Important ANONymous fork update: ZCL holders get double the rewards

Entering Q4 of this year, ANON is still the project that has most of my attention. By co-forking Bitcoin Core (BTC) and ZClassic (ZCL), Anonymous (ANON) will be created, a privacy coin by definition that will feature masternodes while also being mineable. The team working on the project has listened to its community and at the date of the fork (10th of September), the ZCL holders will receive 2 ANON coins for each ZCL coin instead of the 1 to 1 ratio initially announced. To receive your ANON, you'll need to hold your ZCL in your wallet or on a supporting exchange. So far, Cryptopia and TradeSatoshi have announced their support for the fork, ANON team having submitted applications to each of the top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges. In terms of volume, Cryptopia is the #2 platform for ZCL trading, while TradeSatoshi being the 3rd. ANON testnet is live since the 10th of August so that the exchanges can check the functionality of the code and I expect more exchanges to announce their support in the near future.

Another change to the initial plan is to raise the number of coins needed as collateral to set up a masternode. This measure came logically after the number of ANONs received for each ZCL was doubled. You will now need 500 ANON coins to set up a masternode instead of the 100 initially announced. From an economic standpoint, I think this change is a positive one. The number of masternodes set up from day one will be reduced, which means higher rewards but since you will get 2 ANONs for 1 ZCL, setting up a masternode will still be very accessible for those interested. There is also the possibility of sharing a masternode, which means you can start a masternode with a group of people and split the rewards.

In terms of mining, the hashing algorithm will be modified to become ASIC resistant to favor GPU mining. 65% of the block reward will go to the miners and 35% to the masternode owners. The dual consensus mechanism ANON will use leads to further decentralization, a fast network and increased security against attacks. If you want more details about the coin properties, please read the white paper here.

The team behind the ANON project has been very communicative and very transparent, keeping the community they've built around them up to date. They've met every deadline so far and I expect more of the same on their way to the fork. As we are approaching that date, more and more important announces will be made so I suggest you follow their official twitter account @ANON_WeAreAnon and/or join the telegram channel here.

ANON is a very ambitious project that aims to bring complete anonymity and clear use cases to the crypto space. At this moment, the importance of privacy coins is greatly underestimated and it is my opinion that privacy coins are the future of cryptocurrencies. That being said, I believe ANON will play a huge role down the road in this space.