What is Aeon?
Aeon is a privacy coin designed to be focused on the user’s privacy when transacting. Aeon resulted as a fork of Monero, aiming to be a “lite” version of the coin, similar to how Litecoin is the lighter version of Bitcoin.
The developers behind Aeon created the coin to be used primarily via the mobile app, and even be mined through mobile devices.
Aeon vs Monero
Aeon was forked from the CryptoNote protocol on which several privacy coins are based on, including Monero. Seeing as they share the same underlying protocol, both coins present many similar features – ring signatures, one-time keys, blockchain analysis resistance.
Ring signatures make transactions untraceable. A ring signature represents a set of public keys linked to each transaction. But even with ring signatures, someone could still watch your public address to see all incoming transactions. One-time keys are the solution to this problem. To generate a common, one-time key, the sender mixes the receiver’s public address with a random bit of data. Afterward, the public part of the key is created by the sender, while the receiver is the only person able to calculate the private part, which grants him access to release the funds.
The last important advantage that both of the cryptos have is their resistance to blockchain analysis, making it virtually impossible to follow the correct transaction.
Even though they have much in common, the two coins do have some critical differences. As we mentioned before, Aeon is striving towards lightweight usability.
It employs a Proof-of-Work algorithm called CryptoNight-Lite, which verifies the blockchain faster than Monero. Furthermore, the network has a four-minute block time compared to Monero’s two –minute block time.
Aeon Team & progress
On June 6th, 2014, an anonymous developer launched Aeon, as a fork of Monero. Currently, a developer going by the pseudonym “smooth” is the head of the project, but anyone is able to make contributions to the project. No public roadmap is currently available, but you can follow the coin’s development on their thread on Bitcointalk forums.
Price Analysis
The AEON price was relatively flat for the first year of its existence. The coin experienced its first significant price growth at the end of July 2017 where it reached a local high of about $0.95. The next spike occurred in October 2017 with $2.88.
Aeon then mirrored the rest of the market during the end of 2017 which saw sharp increases. It reached its all-time high in January 2018 with $8.99 (0.000587 BTC). The price then corrected itself in the same month, going below half of its value. In February it managed to go over the $4 mark, but most of the month it hovered around $3.
The next months the coin has gone a descending slope, with some rises here and there, but nothing too significant.
The AEON coin is currently trading at $ 0.303470, with a market cap of $4,804,368.
Where to buy AEON
AEON can either be mined or purchased on the exchanges that offer support for it. The coin is available on very few exchanges. According to CoinMarketCap, the only exchanges available are Bittrex, TradeOgre, and HitBTC. Unfortunately, you do not have many trading pairs or fiat deposits through which you can acquire this coin, as the only option is to convert Bitcoin to purchase AEON.
Where to store AEON
AEON coins should be stored using the Sophia client which was created by the development team. It runs on devices that have Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
There are also several wallets that have been created by community members, but you should be cautious when using these as they are not endorsed by the official development team. If you have the necessary knowledge to review the wallet’s code (or have someone review it for you) you should do so in order to verify if the code works correctly.
Conclusion
Although AEON aims to be the lighter, faster version of Monero, the former coin has not caught on as much as other privacy-focused coins.
