What is Verge coin?

Verge coin is a cryptocurrency that strives to make blockchain transactions anonymous and untraceable. Its native token is known as XVG. One of the project’s other key objectives is to dramatically increase throughput and deliver fast confirmation rates, in such way bringing blockchain transactions into everyday life.

The blockchain manages to ensure complete privacy for its users by leveraging a non-standard technology to connect users to the network. Verge also draws attention because it is an open-source and 100% community-driven project – there is no big foundation or company pulling the strings behind the curtain. The project had no ICO and is making the most out of volunteer work and public donations. To stress the project’s commitment to privacy, anonymity, and decentralization. Verge’s core team have signed its black paper with their usernames only.

Verge launched in 2014, as DogeCoinDark. In 2016, yearning to cut the ties with the “Doge” meme and ditch the “dark” connotation, the team rebranded itself as Verge. With their eyes set on making the list of the top privacy coins, the Verge team is betting on interesting new technologies and introducing some powerful security measures to inch closer to their goals.

The technology powering Verge

To make its transactions completely anonymous and secure, Verge is moving away from the internet as we know it. Normally, to transact or communicate with another computer, we need an Internet Service Provider (ISP), a middleman, to facilitate that message. To route a message across the network, our ISP needs to know both  the sender’s unique identifier on the internet (IP address) and the recipient’s IP address. This means that over time, our ISP collects a lot of private information about us – for instance, our location and our contacts’ location, so it’s nowhere close to being anonymous.

To address the connection anonymization problem, Verge coin leverages two key technologies – Tor and I2P.

What is Tor?

Tor stands for “The Onion Router.” It’s a free and well-known software for anonymizing IP addresses and improving privacy and security on the internet. The name “Onion Router” alludes to Tor’s unique method of routing information online – instead of using one ISP to deliver the message from Computer A to Computer B, Tor network wraps the message in multiple layers of encryption by bouncing the connection between thousands of volunteer relay computers on its peer-to-peer network. For example, journalists use Tor to communicate anonymously and more securely with whistleblowers and dissidents.

The Tor’s method ensures the IP addresses changes numerous times before it reaches its destination, making it very difficult to trace the transaction. Verge has implemented Tor as a standard for facilitating the transaction on the blockchain, providing users with dramatically increased privacy and anonymity.

What is I2P?

I2P is short for “Invisible Internet Project” and is a next-generation connection anonymization solution. While Tor enables its users to connect to the regular Internet anonymously, the I2P focuses on facilitating secure and anonymous internal connections between users on the I2P network. It’s what is often referred to as the “Darknet.” Essentially, I2P creates its own private network within the internet.

The way it works is it creates two separate tunnels for incoming and outgoing messages and encrypts a single message in two different bundles. Imagine that you had one mailbox for letters that you were sending out and another for letters that you were receiving. Combined with dynamic routing that conceals everyone’s IP addresses, the I2P solution makes it extremely difficult to decode messages even if intercepted.

On the Verge blockchain, you get an option to route your transactions either through Tor or through I2P, but in any case, your IP is anonymized.

Wraith Protocol

On top of theses connection anonymization solutions, Verge also leverages the Wraith Protocol. It’s a technology that gives Verge users a choice between public and private blockchain transactions. While public transactions guarantee speed and transparency, private transactions are totally untraceable and completely private.

What does the future look like for Verge?

Despite some reputation issues surrounding the project’s ever-changing and mostly anonymous development team, Verge is completely decentralized and open-source, which ensures community support.

Verge is also planning to introduce a sidechain through the Rootstock project. This would make it possible to process smart contracts. If they succeed in solving this challenge, Verge would have a unique standing in the anonymized blockchain space, where other projects like Monero and Zcash are also gaining traction.