Nano is a cryptocurrency that offers fee-less and instantaneous transactions. It attempts to serve as “digital money for the modern world” by being a simple peer-to-peer transfer of value across the world.

Launched in October 2015, Nano’s initial distribution was done through a distinct CAPTCHA faucet system in an attempt to Nano “as fairly and organically as possible”. The faucet required users to complete complex CAPTCHA tests to earn NANOs. Hence, instead of requiring computing resources (e.g., Bitcoin) to mine coins, the faucet allowed anyone with a computer to participate by contributing time and attention (vs. expensive computing resources).

To achieve its mission, Nano is built on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) network structure: Block Lattice. In Block Lattice, each account has its “own blockchain” to keep track of transactions. Since transactions are fee-less, accounts are required to perform some Proof-of-Work (PoW) tasks to send a transaction to prevent Sybil attacks.

In addition, Nano uses a unique and efficient consensus mechanism called Open Representative Voting (ORV): voting is tied to confirmation on the network and voting nodes (on the Nano network) are referred to as Representatives.

Nano token-holders can delegate voting weight to elect network validators. In contrast to most other cryptocurrencies, validators do not earn block rewards, nor transaction fees. Instead, they contribute voluntarily and enjoy the natural incentives provided by a secure and stable network.