regardless of the geopolitical temperature.

Banking instability is no longer theoretical. In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 48 hours, the second-largest bank failure in US history. Credit Suisse, a 167-year-old institution, was emergency-merged with UBS. When faith in institutions evaporates this quickly, alternatives stop being interesting and start being essential.

Another major issue, previously mentioned, is power consumption. Gartner (November 2025) estimates global data center consumption at 448 TWh for 2025, representing a 16% increase from 2024. The IEA projects that total data center consumption will reach 945 TWh by 2030, comparable to the total electricity consumption of Japan. We cannot add more energy-intensive systems to this load. Traditional cryptocurrency mining already uses approximately 150 TWh annually - more than the entire country of Argentina.

These trends aren't separate but interlinked. Climate displacement creates migration, which triggers political backlash, which leads to authoritarianism, which weaponises financial systems, which excludes vulnerable populations, which creates instability, and our banking systems are woven in at every step.

What Actually Happens When You Send a Nano Transaction

Strip away the complexity and money is just information. "You have this much, I have this much, you're sending me some of yours." Every payment system is about verifying and recording this information transfer. The question is how much energy and infrastructure needs to be used to do it.

When you send money to a friend through traditional banking rails, that information passes through your bank's servers, through clearing systems, through the recipient's bank, each step requiring verification, intermediaries, and energy.

Bitcoin and early cryptocurrencies tried to solve this by removing banks but created a different problem: they require thousands of computers worldwide to compete to verify every transaction through energy-intensive "mining." Bitcoin's proof-of-work mining consumes approximately 175 TWh annually. While some sources calculate this as ~1,400 kWh 'per transaction’ (the same as powering a UK household for 6.1 months), however this metric is controversial because Bitcoin's energy use is spent securing blocks, not processing individual transactions, and remains relatively constant regardless of transaction volume. The energy secures the entire network, not individual payments.

Nano takes a completely different approach. Instead of one shared ledger that everyone fights to update, each user has their own blockchain within a "block-lattice" structure. Think of it like everyone having their own account book rather than one giant community book that thousands of people need to verify simultaneously.

When you send Nano to someone, only two accounts need to update: yours (sending) and theirs (receiving). There's no mining, no competition, no proof-of-work arms race. The network confirms these updates through a lightweight voting system run by representatives - nodes operated by users, exchanges, and organisations with a stake in the network's success. These nodes don't get paid; they run because having a functioning network benefits them.

The result? A single Nano transaction uses approximately 0.000112 kWh. That's less energy than a single Google search (0.0003 kWh). To put this in perspective:

• Nano transaction: 0.000112 kWh
• Google search: 0.0003 kWh 
• Visa infrastructure per transaction: 0.0008 kWh
• Bitcoin transaction: approximately 1,400 kWh

Bitcoin currently has the following annualised footprints which are frankly shocking (taken from https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption) while only ever able to make 7 transactions per second, globally taking anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, or even days. 

Nano on the other hand has transactions settle in under a second, typically 0.3 seconds. There are no network fees, not "low fees" but literally zero, because there is no mining to pay for. It works the same whether you are sending across the street or across the world, £5 or £5,000. No intermediary can block it, no government can freeze it, no bank can decide whether you are not allowed to participate.

Where Crypto Should Be Going (But Mostly Isn't)

The cryptocurrency space is having an identity crisis. Most of the industry is still copying Bitcoin's homework  with proof-of-work mining, energy-intensive verification, speculation over utility. The environmental devastation is treated as an acceptable cost of ‘decentralisation'. It isn't.

The "Bitcoin uses renewable energy" argument has become the industry's go-to defence. This is nonsense. Using renewable energy for wasteful computation doesn't make the computation less wasteful - it makes the renewable energy wasted. Every megawatt-hour spent on Bitcoin mining is a megawatt-hour that could replace fossil fuels elsewhere, be stored in batteries, or power industrial processes. The opportunity cost is enormous. Most Bitcoin mining still relies on fossil fuels, estimates from Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance in their Digital Mining Industry Report (April 2025) state: 52.4% from non-fossil sources (42.6% renewables + 9.8% nuclear), with fossil fuels at 47.6% (38.2% natural gas, 8.9% coal, 0.5% oil).

Ethereum's pivot to proof-of-stake in September 2022 was presented as a solution. And to be fair, it was significant: Ethereum's energy consumption dropped by approximately 99.95%. This deserves recognition, it is proof the industry can change when the pressure is sufficient.

But proof-of-stake creates different problems. It concentrates power in the hands of large holders. It requires complex mechanisms to prevent bad behaviour. It still involves substantially more computational overhead than necessary. Ethereum reduced energy consumption from catastrophic to merely substantial. Progress? Certainly. Sufficient? Not remotely.

What's happening in regulatory rooms matters more than crypto Twitter. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation includes disclosure requirements for energy consumption and environmental impact. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is exploring similar frameworks. As banks and payment processors face increasing ESG scrutiny, energy-intensive cryptocurrencies become liabilities rather than innovations.

Central banks worldwide are exploring Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), over 130 countries representing 98% of global GDP. China's digital yuan is already in widespread use. The EU's digital euro is in development. The Bank of England is actively exploring a ‘digital pound’.

Most CBDCs are designed for maximum control, not maximum freedom. They are programmable money that governments can switch off, redirect, or constrain. China's digital yuan already includes technical capability for the government to control exactly how and where money is spent. This is banking infrastructure with authoritarian characteristics baked in at the protocol level.

Money must become simpler, faster, cheaper, and cleaner - or it will be replaced by systems that are. 

The UN estimates there are currently 100 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, a number that's doubled in the past decade. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre projects 1.2 billion climate migrants by 2050. The number of people who exist outside traditional financial infrastructure won't decrease, it will only climb further.

Lebanese citizens weren't 'unbanked’ until suddenly they were while Cypriots didn't expect bail-ins until it happened. SVB depositors thought their money was safe until a Friday afternoon when it wasn't. The uncomfortable truth is that we are all potentially one crisis away from joining them.

The privilege of stable banking isn't permanent. It's a temporary luxury afforded by fortunate geography and timing. As climate change accelerates, as political systems destabilise, as banking crises recur with increasing frequency, the question stops being ‘who needs alternatives?’ and becomes ‘who doesn’t?'

"Too Good to Be True"

The inevitable response is if Nano is so efficient, so fast, so cheap, why isn't everyone using it already? It's a fair question. The answer has two parts: network effects are real and powerful, but they can be overcome when conditions change.

Email took decades to replace fax machines despite being obviously superior. Electric vehicles languished for a century. The internet existed for military and academic use for 20 years before the general public saw any value in it. Transformative technologies typically have long gestation periods where they seem like solutions in search of problems - right up until they become obviously essential.

