Ravencoin enables users to create and trade any real-world (e.g. commodities) or digital (e.g. virtual goods) assets on a network. The core developers launched Ravencoin on 3 Jan 2018. The project has some prominent backers: Bruce Fenton, Board Member of The Bitcoin Foundation, advises the team while Overstock has made a multi-million dollar investment into the project.
Ravencoin (RVN) is a mineable cryptocurrency built specifically for transferring assets from one party to another. Think of it as a blockchain designed to let users create and move digital representations of real-world items — tokens, for example — in a simple, straightforward way. It launched as a fork of Bitcoin's code with its own independent network and no pre-mine or ICO.
Ravencoin is a proof-of-work blockchain focused on issuing and transferring custom assets, not just payments. It started as a fork of Bitcoin's code but uses a different mining algorithm called KawPow, which is ASIC-resistant and favors regular GPUs. The core idea: while Bitcoin is digital money, Ravencoin is a platform for tokenizing assets.
Ravencoin uses proof-of-work mining with the KawPow algorithm, chosen to keep mining decentralized and accessible to people with consumer graphics cards. Miners validate transactions and secure the network, and blocks are produced roughly every minute. There was no pre-mine, ICO, or founder allocation — coins are only earned through mining.
RVN has a hard cap of 21,000,000,000 coins — ten times Bitcoin's supply, reflecting its faster block times. New coins enter circulation solely through block rewards, which halve periodically, similar to Bitcoin's model. Once the cap is reached, no additional RVN can ever be created.
RVN can be stored in the official Ravencoin desktop wallet from ravencoin.org, as well as in third-party wallets that support the coin. Beyond holding and transferring RVN, users can burn a small amount of it to create their own named assets on the network. As with any cryptocurrency, keep your private keys and seed phrase safe and offline where possible.