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Bitcoin is known as the 'King of Crypto', and for good reason. As at today, 7th November 2017, it enjoys a 60.6% dominance of the total cryptocurrency market cap with a market cap of over $120,000,000,000 ($120 Billion).
However while Bitcoin will always enjoy the status of being the 'original' cryptocurrency, the underlying technology, brilliant as it may be in many respects, leaves a lot to be desired.
But another cryptocurrency, Verge, is quickly establishing itself as a market leader in many aspects by developing unique features that have never been offered by other cryptocurrencies.
What is Verge?
Verge promises to be "a secure and anonymous cryptocurrency, built with a focus on privacy".
Verge Currency is a cryptocurrency designed for everyday use. It improves upon the original Bitcoin blockchain and aims to fulfill its initial purpose of providing individuals and businesses with a fast, efficient and decentralized way of making direct transactions while maintaining personal privacy.
Why is Verge superior to Bitcoin?
Transaction Speed
One of Bitcoin's problems is scalability. Without going into technical details, in layman's terms, Bitcoin's blockchain cannot keep up with transaction demand and this is now creating a bottleneck, limiting Bitcoin to a maximum transaction rate of three transactions per second. This number was fine back when few people believe that cryptocurrencies would actually play an important role in our lives, but definitely creates a problem which limits the possibility of mass adoption.
Also, Bitcoin transactions require roughly 10 minutes per confirmations, with 6 confirmations needed for a transaction to be deemed valid. That means sending or receiving Bitcoin actually takes an hour.
Verge, on the other hand, can process around 100 transactions per second and offers transaction speeds that are ultra-fast compared to other coins. Simple Payment Verification (SPV) technology allows average transaction confirmation times to drop to ~5 seconds.
Privacy & Anonymity
Verge uses multiple anonymity-centric networks such as Tor and I2P. The IP addresses of the users are obfuscated and the transactions are completely untraceable.
Community-developed and community-backed
Verge is not a private company funded by pre-mined coins or ICO's. All of the development and marketing is supported by the thousands of members of the community. The development team is active and always in close contact with the community. You can easily reach the main developers for support or new ideas about Verge.
Ready for Mass Adoption
Verge offers a wide array of secure wallets for multiple operating systems. The revolutionary Tor Android Wallet offers mobile anonymity, which is a unique feature among privacy-oriented coins.
Decentralised and Open-Source
Verge is a decentralized currency based on an open-source platform. There is no central control over the coin.
Wraith Protocol
A first in the cryptocurrency world, launched only yesterday.
Wraith Protocol is a technology that allows the user to seamlessly switch between public and private ledgers on the Verge Blockchain. For the first time, users are now free to choose which ledger they want to utilize.
To break it down, when Wraith Protocol is turned ON — the transaction data is hidden and not visible via the blockchain explorer.
In a circumstance where transparency is required, Wraith Protocol would be turned OFF, allowing the transaction data to be viewable on the public ledger.
In addition, Verge provides total obfuscation of IP addresses in both cases, thanks to the most advanced version of TOR integrated in the Core Wallet. In combination with Wraith Protocol it makes Verge the only truly untraceable cryptocurrency.
How does Wraith Protocol work in practice? As all great things in life, it’s simple. When the user initiates a transaction with the Core Wallet, the switch button is set to “ON” and the private ledger is leveraged. Set it to OFF and the public ledger is active.
The process is illustrated below:
Ultimately, Wraith Protocol provides the end user with choice, flexibility and unmatched security. Verge’s high volume, low fees, ultra fast transaction speeds and smart contracts functionality have created the perfect recipe for mainstream adoption, while putting your privacy first. As Edward Snowden once said, “Bitcoin is great, but if it’s not private, it’s not safe”.
The implementation of BIP65 on the Verge Blockchain makes it possible to exchange Verge Currency via atomic swaps, thereby eliminating trusted third parties.
Finally, to provide an additional level of security, Verge's latest wallet update also includes 2-way encrypted p2p chat functionality in the core wallet, which protects the end user against methods of surveillance such as stylometry. This functionality is called Visp.
RSK (Rootstock) Smart Contracts
The next big thing that the Verge dev team is working on is RSK Smart Contracts. This feature will be launched by Q1 2018.
RSK is a two-way pegged sidechain that grafts smart contract functionality onto the Verge network. It also introduces an off-chain protocol for near-instant payments. RSK is an independent blockchain that does not have its own token, it instead relies on existing tokens (such as Verge). RSK is able to do this by pegging (or matching) its smart token to Verge, so that the value of an RSK token is exactly that of a Verge token. Users have the capabilities to freely move their tokens back and forth between the two chains.
A smart contract works by placing a user's Verge into a type of reserve where it is locked up and then used to back the RSK token, known as smartVerge. Think of it as putting your Verge into a checking account and then using the RSK network to spend that money. It is important to note that simple contracts have been in place for Bitcoin which allow users to create contracts, like mutlisig, that requires two or more users to sign off on a payment before it can be released. With the implementation of RSK on Verge, simple smart contracts are taken to a whole new level, with turing-complete smart contract capabilities that will go head-to-head with Ethereum's current offerings.
Another added benefit of RSK is its ability to scale. RSK currently achieves 400 payment transactions per second, which is a huge progressive leap when compared to Verge's current standing transaction rate; around 100 per second. The RSK development team has stated that the eventual goal is to push the bar even higher with future goals to support 2,000 transactions per second using a second layer technology called Lumino. The Lumino Network is an off-chain payment system that relies on a protocol known as the Lumino Transaction Compression Protocol. The LTCP can be compared to the Lightning Network, a scaling solution originally designed for bitcoin that is currently being tested on Litecoin.
Value
Verge is still in its infancy. As at time of writing, it's currently valued at just over $100,000,000. Current circulating supply is 14,203,875,965 XVG out of 16,555,000,000 XVG maximum supply which will should be reached by the end of 2019.
It's current value (market capatilsation) is under 0.1% of Bitcoin. Yet it offers superior technology, transaction speed and privacy.
By the time it reaches its maximum supply in 2019 or within a year of this happening, if the devs keep innovating and the community encourages mass adoption, I would not be surprised to see Verge worth 20% of Bitcoin, which may well be worth close to $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 Trillion) at that time.
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This article was written for entertainment purposes and is not meant to serve as financial advice.