Nano has been running since 2015, nearly a decade of proven reliability and security without the spectacular collapses that have plagued other cryptocurrencies. But it lacks the speculative hype that drives mainstream attention. There's no mining to incentivise armies of evangelists. There are no transaction fees to fund marketing campaigns. It simply works, efficiently and quietly, for people who need it to work.

The Nano Foundation operates as a non-profit volunteer organisation with no equity, no shares, and no venture capital funding. Its directors and ethics cannot be bought. There's no ICO wealth to fund Super Bowl advertisements. This absence of profit motive means Nano lacks the marketing machinery that propelled other cryptocurrencies into mainstream consciousness, but it also means the technology can focus purely on utility rather than investor returns.

Conditions are currently shifting with energy costs rising and climate pressure intensifying. Banking instability is recurring more frequently while political systems are fragmenting. Each crisis creates a new wave of people who discover that ‘wait and see’ isn't an option when your bank has collapsed or your currency has hyperinflated.

The early internet comparison is instructive. In 1995, most people couldn't explain why they'd need email or web browsing. "I can already send letters and read newspapers," they'd say. By 2005, the question seemed absurd. What changed wasn't the technology, email worked the same in 1995 as it did in 2005. What changed was that conditions made the old way increasingly untenable.

Choosing Your Path Forward

Money is just information about who owes what to whom. The question is how much infrastructure, energy, institutional control, and extraction we're willing to tolerate to move that information around. For decades, the answer was ‘however much it takes’ because we could afford it. We no longer can.

The tools exist now. Nano is proof that money can be instant, free, borderless, and efficient without sacrificing security or decentralisation. Whether Nano specifically succeeds or whether other efficient systems emerge matters less than the principle: the future belongs to technologies that waste nothing because there will be nothing left to waste.

We can build better infrastructure, or we can insist that the old systems are unsinkable. Either way, we're going to find out what survives.

Learn more about Nano: https://nano.org

Try Nano for free: https://nano.org/try-nano

BizMerchant and Nano: Shaping the Future of Commerce

The second edition of the BizMerchant Event gathered over 300 entrepreneurs, founders, and innovators… all eager to explore the future of payments, trade, and technology. With Nano as a headline supporter, the conversations revealed one clear truth: the future of commerce is already here.

From cross-border transactions to AI-driven tools, businesses that embrace these innovations will not just survive, they will thrive.

My Journey into Web3 Commerce

My name is Enaanapu Gabriel, also known as Mr. Gabs, from the city of Port Harcourt. What began as a personal journey as a Nano ambassador and a random writer on LinkedIn has now grown into something larger, a movement to reimagine global trade.

Through BizMerchant, I’ve joined a campaign centered around cross-border trade, digital finance, and emerging tools that empower small businesses to think beyond borders.

AltPayments for Global Commerce

The August 23rd BizMerchant Event carried the theme “AltPayments for Global Commerce.” It brought together thought leaders and innovators to discuss practical ways alternative payments can reshape global business.

Highlights included panel discussions, product showcases, and a live demonstration of XNOPAY by Chirag Asarpota proving that blockchain and AI are no longer just buzzwords, but working solutions for everyday trade.

Key Takeaways from the Event

1. Adoption is accelerating.

The debate is no longer if businesses should explore alternative payments, but how fast they can adopt and integrate them.

For entrepreneurs, this means the time to experiment with alt-payments is now.

2. Cross-border trade is being redefined.

According to a 2024 World Bank report on cross-border payments in Africa, SMEs lose billions annually to fees and delays challenges that Nano directly addresses. With Nano’s feeless transactions, SMEs in Africa can now imagine global trade without the burden of middlemen, delays, or fees.

For SMEs, this could mean keeping more profit in every single transaction.

3. Innovation meets practicality.

Tools like XNOPAY prove that blockchain and AI are moving from theory to real-world applications for small businesses.

For innovators, the call is to build tools that solve real problems, not just hype.

From a Summit to a Movement

BizMerchant is no longer just an event; it’s a catalyst for change. From Port Harcourt to the world, it is showing how small businesses can lead in shaping the future of global trade.

What started as my personal journey has now become a collective mission: to inspire entrepreneurs everywhere to look beyond borders and embrace new possibilities.

Looking ahead, the fusion of AI, blockchain, and borderless payments won’t just shape Africa’s role in global trade, it will redefine how value flows worldwide.

Nano’s Role in Driving Change

Nano continues to prove that technology can empower, not exploit, communities. Its borderless and feeless nature removes barriers that have limited small businesses for decades.

Through partnerships like BizMerchant, adoption is no longer a theory. It’s happening on the ground in real communities, with real businesses.

Beyond Events: A Year of Campaigns and Collaboration

Our vision is much bigger than landmark events. The next chapter of BizMerchant is about running campaigns that consistently drive real-world adoption and innovation.

From now until early next year, my focus is on building projects, partnerships, and a global community of digital merchants. Collaborations with forward-looking platforms in e-commerce, travel, and cross-border payments could unlock new opportunities for businesses worldwide.

This is an open invitation. BizMerchant is still moving, still creating, and still shaping the future of trade. Together, we can amplify adoption, empower businesses, and define what the next wave of digital commerce looks like. BizMerchant is also plugging in into big movements , keynote festivals creating a sense of community and string belongings among businesses and youth entrepreneurs 

Final Thought

The future of commerce is not waiting. With BizMerchant and Nano, it is already unfolding and everyone has a role to play.

Follow BizMerchant’s journey on 

Instagram @bizmerchantng

X : https://x.com/bizmerchantng
https://x.com/EnaaGabriel

Watch our live panels to stay updated on events, campaigns, and new innovations….

Understanding the Path to Commercial Grade

Commercial grade represents a comprehensive set of capabilities that will enable Nano to serve as a reliable, scalable financial network capable of handling significant transaction volumes while maintaining consistent performance. The key requirements include:

• Sustained performance during and after network saturation
• Bounded disk storage growth
• Robust spam and DoS resistance
• Reliable transaction processing regardless of network conditions

With the addition of the Bounded Block Backlog & Traffic Shaping in V28, Nano will finally achieve most of these core commercial grade requirements, although continued development and optimisation beyond this release is still planned to achieve full commercial grade status.

Electrum was a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver used in the ancient world, it typically contained about 75% gold and 25% silver, making it a perfect metaphor for a version that's transitioning from Denarius (silver) towards Aureus (gold). This composition nicely symbolises a version that's mostly ready for the gold standard of commercial grade but still has some elements to refine.

What's in V28?

