Verge cryptocurrency (XVG) is one of the representatives of the subspecies of altcoins (along with Dash, Monero, Zcash), designed to provide users with maximum reliability and anonymity of transactions. It is a decentralized open-source blockchain system, which is why anyone can join the development of the network.
A year ago, the Verger coin was quite inconspicuous against the background of a wide variety of other coins. However, over the past time, this virtual asset has been able to attract close attention from the crypto community, and has given good profits to investors who invested in it. In the future, Verge may seriously compete with Bitcoin as a means of payment.
What ideas are being implemented in the project?
A new blockchain system appeared in October 2014 under the name DogeCoinDark as an alternative to the existing cryptocurrencies. At first, the developers did not have any far-reaching plans, and the new token was intended as a joke. However, plans later changed. As a result of rebranding in February 2016, the crypto asset received a new name Verge.
The main purpose of the blockchain system is to make payments with cryptoassets between people and in business convenient for everyday use. At the same time, great emphasis is placed on the security and anonymity of transactions so that transfers cannot be tracked. This ensures the confidentiality of personal data. The ease of use of Verda is also achieved by the speed of transactions. On average, one transfer of funds within the system currently takes up to 5 seconds.
Interesting. In 2022, the throughput of the Verge blockchain was 100 transactions per second. The project team’s plans include the implementation of the developed LTCP transaction compression technology from the startup Rootstock. This mechanism already allows you to make 400 transfers per second, and in the future this figure should increase to 2000. For comparison, in 2016 PayPal carried out 193 transactions per second, and Visa – 1667.
Verge cryptocurrency is created on the basis of a decentralized open source platform, so new developers can join it to improve it. This project does not depend on any government agency and does not have centralized investors who can influence the development of the system and carry out manipulations in the market. Thanks to this feature, the crypto asset is of interest to many investors.
What did the value of the XVG cryptocurrency depend on?
From 2014 to 2022 Verge cryptocurrency was worth only $0.000006. Verge's market capitalization was just over twenty thousand dollars. Such modest amounts were due to the extremely leisurely development of the project, the constant replacement of programmers, problems with the official website, searching for investments and raising funds to enter the market.
The value of the Verge cryptocurrency began to increase only in October 2017. The creators invested their own funds in capitalizing the project, and also found several large investors. In addition, ordinary users donated their money by transferring funds through the Donate section on the official Verge website. The largest exchanges Binance and Bittrex also became interested in the XVG cryptocurrency.
However, the main reason for the success was the use of this cryptocurrency. To date, more than eighty Internet resources (electronic payment systems, TV channels, IT services, online stores, etc.) have implemented Verge blockchain technologies and began accepting its coins as payment. A complete list of resources supporting the Verge cryptocurrency is posted on the project’s official website in the Vendors tab.
At the end of 2022, Verge's market capitalization exceeded $600 million, and the cost of one coin became equal to fifteen cents. The creators of the project owe such a sharp rise in popularity to businessman John McAfee, who published a post on Twitter about the three most promising cryptocurrencies, among which was Verge.
Some of McAfee's followers initially regarded his statement as a joke. Like, probably such a successful and busy person was too immersed in the world of cryptocurrencies and simply mixed up the names. How else could one explain the presence of the little-known and extremely cheap XVG in the list of “the most promising cryptocurrencies”? However, McAfee dispelled all doubts, calling Verge the best option for investors. This statement quickly spread across the network, which helped the XVG cryptocurrency gain additional popularity.
At the beginning of 2022, the rate of the Verge cryptocurrency dropped to 10 cents, and a couple of months later its value dropped to 4 cents. According to experts, this happened due to serious competition in the market, which does not allow Verge to fully develop. Thus, the ZCash cryptocurrency not only costs about $650 per coin, but also has the support of traders. However, already in April the cost of XVG began to return to its previous values.
Recently, the developers have entered into several contracts with large companies like UQUID, which have launched the issuance of debit cards with XVG support. The electronic payment system TokenPay has also become interested in cryptocurrency and the issuance of cards for its use. Amazon is likely to join these companies soon. The creators of Verge have so far refused to comment on this matter, but hint at other interesting news related to their project.
