whitepaper

“Bitcoin” [1] has been a successful implementation of the concept of p2p electronic cash. Both professionals and the general public have come to appreciate the convenient combination of public transactions and proof-of-work as a trust model. Today, the user base of electronic cash is growing at a steady pace; customers are attracted to low fees and the anonymity provided by electronic cash and merchants value its predicted and decentralized emission. Bitcoin has effectively proved that electronic cash can be as simple as paper money and as convenient as credit cards. Unfortunately, Bitcoin suffers from several deficiencies. For example, the system’s distributed nature is inflexible, preventing the implementation of new features until almost all of the network users update their clients. Some critical flaws that cannot be fixed rapidly deter Bitcoin’s widespread propagation. In such inflexible models, it is more efficient to roll-out a new project rather than perpetually fix the original project. In this paper, we study and propose solutions to the main deficiencies of Bitcoin. We believe that a system taking into account the solutions we propose will lead to a healthy competition among different electronic cash systems. We also propose our own electronic cash, “CryptoNote”, a name emphasizing the next breakthrough in electronic cash.