Bounded Block Backlog Implementation

Piotr’s Bounded Block Backlog (BBB) system represents a fundamental shift in how Nano handles network load and transaction processing. Unlike previous versions where unconfirmed blocks could accumulate indefinitely, BBB implements strict bounds on unconfirmed transaction storage and processing, providing several benefits:

• Controlled Resource Usage - Maintains a fixed maximum difference (currently 100,000) between blocks that are checked (initial validation) vs cemented (final confirmation)
• Predictable Performance - Ensures consistent confirmation rates even during high network load
• Enhanced Spam Resistance - Prevents resource exhaustion attacks by limiting unconfirmed block accumulation
• Optimised Storage - Reduces disk usage by properly managing unconfirmed block storage

Early testing demonstrates the system's effectiveness:

• Stable bootstrap performance without major stalls
• Consistent block processing under load
• Improved recovery from network saturation events

Traffic Shaping Implementation

Traffic shaping represents the second half of Nano's comprehensive network flow control system, complementing the fair queuing implemented in V27. This sophisticated system manages outbound network traffic, ensuring:

• Balanced Bandwidth Allocation - Equal distribution of network resources among peers
• Congestion Prevention - Proactive management of network traffic to prevent bottlenecks
• Quality of Service - Maintained performance even during peak usage
• Resource Optimisation - Efficient use of available bandwidth across the network
• Traffic Balancing by Type - Allows tuning of outbound network usage across different node functions for more optimal network usage (e.g. bootstrapping versus live voting)

The combination of fair queuing and traffic shaping creates a complete flow control system that handles both incoming and outgoing traffic efficiently, establishing a necessary foundation for commercial grade capabilities.

RocksDB Optimisations

V28 includes a range of improvements to the database layer:

• Enhanced Lock Management - Resolved premature lock release issues that could impact performance
• Improved Thread Handling - Better coordination of database operations across threads
• Optimised Memory Usage - More efficient memory allocation and management
• Enhanced Performance Under Load - Better handling of high-volume database operations
• RocksDB Modernization - Nano's RocksDB implementation has been updated to V9.7.2, and the default configuration settings have been updated to match current best practices. This results in improved stability & performance for nodes using the RocksDB database backend. Big thanks to RickiNano for his contributions to this effort!

In V28, LMDB continues to serve as the default and production-recommended database backend for the Nano node. While significant optimisations have been focused on RocksDB, both database backends remain fully supported, with all essential functionality in V28 working seamlessly across both systems. The node maintains its full functionality and stability with LMDB, ensuring current operators can continue their operations without disruption.

The strategic focus on RocksDB optimizations reflects the development team's forward-looking approach to Nano's scaling needs. RocksDB's architecture provides advantages that better align with Nano's future requirements, particularly evident in the performance improvements seen with new features like bulk frontier scanning. 

Vote Processing Enhancements

V28 introduces a range of changes to how votes are handled within the network, addressing both the generation and processing of votes to improve overall efficiency.

Vote Generator Improvements

The vote generation system has been completely redesigned to be more resource-efficient. In previous versions, vote generation could become a significant CPU burden, particularly during high-load periods. The new system introduces several optimisations:

• Improved Intelligent Vote Bundling - Instead of generating individual votes for each block, the system intelligently bundles votes for multiple blocks together, significantly reducing CPU overhead with optimisations of this system taking place in this release
• Optimised Timing Control - New timing mechanisms ensure votes are distributed more evenly across the network, preventing vote flooding scenarios
• Resource-Aware Processing - The generator now adapts its behavior based on system resources, preventing CPU spikes during heavy voting periods
• Enhanced Vote Prioritisation - Better handling of priority votes ensures confirmations aren't delayed during high-load scenarios

Vote Filter Implementation

One of V28's most impactful features is the new vote filtering system. Previous versions processed all incoming votes, leading to significant redundancy and resource usage. The new filter implements sophisticated deduplication and relevancy checks:

• Intelligent Vote Deduplication - Eliminates redundant votes for already-confirmed blocks
• Vote Relevancy Checking - Only processes votes that are necessary for achieving consensus
• Bandwidth Optimisation - The 60% reduction in processed votes directly translates to lower bandwidth requirements for nodes, lower latency and improved responsiveness
• Memory Usage Improvements - Reduced vote storage requirements through better filtering
• Network Load Reduction - Less vote traffic means more network capacity for transaction processing

Bootstrap and Database Optimisations

Bulk Frontier Scanning

The ascending bootstrapper's new bulk frontier scanning capability represents a major improvement in how nodes synchronize with the network:

• Parallel Account Processing - Instead of processing one account at a time, nodes can now scan up to 1,000 accounts simultaneously
• Efficient State Retrieval - Optimised database queries reduce the I/O overhead during bootstrapping
• Smart Caching - Implementation of intelligent caching mechanisms for frequently accessed frontier data
• Adaptive Processing - The system adjusts its scanning rate based on node resources and network conditions
• RocksDB Optimisation - Particular attention was paid to optimising bulk operations for RocksDB, resulting in significantly faster synchronization times

Legacy Bootstrapper Retirement

The complete removal of the legacy bootstrapper marks a significant milestone:

• Simplified codebase and improved maintainability
• Streamlined networking operations
• More efficient resource utilisation
• Enhanced foundation for future improvements

Legacy Code Removal

The retirement of the legacy bootstrapper is more than just code removal - it represents a significant architectural improvement:

• Architectural Cleanup - Removal of deprecated synchronization methods and associated complexity
• Memory Usage Optimisation - Elimination of redundant data structures and caching mechanisms
• Network Protocol Simplification - Streamlined bootstrap protocol without backward compatibility overhead
• Improved Error Handling - More consistent and predictable behavior during network synchronization
• Foundation for Future Improvements - Cleaner codebase enables faster implementation of future optimisations

These improvements create a more efficient and resilient network. For example, the vote filter's reduction in processed votes complements the traffic shaping improvements, while bulk frontier scanning improves node synchronisation speed. The removal of the legacy bootstrapper both simplifies the codebase and allows for more aggressive optimisation of the remaining bootstrap code.

Recent beta testing conducted by Bob has demonstrated impressive performance of V28's bounded backlog system under significant network load. In a controlled test environment, the network successfully handled a sudden influx of 200,000 blocks while maintaining remarkable stability and performance. 

During this heavy spam test, legitimate transactions continued to achieve confirmation times under 1.5 seconds, highlighting the effectiveness of the new prioritization mechanisms. The backlog processing showed sustained throughput of approximately 300 transactions per second (TPS), while the bounded backlog system successfully maintained its target cap of around 100,000 blocks.

Looking Ahead: V29 and Beyond

The path to full commercial grade status continues with future developments:

Enhanced Peer Management

Future versions will introduce:

• Sophisticated peer scoring systems
• Improved representative identification methods
• Enhanced network topology optimisation

Network Scaling Improvements

Ongoing development focuses on:

• Vote traffic optimisation
• Multi-node representative crawl enhancements
• Advanced network infrastructure adaptations

Continued Optimisation

Future releases will focus on:

• Fine-tuning bounded backlog parameters
• Optimising traffic shaping algorithms
• Enhancing overall network efficiency
• Further spam resistance improvements

The Future of Automating Receive Blocks

Receive blocks are an integral part of the Block-Lattice structure; while providing crucial benefits through fixed transaction sizes and efficient bookkeeping, however the current implementation also presents integration challenges that we aim to address. 