All this contributed to an increase in the price of XVG to 8 cents. The market capitalization of the Verge cryptocurrency today is $1.2 billion, which allowed it to get into twentieth place in the Coinmarketcap ranking. Thus, Verge managed to seriously overtake ZCash, whose capitalization is only $650 million.
Development team
Initially, the new blockchain was created by crypto community enthusiasts who wanted to improve the Bitcoin blockchain. Verd did not have a centralized team gathering, and the unification of people to create a new system took place on Internet resources.
The main developers of Verda, as indicated in the Blackpaper, are users under the logins Sunerok, Gfranko, CryptoRekt. There is no detailed information about these people on the Internet. In addition to them, another 25 people who took part in the development of the project are indicated. Developer interaction takes place in the GitHub repository. Project participants invite all talented people who want to contribute to the development of the cryptosystem to this resource.
Figure 1. Project team
Verge did not have an ICO. The development of the cryptosystem occurs at the expense of the developers themselves. Unlike most new startups, the project team did not initially receive a certain amount of coins. Its members, on a common basis, together with other users, purchase XVG coins on exchanges or receive them as a result of mining.
As a source of financing, it is proposed to create special projects like mining multipools, so that part of the funds received can be directed to developers for further development.
Technologies used
As already indicated, the Bitcoin blockchain was taken as the basis of the cryptosystem. Despite the principles of decentralization that were used in its creation, Bitcoin has a certain disadvantage. It is due to the fact that most of the ecosystem consists of companies and Internet services that use vulnerable computer networks. As a result, personal data can become available to anyone.
To ensure personal confidentiality and anonymity of money transfers, TOR and i2P tools were integrated into the Bitcoin blockchain. Thanks to this multi-layer design, it becomes impossible to track the user’s IP address and location.
For high speed of money transfers, the Verge blockchain uses SPV (“simple payment verification”) technology. Due to this, money transfer within the system can be made in 5 seconds.
Verge Key Features Overview
The creators of Verge placed the main emphasis on ensuring anonymous connection of users to the network in order to solve the problem of privacy.
The Internet itself is quite simple. An Internet service provider (ISP) or other intermediary is required to facilitate the transfer of information between computers. When sending data, the ISP needs to know the unique identifier of the sender and recipient (IP address).
This is normal for normal internet traffic, but is not anonymous. Over time, the Internet service provider accumulates a large database of IP addresses that a specific user is connected to. This happens because in most cases, registering with an Internet provider results in a specific IP address being assigned to the user’s identity. This leads to numerous anonymity and privacy issues.
To avoid this, Verge uses two technologies for anonymous connection - Tor and I2P.
Tor
Tor is a well-known IP address anonymization scheme. This is an acronym for The Onion Router. This approach allows you to wrap the transmitted data in several layers of encryption. Instead of routing an Internet connection through a single ISP, Tor provides connections through numerous relay computers (nodes) in a Tor-peer-to-peer network.
This causes the IP address to change multiple times and makes it difficult to trace the original sender. Using Tor means that not a single node on the network knows the entire route that a particular message will take. As a result, it becomes anonymous and untraceable. The path of message transfer connections is determined by the directory service.
Tor is a unique peer-to-peer network. Each participant when using Tor acts as a relay node for other messages circulating on the network.
I2P
The next generation of connection anonymization solutions is called I2P. Although Tor provides directory-based routing, I2P allows for dynamic routing of information packets. I2P does not use a directory, so the flexible network routing it creates allows you to avoid congestion and network failures.
I2P also splits routing into two separate tunnels: outbound and inbound. Messages sent to another computer or website are transmitted along one path, and the response information arrives through another channel. Even in the event of potential data interception, the attacker will only have access to half of the message history and will not be able to determine who exactly the user is communicating with.
Tor was created as a portal for anonymous access to the regular Internet. I2P, in turn, provides a much more reliable communication option, which leads to the creation of a private network on the Internet. I2P is a real darknet (“dark network”) that uses applications specially developed for it.
Verge users have the option to route transactions via Tor or I2P, but IP anonymity is standard operating procedure for Verge.
Description of the Wraith protocol
The Wraith protocol allows users to choose between public and private transaction chains. Public transactions can be tracked freely and are carried out at the same high speed. Private transactions cannot be viewed or tracked.
