Vertcoin (VTC)VTC
A 2014 code fork of Bitcoin built to resist ASIC mining, with 2.5-minute blocks, 84 million coins and a history of 51% attacks.
The wiki's angle: Vertcoin is the cleanest test of the ASIC-resistance promise. It kept changing algorithms to keep miners decentralised and was 51% attacked anyway, which is the risk every small proof-of-work chain in this wiki shares.[3][1]
Contents
Design
The README calls Vertcoin “a fork of Bitcoin that is designed to resist the monopolisation of mining power”, with 2.5-minute blocks, halvings every 840,000 blocks, 84 million coins, per-block difficulty retargeting and the Verthash proof of work[1]. Its mainnet genesis block carries the timestamp 1389311371 and the headline “01/09/2014 Germany to Help in Disposal of Syrian Chemical Weapons”[2].
Attacks
Wikipedia reports that Vertcoin suffered 51% attacks from October through December 2018, changed its proof-of-work algorithm, and was attacked again on 1 December 2019[3]. It also cites a December 2018 paper arguing that Vertcoin's difficulty adjustment was “very sensitive to hash rate change” because the chain was not very popular[3].
Date
The infobox uses the genesis timestamp; Wikipedia only says the coin was created in early 2014[2][3].
References
- primaryVertcoin Core README, GitHub vertcoin-project/vertcoin-core [archived]
- primaryVertcoin Core src/chainparams.cpp (mainnet genesis timestamp 1389311371) [archived]
- secondaryWikipedia, “Vertcoin” [archived]