Looking ahead, we envision a streamlined approach that automates receive block processing in a way that does not require end-user signing outside of their normal transaction workflow. 

Reducing PoW on Blocks

Proof of Work, once a cornerstone in Nano’s spam prevention, has seen its role evolve with the implementation of novel systems such as Bounded Backlog, fair queueing and the bucketing system and with such advancements, the workload required by the PoW mechanism for anti-spam measures has been drastically reduced.

The motivation to heavily reduce the PoW difficulty is to ease the burden for integrations when generating transactions. Ideally, the PoW computation can be imperceivable to users while still being effective at prevention of bulk DoS traffic.

If you would like to contribute to these ongoing developments, please visit our GitHub or check out the core development documentation page.

That said, credit cards come with many downsides for us as a merchant which is why we offer a 5% discount on prompts paid in Nano.

Downsides of credit card payments

1. Transaction costs

Credit cards come with high costs for merchants. Any cost we incur we need to charge for in some way. For accepting credit card payments via Stripe we are charged a base fee ($0.30) plus a variable fee (3%). On a $5 transaction that comes out to $0.45, an almost 10% charge.

We strive for maximum privacy and therefore prefer to not collect billing addresses. Stripe offers increased privacy for users and determines the applicable VAT for an additional 1% fee. Paying out to our bank account comes with a fee. Converting foreign currencies to EUR or USD means another fee and a sub-optimal exchange rate. Need an invoice? Another fee.

It all adds up to over 10% fees on a $5 deposit, even more on smaller deposits, and remains high even for higher amounts deposited. Good for Mastercard's bottom line, bad for all of us.

2. Chargebacks and waiting times

Credit cards allow people to chargeback and to dispute payments. We have no issue with that and understand that people sometimes want to do so. However, there is a lot of credit card fraud where people will, in our case, deposit funds, use the service, then dispute the payment or claim a chargeback which costs a lot of time and money for us.

For regular payments Stripe pays out to a bank account after 7-14 days. This is not a long period, but it is annoying when there are bills to pay. Instant payouts are available... for an additional fee.

Why we prefer Nano

1. Zero fees

Nano offers an extremely simple zero fee. It's $0, regardless of amount paid, regardless of the time of day. When we pay out to our own account it's again done at zero fees.

If we convert to USD or EUR there would be an additional charge of ~0.25% for doing so on an exchange, which means incredible cost savings compared to Stripe.

Because of this we can let people deposit as little as $0.01. We can even allow people to withdraw their funds at any time, because there are zero fees on that as well.

2. Instantly fully settled

Every Nano payment is instantly settled. Instantly settled in the sense that there can be no rollbacks or chargebacks, while anyone can (instantly!) withdraw funds that are unused.

Instantly settled also in the sense of instant payouts to our own accounts. Whereas Stripe takes 7-14 days, with Nano we have the money in our account in literally a second.

3. Value preservation

Fiat currencies like US Dollars and Euro are subject to debasement. We prefer to hold our money in a stronger store of value. Nano has a fixed supply and is decentralized, making it a form of money that can not be debased.

When we receive fiat payments we need to take additional steps to get to Nano. We have to withdraw from Stripe, send funds to an exchange and swap into Nano. This means extra effort and extra cost. Accepting Nano removes this additional step.

Conclusion

We are glad we can offer credit card payments since far from everyone has access to Nano. Given that Nano is much more attractive for us to accept and saves us time and money, we encourage people to use it rather than credit cards and offer a 5% discount when using Nano on our website.

To those that want to learn about Nano we would suggest reading an article on the basics of how it works. Alternatively we would suggest downloading a wallet like Natrium (Android here, iOS here) and getting some Nano from NanoDrop to try it out with. It's all free. If you'd like to get your hands on some Nano to use with us you can find exchanges here or find ways to earn small amounts of Nano here.

To merchants considering accepting Nano for payments NanoPay is an easy all-in-one solution.

We're personally enthusiastic about Nano and are always open to chat about it in our Discord server or via our support email.

Many cryptocurrency advocates boast about the scalability of their favorite coin without having much real understanding of the meaning. In most cases, the numbers being touted as the maximum transactions per second (TPS) of a network are nothing more than an artificial constraint due to protocol limitations. In reality, these "maximum TPS" numbers don't describe a network's scaling capabilities, but rather its scaling limitations.

If our goal is really to create a monetary foundation for a new global economy, it's critical that we establish a clear understanding of the meaning of scalability, and what is required to achieve scalability capable of serving the demand of a global monetary system.

Scalability isn't just about "max TPS" and protocol thresholds. It's a multifaceted challenge involving network design, resource management, and real-world performance considerations.

Let's take a look at some of the core principles of scalability for distributed ledger networks.

Purpose-Driven Architecture

Perhaps the most fundamental principle of scalability is purpose-driven architecture. In the same philosophy as phrases such as "keep it simple, stupid!" (KISS) popularized by Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson, and "do one thing, and do it well" (DOTADIW) popularized by Unix developer Doug McIlroy, purpose-driven architecture emphasizes focus on optimization of a system for its primary function. For the sake of this discussion, that primary function is monetary payments.

Imagine using a Swiss Army knife as your sole tool for driving screws, cutting, etc. While versatile, it's not the most efficient tool for any specific job. Similarly, many distributed ledger networks aim to be all-encompassing, offering functionalities such as smart contracts and decentralized applications. While this versatility can be attractive and induce demand and investment, it often comes at the expense of efficiency, having a detrimental effect on the processing of monetary payments.

By concentrating solely on payments, a network can allocate resources more effectively, reduce operational costs, and handle a higher volume of transactions without incurring prohibitive expenses.

When a network supports non-monetary use cases, monetary transactions must compete for network resources and priority. Unfortunately, monetary payments are often less profitable compared to just about every alternative use case. This competition results in monetary transactions being deprioritized, leading to higher fees, slower processing times, and an overall degraded user experience.

Support for non-monetary use cases can even be unintentional. Networks that allow storage of arbitrary data can be exploited for non-monetary purposes. This misuse increases resource consumption (computation and storage) and operational costs, which are ultimately passed on to users through increased fees, inflation, or degraded network performance. This has been observable even in Bitcoin, with "NFT" exploits for storing arbitrary data such as Ordinal Inscriptions, Bitcoin Stamps, and BRC-20 tokens causing exponential surges in fees and confirmation times.

Asynchronous Data Structures and Consensus Protocols

Traditional blockchain cryptocurrencies process transactions sequentially, creating a linear chain of blocks. This sequence means that unrelated transactions can bottleneck the network because their processing is blocked by the processing of preceding transactions. This design inherently limits scalability, as all transactions are processed one after another.

