Viacoin Attempts To Move Services Off The Bitcoin Blockchain



Altcoin projects have been getting more ambitious in recent months.

Viacoin is one example. This new altcoin raised money aggressively through an ICO presale.

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Fortunately for early investors, their presale purchase has been a smashing success. ICO coins sold for 6201 Satoshi each and Viacoin is now trading in the 33-45K range. Compared to most other ICOs - which see the Dev leave town in a hovercraft - Viacoin has lasted longer and made more of a profit and impression.

The Viacoin project plans on building their own protocol - known as ClearingHouse - to make it easy for third parties to add services on the blockchain. As the ANN thread stated when asked about why this team doesn’t just build these additional services on the Bitcoin blockchain: “ The answer is simple: there have already been similar attempts to build out services that utilize the Bitcoin blockchain but they have faced strong resistance from Bitcoin core developers who consider this kind activity as “blockchain spam” and in some cases made attempts to block and inhibit such activity.”

Anyone reading that sentence can feel the frustration that has been encountered by some due to Bitcoin politics. Devs using the ClearingHouse protocol will not have to deal with daunting blockchain back alley politicking. Instead they can focus on creating services that offer improvements over the ones currently offered.

There’s another major advantage of Viacoin.

Viacoin uses 24 second block target times. This should cut down on the noticeable lag that Bitcoin transactions suffer from. In order for merchant applications like point of sale systems to use blockchains and satisfy customers the transactions must be confirmed quickly. 

Viacoin is 25 times faster than Bitcoin for confirming transactions. This increased speed should go a long way towards convincing people who may be on the fencet to at least try the technology.

Viacoin Is Gaining Interest As A Long-Term Viable Project

New Blockchains Can Offer A Universe Of Fresh Possibilities

As you can imagine, Viacoin’s claims have captured attention from many folks who intensely follow the altcoin sector. The majority of altcoins are merely pointless clones created for the sole purpose of pump and dumps. They don’t gain traction with anyone or get anywhere in the market place over time because they literally have no vision or purpose. The average alt will languish because it does not solve a problem and is not a superior alternative to Bitcoin for most purposes or applications. Any alt that can help create functionality that solves day to day problems will be able to move up the charts quickly, due to the amount of weak competition in the sector.

Viacoin is already the 24th. most valuable altcoin by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Early investors have caught on to the project’s potential and the coin is now moving forward rapidly with development. Viacoin hired Peter Todd as Chief Scientist and Advisor to the project on July 30th. Todd has worked on Bitcoin Core development as well as several altcoin projects.

Tree Chains Could Alter The Blockchain Universe Drastically

The primary reason Todd was brought in was to work and perfect tree chains. What tree chains and side chains are is beyond the scope of this discussion, but in summary they can open up blockchains to a whole new universe of possibilities.

It’s no secret that it takes ‘Big Ideas‘ to excite people. It’s nearly impossible to build a following these days with generic technology. Viacoin is ‘swinging for the fences‘ at a time when the average altcoin is designed solely to make a person or small group of people limited sums of money.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that big idea coin projects are going to start to capture their share of attention in coming months. Certainly many crypto traders and miners are still fascinated by pump and dump schemes, but there is also a new variety that exists. These people are weary of the scams and empty promises of new coins and instead are looking to invest in ‘value stores‘ that could significantly increase their wealth. Wealthy investors have been attracted to Bitcoin due to its potential and performance. These heavyweights will over time invest more and more into stable and growing altcoins.

The projects that keep their eyes on the big prize will gain their share of wealthy investors and dedicated miners. The rest of the pie will be left for the one-hit wonders with attention deficit disorder. They’ll be forced to fight over crumbs and come back the next day to do the same. Projects like Viacoin, if successful, will create an ecosystem that grows rapidly. The real value for the coin comes in the form of being a highly used eco-system where tons of developers add value through new applications.

These applications can eventually solve all major financially-related problems. Whether this happens remains to be seen, but so far the signs are good. If the Viacoin team stays dedicated to their task great things can happen.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. Please sound off below!


  • Crypto Gotti

    I’m a definite fan of Via. It’s the only alt I even feel comfortable holding lately because the Dev team is committed and they actually have a great plan here. I hope they continue on and overcome their challenges. Bitcoin needs real competition.

  • mbranton

    This isn’t a good idea, a big idea, nor is this real competition. Statements around block confirmation time as being a defining factor are at the very least misleading, and ultimately just inaccurate. Blockchain protocols with low confirmation times result in much more frequent chain reorganization and put undue processing on the network nodes in terms of memory and bandwidth. A blockchain reorg is worse than a “slow” confirmation in that it potentially rolls back and delays transactions that were previously thought to be good. Bitcoin has been slow to adopt alternative protocol implementations, but all of the pieces are there, and it already has a significant market cap and highly secure network. The developers have made limited concessions that dramatically increase the utility of the network.

  • http://www.dogecoin.com/ Dogecoin

    Pump and (will) Dump (soon)