What is Aeon (AEON)? | Beginner's Guide

What is Aeon?

Aeon is a light and mobile-friendly currency for privacy. Similar to the way Litecoin is a lighter Bitcoin supplement, you can watch Aeon as Monero's younger brother.

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The Monero community is entirely focused on privacy and anonymity for the end user. This focus has its advantages, but has meant that the currency remained behind from an usability point of view. Aeon is based on Monero's hash CryptoNote while adding some lightweight features.

In this guide for beginners of Eone, we explain:

Aeon vs. Monero

Aeon aims to be Monero-lite. Both cryptocurrencies use the CryptoNote protocol, a base of several private currencies. Because they share the same underlying protocol, both coins also have many similar characteristics: ring signatures, single-use keys, resistance to blockchain analysis.

using ring signature, transactions can not be tracked. A ring signature is actually a group of public keys related to each transaction.

Typical transactions only have a public key from the sender, so it's easy to track. The ring signature transactions, on the other hand, take the sender's public key and merge it into a group of other public keys on the network. Therefore, it is only possible to determine that one of these addresses initiated the transaction but can not verify which one did exactly.

Even with ring signatures, someone could still see your public address to see all incoming transactions. One-time keys solve this problem. To produce a common one-off key, the sender combines the recipient's public address with a random bit of data. Then, the sender creates the public part of the key, while the receiver is the only person able to calculate the private part, giving him access to unlock the funds.

The last significant advantage shared by both cryptos is their resistance to blockchain analysis. Transactions on a public ledger have become relatively simple to track. Several studies have shown that even Bitcoin, with its pseudo-anonymity, is not as private as we once thought. Trying to follow a CryptoNote transaction, however, is like drawing a family tree in which the branches become exponentially more numerous and intertwine with one another. It is almost impossible to follow the correct path to the end.

The differences

Although they share the same base as CryptoNote, there are some critical differences between Aeon and Monero. As stated above, beyond anonymity, the Aeon community is working towards light usability.

Its Proof-of-Work algorithm, CryptoNight-Lite, Enables a faster blockchain verification than Monero. The platform also has a 1 MB scratchpad, which means that it can be run on mobile devices and traditional computers without losing much efficiency. The use of a complete Monero portfolio, on the other hand, may require an excessive amount of space depending on the computer.

Aeon also prunes the blockchain to help with scalability while Monero does not. In addition, the network has a block time of four minutes compared to two minutes for Monero.

Finally, all Monero transactions are anonymous. Eone transactions are only anonymous by default. You can still disable the privacy feature for lower fees. This difference exemplifies the community's willingness to sacrifice a sense of privacy for a better user experience.

Aeon Team and progress

An anonymous person launched Aeon on June 6, 2014, as a fork of Monero. Now, a developer who follows the pseudonym "smooth" guides the project, but anyone is allowed to contribute. There is no public roadmap. Although it is a relatively small project, Github is active with weekly commits (if not daily).

Aeon is competing with other coins that focus on privacy. However, its closest competitors are projects that also focus on ease of use.

Dash is mainly focused on being "digital money", but it also includes a PrivateSend function that uses the coin mix in transactions to preserve privacy. Another competitor, PIVX, is a fork of Dash that is also building an easy-to-use anonymous currency.

Zcash and Bytecoin are also in the privacy space. Zcash uses zk-SNARKs, a type of zero knowledge encryption, to provide users with privacy. Bytecoin, on the other hand, uses CryptoNote, and is the currency from which Monero originally bifurcated.

Trading

The price of Aeon was relatively flat for the first year of its existence. The currency recorded its first significant price jump at the end of August 2016, when it reached a local maximum of around $ 0.195 (~ 0.000338 BTC). The next peak occurred in September 2017 and was followed by a sharp rise in prices at the end of the same month to reach a bitcoin maximum of ~ 0.000667 BTC. Aeon followed the rest of the market during the 2017 uptrend where it rose to $ 8.99 (0.000587 BTC).

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Because the project has a small market capitalization, it is difficult to determine what caused some of these price movements. Without any perceptible news about the project, it is possible that the coordinated pump and dump efforts have created part of the volatility. As with most cryptocurrencies, Aeon must see an increase in usage to achieve a positive price movement.

Where to buy AEON

You can or mine AEON or buy it on an exchange.

If you're interested in mining, we recommend joining one of the mining pools listed in the Bitcointalk forum of the project.

Your AEON purchase options are limited. Using Bitcoin to buy on Bittrex is the best solution as the stock exchange has the highest trading volume. You can also try TradeOgre or HitBTC, but the volume on these exchanges is minimal.

Check out our guide on how to buy Bitcoin if you're confused about where to start.

Where to keep AEON

You need to store the AEON using the Sophia client provided by the development team. It is available on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Community members have also created different portfolios, but you should be cautious when using them, as the official development team does not approve them. If you can, always review the wallet code (or ask someone to review it for you) to make sure it works properly.

Conclusion

Aeon is the lightest and fastest version of Monero. Although both projects share the same underlying privacy protocol, CryptoNote, Aeon is striving to be more accessible. The project is doing this by implementing a lightweight mining algorithm, smaller blockchain and optional anonymity.

As Monero grows, Aeon could very well grow up with it. While using Monero for transactions where you want to ensure privacy, it is possible that Aeon is a suitable replacement for daily exchanges where guaranteed anonymity is not as important.

Additional resources

Bitcointalk

chirping

Reddit

Github

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