Asynchronous data structures, like Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), allow for parallel processing of transactions that aren't dependent on each other. Multiple transactions can be processed simultaneously, significantly increasing throughput and reducing confirmation times. By enabling asynchronous processing, networks can better handle the high transaction volumes required in a global economy.

The type of consensus protocol also plays a crucial role in scalability. Leader-based consensus protocols, such as Bitcoin's Nakamoto Consensus, rely on a single node (the "leader") to propose the next block of transactions. Miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle, and the first to solve it adds the next block to the chain. This is a synchronous process that forms bottlenecks in the system's overall performance.

In contrast, leaderless consensus protocols, especially those utilizing vote propagation in Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) systems, distribute the consensus process across multiple nodes without a central authority. Nodes collaborate to reach agreement on the order and validity of transactions through weighted voting mechanisms. This can be done asynchronously, ensuring that no transaction processing is blocked by the processing of other unrelated transactions.

This leaderless approach reduces single points of failure and allows for more efficient processing of transactions. By not relying on a single leader, the network can achieve lower latency and higher throughput, as multiple nodes contribute to consensus simultaneously. This method is particularly effective when combined with asynchronous data structures, further enhancing the network's ability to scale and handle global transaction volumes.

Vertical vs. Horizontal Scaling and Decentralization Trade-offs

In traditional computing, scaling is achieved by adding more servers (horizontal scaling) or enhancing existing ones with better hardware (vertical scaling). However, in distributed ledger networks that require consensus among nodes, these concepts don't translate directly.

Adding more nodes doesn't necessarily improve throughput in such networks. In fact, it can introduce additional latency because more nodes need to communicate and agree on the network's state. This means that real-world throughput is often inversely correlated with the level of decentralization. As the number of nodes increases, the time required to reach consensus can also increase, slowing down transaction processing.

Some networks attempt to scale vertically by requiring nodes to have more powerful hardware. While this can increase individual node capacity, it also leads to higher operational costs for those running the nodes. Expensive hardware and increased energy consumption mean that fewer participants can afford to operate nodes, leading to centralization. This concentration undermines the decentralized ethos of cryptocurrency.

In contrast, optimizing nodes to improve capacity without increasing hardware requirements offers a more sustainable path to vertical scalability while maintaining decentralization. By enhancing the efficiency of software and protocols, such as refining consensus algorithms and improving data structures, networks can process more transactions using the same hardware. This approach maintains low operational costs, encourages wider participation, and supports decentralization while still improving performance.

By focusing on optimization rather than relying on more powerful hardware, networks can enhance scalability without sacrificing the principles of decentralization or imposing additional burdens on node operators.

Optimized Data Dissemination

Even if a network can theoretically process thousands of transactions per second, real-world throughput depends on how quickly data can be propagated and disseminated across the network. The latency for data dissemination - the time it takes for transaction data to reach all nodes - is a critical factor in network performance.

Efficient data propagation ensures that all nodes receive transaction data promptly, facilitating quicker consensus and higher throughput. Implementing optimized communication protocols, such as modern gossip protocols, can help minimize latency and improve the network's ability to handle a large volume of transactions.

Unfortunately, the majority of distributed ledger networks use relatively naive mechanisms for data dissemination, such as traditional gossip protocols, causing network latency to be orders of magnitude greater than necessary.

Node Synchronization and Quality of Service

As networks scale up to handle more transactions, node synchronization becomes crucial for maintaining efficiency. This means ensuring that all network nodes agree on the order in which they process incoming transactions. This is commonly referred to as the determination of prioritization for quality of service (QoS).

Under normal conditions, nodes can easily stay synchronized because they have enough time to communicate and align on transaction ordering. However, when the network reaches maximum capacity (i.e. "saturation") keeping nodes in sync becomes much more challenging. If nodes start processing transactions in different orders due to timing differences or delays, it can create compounding backlogs and increases in latency. This misalignment results in severely degraded network performance.

To prevent this, it's essential for networks to establish a common protocol for transaction ordering, especially under heavy load. By following standardized rules, nodes can maintain synchronization and process transactions efficiently, ensuring smooth network performance even when demand is high.

Removal of Protocol-Level Constraints

Most cryptocurrencies have protocol-level constraints, such as block size and block time, that effectively create a maximum theoretical throughput. While these limitations are often in place for security and stability, they can become bottlenecks as network demand grows.

To achieve true scalability, as many throughput constraints as possible should be removed from the protocol. This approach allows scalability to be limited only by node hardware, networking, and synchronization, rather than arbitrary protocol parameters. By minimizing built-in constraints, networks can better adapt to increasing demand without sacrificing performance, and scale in correlation to Moore's Law.

Seeing [Failure] is Believing

Understanding the impact of scalability constraints often requires witnessing first-hand a system under real-world stress. Bitcoin has provided clear examples of this challenge. During periods of high demand, the Bitcoin network has experienced exponential surges in transaction fees and confirmation times. These spikes make the limitations of its scalability tangible, affecting user experience and trust in the network's efficiency.

Despite Bitcoin's prominence, no cryptocurrency - Bitcoin included - has sustained a level of stress of any significance relative to what will be expected of a global monetary system. This means we haven't fully observed how scalability constraints affect most networks when pushed to their limits. Bitcoin's visible struggles under relatively insignificant usage highlight the importance of addressing scalability head-on. Without firsthand experience of such stress, it's easy to underestimate the critical nature of scalability constraints in distributed ledger networks.

Nano's Approach to Scalability

Nano exemplifies effective scaling in the cryptocurrency realm by aligning its design with the core principles of scalability. By focusing exclusively on being a digital currency optimized for payments, Nano has been architected to handle high transaction volumes with minimal latency and zero fees, making it a strong candidate for a global monetary system.

Purely Monetary Purpose

Nano adheres to the philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well." It is designed solely for monetary transactions, avoiding the complexities and inefficiencies that come with supporting non-monetary use cases like smart contracts or decentralized applications. This singular focus ensures that all network resources are dedicated to processing payments efficiently, without competition from other types of use cases that could congest the network or inflate fees. By eliminating support for arbitrary data storage and non-monetary use cases, Nano prevents misuse of the network that would otherwise degrade performance and increase operational costs.

Asynchronous "Block Lattice" Data Structure

At the core of Nano's scalability is its Block Lattice data structure. Unlike traditional blockchain cryptocurrencies that process transactions sequentially in a linear chain, Nano's Block Lattice is a type of DAG in which each account is represented as its own blockchain ("account chain"). This means transactions are asynchronous and can be processed in parallel, as they are independent of unrelated transactions. This design significantly increases throughput and reduces confirmation times, as there's no need to wait for global consensus on a single chain of blocks.

