What Is Electroneum?
Electroneum is a mobile-first cryptocurrency aimed at mass adoption. The Electroneum team makes acquiring cryptocurrency as simple as downloading an app. By breaking down the barriers around acquiring it, the Electroneum team believes they can spread their coin far and wide.
How Does Electroneum Work?
Electroneum, also referred to as ETN, is built off the Monero codebase to allow for transactions on a decentralized blockchain. Like Monero, Electroneum has some built-in privacy features. One of the main criticisms of Bitcoin is that the balance of every wallet address is public and easily searchable. This problem is solved with Electroneum’s stealth address, a one-time public key that “prevents recipient’s funds from being linked with their wallet. That address can be audited by a 3rd party to prove the transaction occurred (with the sender sharing their public view key).
The recipient gets their funds through their wallet’s private view key which scans the blockchain. Once detected and retrieved by the wallet, a single-use private key is created (corresponding with senders public key).
The recipient can now spend those funds using their private spend key. This occurs without the sender, recipient, nor the amount transacted publicly linked. If you’d like to read more about the privacy technology behind Monero and Electroneum, we suggest our Monero guide here.
Transactions are relatively fast with dynamic fees based on the level of traffic on the network. You can check out the recent blocks here. The vast majority of transactions have less than 0.2 ETN in total fees and new blocks are added every minute or so.
The Electroneum codebase tries to avoid powerful ASICs having a huge advantage over CPU miners. The mining utilizes a memory bound algorithm to try and encourage CPU mining, giving average users easy access to ETN. The ability to give everyone access to this coin will be a recurring theme throughout this guide.
Mobile App
Electroneum’s greatest differentiator is using a mobile app to bring in new users. It’s already available both for Android and iOS.
The app provides access to a digital wallet and the ability to send and receive ETN. For extra security, you also have the option to create offline paper wallets. It’s recommended you spread your coins out across several paper wallets in case you lose one.
The app incentivizes you to share your knowledge of Electroneum with the world. Anyone who invites five friends to join the app is entered into a contest to win 5000 ETN. The new users you invite are also eligible to win. Use this code 4CD549
Mobile Mining
The most interesting feature is the ability to perform mobile mining. The app will allow your phone’s CPU to engage in simulated mining. This doesn’t cause your phone to heat up or lose significant battery life. The mining also uses a negligible amount of your internet data. Though your mobile mining won’t actually help confirm new blocks on the blockchain, you’ll still receive rewards.
The app requires the use of your CPU to teach you about the connection between the power of your computer and the ability to mine. Eventually, they hope to convert some of the mobile miners to full miners on a computer. Using the phone’s CPU also prevents people from simulating thousands of iterations of the app on a computer to receive free coins.
But why pay people to do virtual mining? “The mobile miners bring the utility of viral marketing to Electroneum. It’s important to remember they aren’t bringing blockchain utility, they’re bringing a different utility – they’re bringing on users at a ridiculously low CPA and allowing Electroneum to have viral growth.”
The app now has 1.5 million registered users on Android and iOS and continue to grow.
Electroneum Mining
As mentioned previously, due to the ASIC resistant nature of the Electroneum mining algorithm, it’s still feasible to mine coins with just your CPU. You can complete a quick download and join a mining pool right away here. The average block reward is about 9,500 ETN.
Where Can You Store Electroneum?
You can find the Electroneum Wallet Manager here.
Through the wallet manager, you can set up online or offline wallets. The online wallet you register is accessible through the app using your same login details. You can follow this detailed guide from the team on how to create, store and secure your offline wallet.
Conclusion
If you are new to crypto and don’t like the hassle of registering with exchanges, then downloading the Electroneum app and trying to win free coins may be your best entry into this world. Furthermore, if loud, expensive ASICs intimidate you, then check out the Electroneum CPU mining solution. Even though Electroneum is named after the electron, it’s hard to be negative about its future.
