Early Examples of Altcoins

 The earliest notable altcoin, Namecoin, was supported by the Bitcoin code and used an equivalent proof-of-work algorithm. Like Bitcoin, Namecoin is restricted to 21 million coins. Introduced in April 2011, Namecoin primarily diverged from Bitcoin by making user domains less visible. Namecoin allowed users to register and mine using their own .bit domains, which was intended to extend anonymity and censorship resistance.


Introduced in October 2011, Litecoin was branded because of the "silver to Bitcoin's gold." While fundamentally similar in code and functionality to Bitcoin, Litecoin differs from Bitcoin in several essential ways. It allows mining transactions to be approved more frequently. It also provides for a complete of 84 million coins to be created—exactly fourfold Bitcoin's 21 million coin limit.

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