Asynchronous "ORV" Leaderless BFT Consensus Protocol

Nano employs an asynchronous and leaderless "Open Representative Voting" (ORV) consensus protocol. In ORV, account holders delegate their voting weight to representatives based on their account balance. These representatives participate in a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus by propagating votes for transactions. Since consensus is achieved through a weighted voting system without a central leader, the network avoids bottlenecks associated with leader selection, and can process transactions more efficiently.

Principal Representative Mechanism

Nano introduces the concept of principal representatives to balance decentralization with data dissemination latency. Principal representatives are nodes that have accumulated a significant amount of delegated voting weight. While the network remains decentralized by allowing any account to choose its representative, concentrating votes among principal representatives streamlines the consensus process. This reduces communication overhead and latency, as fewer nodes need to be consulted to achieve consensus, without compromising the overall decentralization of the network.

Hierarchical Gossip about Gossip Protocol

To enhance data dissemination efficiency, Nano utilizes a hierarchical Gossip about Gossip protocol, made possible by its principal representative system. This protocol allows for faster propagation of transaction data and consensus votes across the network compared to traditional gossip protocols. By organizing nodes hierarchically, with principal representatives at higher tiers, information spreads more rapidly and efficiently. This results in orders of magnitude faster data dissemination, which is critical for maintaining low latency and high throughput in a global payment network.

"Opportunity Cost" for Quality of Service and Spam Mitigation

Nano addresses node synchronization and Quality of Service (QoS) by implementing an "opportunity cost" QoS model for all node operations that factors in both the account balance and the time since the last transaction. Transactions are prioritized based on this model, which segments node operations like transaction validation into round-robin queues categorized by account balance and prioritized by least recently used. This ensures fair access to network resources and mitigates the impact of spam by making it extremely difficult for malicious actors to monopolize network capacity. By disincentivizing abuse and ensuring synchronized transaction ordering across nodes, Nano maintains network efficiency even under extreme load.

Removal of Protocol-Level Constraints

Nano has eliminated nearly all protocol-level constraints that could limit throughput, such as fixed block sizes or block times. This design choice allows Nano to scale in accordance with Moore's Law, with scalability constrained only by node hardware, networking, and synchronization. By removing arbitrary limits, Nano ensures that its network can adapt to increasing demand and technological advancements without requiring additional complexity or protocol changes.

Nano is a Prime Example of Effective Scaling

Nano's approach to scalability embodies the core principles necessary for a cryptocurrency to function effectively as a global monetary system. By maintaining a purely monetary purpose, leveraging asynchronous data structures and a leaderless consensus protocol, optimizing data dissemination, implementing innovative QoS measures, and removing protocol-level constraints, Nano demonstrates that it is possible to achieve high throughput and low latency without compromising decentralization or security. This makes Nano a compelling case study in effective scaling, showcasing how thoughtful design choices can overcome the inherent challenges of distributed ledger networks.

Scaling a distributed ledger network to meet global demands is a complex challenge requiring careful consideration of network design, resource allocation, and real-world performance. A purpose-driven architecture focused on monetary transactions, as exemplified by Nano, can address many scalability challenges by optimizing efficiency and minimizing unnecessary constraints.

Other networks, while innovative, often face trade-offs impacting scalability. High hardware requirements, centralization risks, resource competition from non-monetary use cases, and protocol limitations can hinder a network's ability to process transactions efficiently on a global scale.

As the cryptocurrency landscape evolves, networks prioritizing efficiency, fairness, and practical scalability are likely to lead in global adoption. It's an exciting journey ahead, and only the test of time (and demand) will tell which solutions will meet the challenges of serving a global economy.

Attendees were treated to an engaging lineup that highlighted the potential of Nano (XNO) in global payments and business transformations. Among the standout moments was a session by Vini Barbosa on leveraging nano for international transactions, which resonated with newcomers and seasoned entrepreneurs alike. Also included in the day were ‘Pitch Sessions’ for business owners and demos of Nano payments and ecosystem services such as Madora.io which streamlines integrating Nano payments into your business.

The success of this event is a testament to the incredible growth since its humble beginnings as a simple meet-up. 'The BizMerchant' event is now carving its place as one of the city’s must-attend summits, drawing a diverse crowd eager to explore the limitless possibilities of emerging technologies.

“We expect more events like this in Nigeria, one of kind and super helpful for new startup owners”

Said a team member from Letsbuild Academy(Web3PH) - a partner of the event that connects creators, developers and talent across Africa and beyond.

The event offered a golden opportunity for business owners to passionately showcase their services, network extensively, and explore promising partnerships. The participants’ enthusiastic engagement indicates a strong future for nano adoption and entrepreneurial growth in Nigeria.

We have set up a brand new Instagram page where you can view behind-the-scenes pictures of the event and follow along our journey to building the next event! Please give our posts a like, follow and share here: https://www.instagram.com/biz_merchant_event

But to continue this momentum and build an even more successful future, we need the Nano community’s ongoing support! Whether that is through showcasing your own ideas at the next event or donating to our next event fund (see address at the bottom of the article), your support helps us in growing The BizMerchant event even further. 

We acknowledge the unwavering support from our community partners, especially names like George Coxon, Milan Milen, Patrick Reilly from Madora, Pim from Rirriro, Vini Barbosa and many more, whose contributions have been invaluable. The continued encouragement and active involvement from these influencers help drive our mission forward.

For those who wish to explore partnerships or have inquiries, do not hesitate to reach out via email at bizmerchantsevent@gmail.com.

This is only the beginning. Together, we can innovate the future of digital business!

BizMerchant Event 3.0 fund here: nano_1uzycpey8k5x5xr3kncsc8b763j95qz9655a1n3b8mi46tt95fa7tiqmejes

**Written by Enaanapu Gabriel
Community Contributor and Event Organizer

Digital currencies are a specialized form of peer-to-peer (p2p) network. They differ substantially from more commonly encountered p2p networks like distributed hash tables (DHT) in their need for rate limiting and flow control.  For digital currencies to function, there needs to be agreement about the state of the network whereas content-addressed DHTs are stateless. Since DHTs are by and large the most popular type of p2p networks, p2p quality of service (QoS) and flow control are a less explored area.

Issues with flow control by fee:

The most common way to provide QoS in a currency network is by having the user pay a fee at the application level. This method is trivial to implement but has several drawbacks:

• Requires a financial decision based on network conditions
• Political contention around recipients of the fee
• Setting a transaction fee is accident-prone

If flow control can be solved passively at a technical level we can avoid possible fee miscalculations, simplify the user experience, and avoid the other drawbacks of the fee-based approach entirely.

Decentralized flow control is difficult:

The fact that most digital currencies use fees as flow control shows their high effectiveness and ease of implementation. The ease of implementing fees ignores, or tries to mitigate, the centralizing effect and inherent political contention when deciding fee parameters.

Because we are limiting the rate of data that is processed for consensus, flow control must be decided before the consensus step. Since fees are a number field in the transaction itself it is easy to make the priority determination before consensus. Constructing a flow control mechanism that does not require a fee is inherently more complex.

