Ever since the blockchain industry emerged ten years ago, there has been a tremendous rise in the availability of different cryptocurrencies in the market. Competition has been the order of the day among the thousands of coins in circulation. But the fact remains that this competition has remained the sole reason for the continuous growth of the blockchain industry.

One coin that is currently gaining grounds is the Aeternity cryptocurrency which has successfully gained the following of many due to its high scalability and off-chain smart contracts. Before letting the cat out of the bag, we are going to discuss the meaning of Aeternity, its history, features, benefits, and how to own the coin.

History of Aeternity

The work of Yanislav Malahov, the founder of the Aeternity cryptocurrency, was supported by a host of other crypto experts that formed the Aeternity team. Although popular, the coin has not stayed too long in the coin market. Its existence can easily be traced to 2017 when it was officially launched as a testnet. It was able to raise over $28 million within two months of its release which caused a steady rise in the value of Aeternity and its growth.

When it’s mainnet was finally released in June 2018, the Aeternity token migration was made free and easy. It gave users already in possession of its token in the Ethereum blockchain, the free access to migrate to the Aeternity blockchain. This migration process was designed to be in four phases and was spread across from October 2018 to September 2019.

Aeternity and its market value

Aternity is an open source decentralized blockchain platform that is built on Ethereum blockchain. Its platform was designed for a decentralised application that has the full assurance of solving the ever-rising scalability issues faced by other cryptocurrencies. With a view of settling transactions between a peer to peer process, Aeternity employs the use of a smart contract as a lead advantage to other cryptocurrencies. Its consensus mechanism was built as a high breed employing both the Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake making it different from their smart contract blockchain.

Currently, the Aeternity coin has a market cap of $88748996USD which is equivalent to 24167BTC. Its current circulating supply is 2330204472AE against its total supply of 273685830AE. The Aeternity Cryptocurrency currently ranks 50 in the coin market and it is traded across different cryptocurrency exchange markets.

Unique features of Aeternity cryptocurrency

Here are some unique features found in the crypto coin;

• State channels feature; Aeternity cryptocurrency employs the state of channels as an off-chain feature. This feature allows communication only between two parties. This two-way system also allows both parties to access and sign transactions to ensure that they are properly authorized. This authorizing process enables both users to carry out transactions within a short interval without necessarily waiting for validation by its consensus mechanism.
• Easy naming system; This naming system of Aeternity caters for the easy identification of its blockchain. While this might be termed valid for using their platform, it also helps for keeping the entire network decentralised and highly secured. Its naming system can be used on account addresses or hashes.
• More transparent governance; Governance has been a serious issue when it comes to performing upgrades in any blockchain platform. This upgrading process usually requires a hard fork in its blockchain framework creating a diverse decision among users and the platform community. Aeternity creates a more transparent governance process which is part of the consensus mechanism making it more open for users to come to an agreement on what upgrade process to use.
• A hybrid consensus; Aeternity uses a hybrid form of consensus, combining both the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake algorithm. Its Proof of Work algorithm caters for the high electricity consumption making it easy to mine blocks with the use of smartphones. The view of the team behind making its consensus a hybrid was far from just being able to mine with your smartphones but to make it difficult for miners to corrupt the system on their mining process.

The wallet system of Aeternity

Despite the fact that Aeternity is just barely a year old didn’t make it difficult to access its wallet system. The Aeternity wallet system is used to keep private and public keys secured. Most wallets are provided with encrypted keys to ensure that the security of the Aeternity coin is highly guaranteed. Examples of such wallets are;

• MyEtherWallet; My ether wallet is a desktop application that allows you to set up your wallet and to manage your Aeternity coins. This first requires you to enter a strong password that protects your private keys. And after creating your wallet, private keys can be downloaded and stored in your USB for safety.
• Ledger wallet; Ledger wallet is most times called Ledger Nano S. It is used for storing cryptographic assets. Ledger Nano is a hardware wallet that is used to keep private keys in a small USB drive-like hardware. It is most times referred to as a cold storage wallet because of its ability to be stored offline.
• Trezor wallet; Another alternative of a hardware wallet is Trezor. This hardware wallet has one of the best user environments with an easy setup. The Trezor registration process is easy and free to start.

How to buy Aeternity coin

Using a cryptocurrency exchange platform is, for now, the best means of securing your Aeternity coins. This exchange process gives access to those who already are in possession of bitcoin or ethereum. If you are new to cryptocurrency, securing either coin through Coinbase is the first process. Registration at Coinbase gives you access to use your debit or credit card. After purchase, head to the Binance cryptocurrency exchange; this allows you to set up your account before exchanging your bitcoin or ethereum for the Aeternity coin

How to mine Aeternity Coin?

The high breed nature of the Aeternity network allows for the easy mining of its coin. The mining process uses a Cuckoo cycle for mining which is similar to the Equihash algorithm used in cryptocurrencies like Zcash. Cuckcoo cycle works with a proof-of-work consensus which is memory bound. This mining process of allows the mining with the use of GPU with your memory bandwidth and is the only limiting factor to the size of your profit. Although Aeternity is very much new in the blockchain industry, there is ongoing work to supply miners with the best and trusted mining process.