The Verge network is planned to perform private transactions using hidden addresses via Tor technology. These “stealth” addresses send funds to the user’s disposable addresses. Only a specific recipient can have access to funds sent to a hidden address. This type of address is an important component of many other cryptocurrencies, such as Monero. However, this coin uses more complex cryptography and other features to ensure privacy.
Directed Acyclic Graph is based on elliptic curves and is considered a highly reliable technology in the field of security and privacy. This technology is a key part of the Bitcoin blockchain, and Verge uses part of the network of the world's first cryptocurrency. This element is known as the Diffie Hellman elliptic curve. It allows participants on the network to share and agree on keys and transaction signatures to establish a secure connection and transfer of funds or data.
Tor integration
Tor is a network of proxy servers that ensures the anonymity of a network connection. Tor forwards traffic encrypted through a group of virtual tunnels. It includes over 7 thousand nodes. At the same time, the user’s location is hidden and the security of his personal data and anonymity of communication are ensured.
Tor routing is supported by application-level encryption in the communications protocol stack. Data encoding, including IP addresses of subsequent network nodes, occurs several times. Next, the resulting code is transmitted through a virtual network of so-called mirror nodes, determined randomly. In each of these nodes, only the data that makes it clear where and where to send the code next is decrypted. Then the data is encrypted again and sent over the network. The last node decrypts the inner layer and sends the original data to the recipient without revealing the sender's address.
Figure 2. Tor transaction sequence
This sequence of hops between Tor network nodes (occurs every 10 minutes), which uses information encryption, allows you to hide the connection between the sender and the recipient. To establish such a connection, it is necessary to know the source and destination points of data delivery.
Integration with i2P
The bottleneck of Tor as an anonymity tool is that it uses a centralized set of directory services. To solve this problem, integration with the i2P service was carried out. It also has a tunnel structure. The anonymity of all data in the Verge blockchain is ensured by the ipv6 tool.
Each user has his own IP2 router. It consists of a system of incoming and outgoing tunnels. Information is transferred only in one direction (to or from the user). In the Verge blockchain, data is transmitted by message through one of the outgoing tunnels.
To maintain network operation, i2P uses 2 distributed hash tables DHTs. Through them, hash values are linked to the content. The advantage of DHTs is the ability to scale, which ensures high-quality operation of the decentralized P2P network, increasing traffic and the number of transactions.
Network paths in i2P are created and updated dynamically. Each router compares information with other nodes. Unlike Tor, which uses a single duplex circuit to transmit traffic, i2P uses 2 independent simplex tunnels for traffic. A hop between i2P nodes occurs every 14 seconds.
Figure 3. i2P transaction sequence
How to mine XVG
Verge is mined using the]Proof-of-Work (POW)[/anchor] algorithm. 5 mining algorithms are immediately available to Internet users: blakes2, Lyra2rev2, X17, myr-groestl, Scrypt. It is one of the few cryptosystems that supports so many hash functions on a single blockchain. This approach increases security and makes the XVG coin more accessible to all those who want to mine it.
Interesting. The total emission of the cryptosystem is about 16.5 billion coins. At the time of writing, almost 14.7 billion tokens have been mined. Creating a new block using any of the algorithms takes approximately 30 seconds. The block includes 12.5 thousand coins. The difficulty of mining is affected only by the hashrate of a particular pool. This approach to mining allows you to protect the system from “51% attacks.”
About mining
As noted above, the cryptocurrency is based on the Scrypt algorithm. Miners receive 12,500 coins as a reward . The developers believe that in this way, in 8–10 years the supply of coins will be exhausted.
You can mine cryptocurrency either independently or in pools. Today there are several similar networks for joint mining. How profitable is it to mine Verge (XVG) cryptocurrency? Over time, the complexity of the network increases. Therefore, users have to update their equipment. Before you start mining new blocks on the network, it is advisable to turn to specialized calculator services where you can calculate the profitability.
Results for 2022
Last July, the project team presented its roadmap to the crypto community. It outlined plans for the next six months.
Figure 4. Blackpaper Verge for 2022
Over the past time, users have been offered a variety of Verge wallets for various operating systems and devices. See below for more details.