The opportunity cost of a transaction:

It is commonly discussed that a fee is required because rate limiting must have a cost as nothing is free.  The implication is that without a fee field in the protocol, we can’t determine the associated cost of confirming a transaction.

This analysis misses using the opportunity cost of the balance held in that account as the associated cost function for prioritization.

Opportunity cost is an economic term for what you give up by making a certain decision. The opportunity cost of holding a currency is what you forgo by holding that currency. Some examples of what could be given up are: purchasing an investment, holding a different currency, or eliminating interest by paying off debt.

If we measure the length of time since an account’s last transaction and compare it with the balance held in the account, we can obtain the opportunity cost spent by that transaction and do so without user intervention.

Summary:

Nano uses the opportunity cost of a transaction to passively determine a transaction cost as a parameter for flow control and QoS across the network.

Other digital currency protocols may have a hard time implementing opportunity cost flow control based on the face value of the transaction if they allow a significant external value to be tied to the transaction. Specifically, when arbitrary data is allowed in the protocol, the software isn’t able to make a true opportunity cost determination for a particular transaction.

Fee removal greatly simplifies the user experience, minimizes contention in the protocol specification, eliminates sources of confusion, and avoids pitfalls that can lead to accidental loss.

V27: Core Enhancements Unveiled

Fair Queueing enhancements

The fair queue component designed by Piotr Wójcik has been added to the nano node. The fair queue orders requests in a fair, round-robin fashion which is needed by several components in the node. The fair queue was added to block, network message, bootstrap request, and vote request processing. The fair queue ensures that each network peer gets equal processing time within each component.

Election/block handling improvements

A number of performance and maintainability improvements were added to election and block handling which improve performance when under load. Both block processing and vote processing were reimplemented using fair queueing. Networking operations were separated from block processing which both improved maintainability and performance.

Representative handling improvements

Multiple parts of rep handling were improved including weight tracking, vote request aggregation, and rep crawling. Memory use for rep handling has been significantly improved, performance for request aggregation has been improved, and a number of changes to reduce vote bandwidth usage have been made including only replying to vote requests with final votes and not using the vote cache when responding to requests.

Network handling rewrite

Significant portions of the networking stack have been rewritten and simplified. Legacy code that handled half-duplex TCP channels has been removed and all TCP connections now operate full-duplex. Asynchronous callback-style code has been replaced with coroutines in several places simplifying code flow.

Network Flow Control Improvements

Network Flow Control Improvements refers to a set of algorithms and protocols designed to regulate the rate of transaction processing and data flow across the network to prevent congestion, ensure network stability, and maintain optimal throughput. 

The primary goal of improving flow control in V27 is to enhance the Nano network's resilience to spam and denial-of-service attacks, improve overall transaction processing efficiency, and ensure equitable resource distribution across the network. By intelligently managing how transactions are processed and propagated, V27 aims to maintain high throughput and low latency, ensuring Nano remains a fast and reliable decentralised payment system, even as it scales.

Rate-Limiting: This is a mechanism that limits the number of transactions that can be processed or propagated by a node within a certain timeframe. Rate-limiting is essential to prevent DDoS attacks and to manage the load on nodes, ensuring that they do not get overwhelmed by too many transactions at once.

Adaptive Algorithms: The V27 update employs algorithms that can adapt based on real-time network conditions. These adaptive mechanisms ensure that the flow control settings are dynamically optimised, whether the network is under heavy load or operating normally.

Flow control in V27 of the Nano node represents a sophisticated suite of features designed to optimise network performance, safeguard against malicious activities, and ensure the Nano network remains scalable and efficient as it grows.

Configurable Logging: Tailored Diagnostic Insights

Acknowledging the pivotal role that effective logging plays in the realms of network diagnostics and monitoring, V27 is set to unveil a logging system that boasts efficiency and high configurability. This system empowers node operators with the capability to custom-tailor logging levels and outputs, simplifying the process of debugging and health monitoring of nodes. This method is designed to balance the need for detailed logs with keeping disk space use low and avoiding log clutter, marking a vast improvement in how the system works.

Voting Mechanism Reinvented: Up to 255 Votes Per Message

In an ambitious move to amplify the network's scalability and voting efficacy, V27 will extend its support to encapsulate up to 255 votes per message, marking a leap from the previous limit of 12. This enhancement is set to dilute the network congestion and diminish voting traffic, which, in turn, bolster the consensus mechanism's robustness. By amalgamating a larger quota of votes into fewer messages, Nano strides closer to a scalable future, ensuring the network's resilience proliferates in tandem with its activity.

Bounded Block Backlog Preparation: Reimagining QoS

Culminating the array of enhancements, V27 lays the foundational stones for an initial rewrite of the Bounded Block Backlog functionality. This pioneering stride towards enhancing the network's Quality of Service (QoS) embodies a smart transaction prioritisation strategy, ensuring that critical transactions are swiftly processed even amidst elevated network loads such as spam attacks. This move underscores a commitment to a more stable and consistent user experience irrespective of network dynamics. 

A Beacon of Continuous Improvement

V27 encapsulates Nano's ethos of perpetual innovation and evolution despite the noise of our space. By heralding significant improvements across critical dimensions such as bootstrapping efficiency, logging operability, scalability through an enhanced voting mechanism, and a reimagined approach towards network QoS, V27 doesn’t just augment the network’s performance; it takes on the learnings of the more recent past attacks and brings Nano ever closer to Commercial Grade. 

For a more detailed exploration of V27 and to partake in its developmental discourse, visit the discussion for V27.

If you would like to contribute, please check out our GitHub, or the core development documentation page.

For those interested in why we have chosen the name Denarius for V27, denarius coins of Roman antiquity were made by hammering. A piece of metal would be heated up and placed on an anvil with a punch on top. Then the punch would be hit with a hammer, sometimes more than once, to impress onto the coin the designs contained in both the punch and the anvil with this process leaving very distinctive marks on the coins. Coins made from silver of high purity might show flow marks, lines radiating out from the centre of the coin. With flow control being such a major feature of V27 and as we near ‘Commercial Grade’ which is our Aurus (gold) standard, we felt Denarius was a fitting name!

TL;DR: You won't need to off-ramp most of the time. Or, at least, that's the general idea: Avoiding on-ramps and off-ramps as much as possible.

What are on-ramps and off-ramps?

Ramps reference entry and exit points from fiat to nano and vice-versa. Essentially, if we understand nano as a road of users coming and going, an on-ramp is when these users exchange a fiat currency for XNO, while an off-ramp exchanges XNO for fiat. Getting in and out of the nano road.

Nano's On-ramp & Off-ramp visualization. Source: Vini Barbosa (@vinibarbosabr)

The "Nano Road" is a permissionless road that anyone can use anywhere and at any time. It is a high-speed road connecting any starting point to any destination, usually in less than a second and without charging fees from its riders.

Conversely, the fiat roads are permissioned and are not available to anyone anywhere at any time. Moreover, the ramps are the nano road's weak spots, where the fiat road owners can create barriers, rentseek, and decide who has the right to use them or not.

In summary, the nano road is a free-to-use high-speed road that can efficiently lead you anywhere you want. However, it is limited by the on-ramps and off-ramps, which you can decide not to use with the proper management.

This is what this article is about. I will not address the particularities of the fiat roads (like taxes and other regulations), which will change according to each individual's location. If you want to better understand these particularities, you should consult a local professional.

Business management: Accepting nano payments and avoiding the fiat ramps

Accepting nano payments in your business is as easy as setting up a self-custody wallet (usually won't take more than five minutes) and communicating it visibly (a "nano accepted here" sticker on a physical point of sale or similar on a website or social media account).

"Nano accepted here" stickers in Portuguese. Photo: Vini Barbosa (@vinibarbosabr)

Additionally, it is possible to use third-party services or integrations to help receive and manage the nano payments. Check some merchant solutions that accept nano, like NowPayments, Sellix, and pay.nano.to.

Just like cash, you communicate that you take XNO for payments, and your customers will pay from their pockets (self-custody wallet) to yours. At the end of the day/week/month/quarter, you make the cash accounting by taking notes on a ledger and moving part (or all) of it from the daily hot wallet to a safe cold wallet.

Ok, now you still need to pay infrastructure costs, goods, and service providers, pay your employees, and take your share of the profit; thus, you definitely need to off-ramp your XNO, don't you? No. Not necessarily.

Cryptocurrency inflow will be relatively low at first

Let's be realistic here; there aren't yet many people looking to spend their cryptocurrency (including nano) daily. Or, at least, there are far more people in the world currently spending their local fiat currencies instead of a better monetary alternative.

Therefore, businesses can expect the payment share in nano to be far lower than that of fiat payments in the beginning. The shift will most likely be gradual instead of sudden, which is perfect; here's why:

By receiving a relatively low share of your payments in nano, you have enough time and lower risk exposure to learn this new endeavor on a business level. Overall, you will still be able to keep your fiat cash flow sustaining your business with your usual customers to pay for infra, providers, employees, and most part of your profit-taking share.

Eliminating the on-ramps with an alternative nano DCA strategy

Nano will be an extra revenue, which you will learn to manage properly—the same way you learned to manage your fiat-based business when you started it in the past.

At first, all nano revenue could be paid as a bonus to the owners and kept for mid-to-long-term savings, as some dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategy. Instead of buying XNO, you take this share as profit and save it for the future. As a result, you will slowly eliminate the need to on-ramp (buying nano with fiat), directly receiving it in exchange for your work.

However, if you still want to exchange XNO with other currencies, check the exchanges that currently support nano.

You can also propose to pay your employees bonuses and result-oriented rewards with nano as the volume increases. This would be a separate payment from the usual wage and should ideally be given guidelines for safekeeping and insights on how to spend directly—which leads us to the next step: building (or taking part) in a circular nano-based economy.

Build and take part in a nano-based circular economy

So, you have been taking a share of your profits in nano and paying bonuses that way for a while, but (1) the volume in nano payments is surging, and/or (2) it is time to use these savings that have increased their purchasing power; should you off-ramp now?

Maybe... It's up to you, but again, not necessarily. At least, not in the most common way of doing it (directly exchanging nano for fiat to your bank account).

For that, you can take part in worldwide crypto-based circular economies on the internet, using crypto-native services such as gift card stores (like RedeemforMe, Coinsbee, Cake Pay, etc) and merchants or other services that can be useful for businesses, like NanoGPT and its pay-per-use model for artificial intelligence (AI) tools or Fyncom with its finance and communication solutions.

Moreover, you can start networking with other local businesses, merchants, and service providers who could also be interested in accepting nano for payments and starting a local circular economy where entities can directly earn and spend locally in a peer-to-peer manner.

At this point, it's essential to always have some educational material available and easily accessible at your business place (online or physical) to help onboard new users interested in nano. This achieves two goals: (1) onboard customers that will start using this preferred medium of exchange at your store and, possibly, bring new customers alike in the future, and (2) onboard businesses, merchants, and service providers where you can directly spend your XNO revenue without needing an off-ramp.

Start slowly, but start now!

In conclusion, nano payment adoption will not suddenly happen by magic. It is a gradual change for a better relationship with money that takes time, learning, and educating others, and it won't happen unless enthusiasts do their part. Nevertheless, most businesses and individuals could already start taking their first steps now. The sooner people start doing it, the sooner a relevant adoption will happen.

I started receiving very small payments in bitcoin for writing gigs back in 2020. A few months later, I had already sold some goods online in exchange for nano. In 2021 and 2022, I received my yearly bonuses in BTC, and in 2023, I freelanced for nano, and other cryptocurrencies, slightly increasing the crypto-based payments share over my dominating fiat payments.

Nano has always been my preferred choice due to its properties as money, and I continue to work with Ririro and get some of my payments in XNO.

For what it's worth, the more I started using crypto for payments, the more I naturally started distancing myself from BTC due to long waiting times, fees, and lack of privacy that were not interesting from a business perspective with enough offsetting competitive advantages.

This year, I finally achieved my goal of earning my payments 100% in cryptocurrencies while discovering new ways to use that money without relying on off-ramps.

It is possible!

Start slowly and move forward as you feel comfortable, according to your own reality. Nano will only have sustainable long-term value if we recognize this value and adopt them. No adoption equals no use, which equals no organic demand. Speculators of non-used coins are just playing a "Greater Fool" game that is fated to end and bring significant losses to the ultimate "greater fool."

Finally, start slowly, but start now. As you go, join me and teach others how to accept and use payments in nano without relying on fiat ramps.

Nano (XNO) has brought in technological advancements that made blockchain based solutions affordable and simple to the fact that they can be used in applications such as parking space counters. 

This work portrays use of Nano in an alternative way to keep track of available parking spaces via IoT nodes installed at entry and exit points of parking lots. 

The available parking space data (i.e. the Nano balance of the wallet linked to the entry point IoT device) can be posted on display boards while a car approaches the parking lot. The available parking spaces can also be accessed via the internet by posting the data on a website or via a mobile app.

An enhancement for this work is the issue of entry tickets with timestamp and unique ID by using the block data during asset transfer which can be used for collection of parking fees by the help of IoT nodes at the exit points of the parking lots.

There are many blockchain technologies that support smart contracts through which parking space systems can be managed. Based on the approach used in this work only fee-less blockchain technologies can be used. Various fee-less blockchain technologies were compared and Nano proved to be a viable solution for the implementation of the proposed methodology.

This work was only possible because Nano was economical, fee-less & instant.

Read full paper: https://doi.org/10.12694/scpe.v25i2.2459