It was previously noted that one of the stated goals of the project is to make cryptocurrency transfers accessible for everyday use. In this regard, tools for making P2P transfers within social networks such as Twitter, Reddit, Discord, IRC, Slack, Steam, as well as for the Telegram messenger, were brought to the market. Any user of these resources can easily transfer funds to another person’s account safely for their personal data.
At the end of the year, the launch of the Verge Core 4.0 wallet with support for the Wraith protocol was announced. This tool will make payments within the blockchain system even more secure. The implementation of this mechanism in the Verge system is at the final testing stage.
Online stores and specialized resources are connected to the Verge system to receive payment. In particular, on December 24 it became known that the oVPN anonymizer accepts payment for its services in XVG. You can also pay with this coin on the resource for selling mining equipment Ethereum Miners, on the website for hosting services Snel, and on the educational resource Advisor Prep. A complete list of stores and services that accept payment in XVG coins can be found here.
Verge Messaging System
Verga also includes messaging options. You can send XVG via Telegram, Discord, Twitter or IRC using only your username. The bot will process the transaction and place the funds at a special address where the coins will be temporarily frozen. It will then send a message to the recipient with instructions on how to claim these funds.
Verge is not the only cryptocurrency that provides messaging capabilities when making payments. However, its creators have taken a big step forward, using the accumulated user experience and focusing on ease of use.
Coin wallets
Over the past 6 months, the Verda team has presented a wide variety of electronic wallets, including those with support for Tor and i2P resources. Here you can find wallets for both desktop computers (Windows, Linux, Mac) and mobile devices with iOS and Android operating systems. The full list can be found here. To safely store your XVG assets, it is recommended to use Electrum cold wallets.
Figure 5. Verge wallets
Where are XVG coins sold?
You can purchase Verge coins on the cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Bittrex, Cryptopia, HitBTC. Basically on all exchanges as of January 20, 2022, XVG is traded in pairs with BTC at an average rate of 0.00000866.
Figure 6. Historical XVG price chart
There is currently no option to purchase a coin directly for rubles. If you want to add this coin to your investment portfolio, you will first have to purchase Bitcoin. This can be done on the Exmo, Livecoin exchanges or through the monitoring service for electronic exchangers Bestchange.
Interesting. On December 1 last year, the coin's value was $0.005889. The maximum price after a sharp rise was recorded on December 24 at $0.252633. In just 2 weeks, the owners of this coin increased their assets by almost 43 times. The current price is almost 11 cents.
As an alternative, you can buy a coin for altcoins on the cryptocurrency resource Coin Switch. There are more than 100 direct exchange options available to buyers here.
Where to buy Verge cryptocurrency
The coin is offered on all leading exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, Upbit, HitBTC, YoBit and others. Some sites where XVG is traded do not offer fiat money for deposit. Therefore, users will have to turn to either the services of intermediary exchanges or exchange services.
How to buy Verge cryptocurrency? To do this, you need to create a wallet for storage, as well as register on one of the exchanges. After this, you can open transactions and buy coins. The cryptocurrency has quite high liquidity compared to its competitors.
Prospects for cryptocurrency
Verge cryptocurrency forecasts from various experts, including John McAfee, indicate good prospects for this asset. The coin gained recognition in the second half of last year, when problems with the scalability of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains became apparent. Fast transactions with minimal commissions have become a good alternative to the most popular cryptocurrencies. In addition, the Verge blockchain allows for money transfers while preserving the user’s personal data. This anonymity has a positive effect on the popularization of the asset due to the desire of some states to regulate the cryptocurrency market. Therefore, cryptocurrency has great growth prospects. You can invest in it for the medium and long term.
You can find out more about the Verge cryptocurrency in the following video:
XVG Forecast for 2022
Speaking about the value of the asset, it is noted that recently the news has not been the best. This is due to the general decline of the cryptocurrency market, which will last for who knows how long. According to expert forecasts, if Bitcoin and other altcoins grow, then with a high degree of probability other coins will “pull” Verge along with them. The prospects for the coin are quite good due to its focus on privacy. With “pressure” on anonymity from regulators, interest in the Verge cryptocurrency is only increasing.
