Verus is the name of a decentralized digital currency coin which I have recently discovered.

The aim of this article is to explain what Verus is, yet at the same time, trying to avoid being too technical -  I would really like people to embrace this coin rather than get frightened away by too much technical talk.   For those who wish to investigate and dig deeper into the more technical side of the information, I will supply links at the end.

Verus is a unique privacy coin and to quote directly from the abstract part of their vision paper:
“The Verus Project aims to establish a secure, privacy-centric, fairly-distributed cryptocurrency. But, beyond this currency, Verus seeks to become much more than a zero-knowledge privacy coin, one with two completely new highly-decentralizing proof of work and proof of stake algorithms” 

 

                             

A look at privacy

Verus uses zk-SNARKS, which is a type of cryptography used on the Zcash blockchain.     In case you are wondering, zk-SNARK stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge.  By using zk-SNARKS, transaction information is completely encrypted using it’s unique proof of construction algorithm (zk-SNARK), on the Zcash blockchain.  This will provide us with much greater anonymity.     Many people may say that a blockchain such as Bitcoin is private, but it is not truly private.  The transaction records are held on an immutable ledger that can be interrogated.    With zk-SNARKS we get shielded transactions allowing transaction validation while keeping all inputs private.    

Verus uses Proof of Work, Proof of Stake and the Komodo’s Delegated Proof of Work algorithm which keeps it secure and almost impossible for 51% attacks to occur. 

                               

Defence against centralization from ASICS

Verus use their own hashing algorithm called VerusHash.  It is a new algorithm which is highly optimized for CPUs.

The developers say that at the current time, they do not have ASICs and they don't expect to, until the economics of the coin drive that development.  However, If and when there are ASICs developed specifically for VerusHash, it will be the intention to make an open source hardware design that will be available to the community.  This will prevent centralization by making ASICs easily and affordably available to anyone, not just one or two large companies and wealthy customers.

The Verus developers say that they currently do not know of an algorithm that is truly ASIC resistant but their approach gives a fresh start to zk-SNARK privacy and is the most sensible method to dealing with the centralizing nature of ASICs today.

So what is an ASIC?

In case you are wondering, certain manufacturers have created custom hardware circuits to mine specific types of digital coin.  ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit and these circuits can be found in abundance within our everyday lives.  Your washing machine probably has an ASIC, a small integrated circuit designed to do a specific job of controlling your machine.  So when a crypto coin is available to mine such as Bitcoin, hardware manufacturers create ASICs that are optimized to run as a mining rig and will totally out-perform any general or even  high powered system such as a laptop or desktop PC.  
ASIC-resistant simply means that there is no advantage compared to a standard CPU system in building a specific circuit for mining the crypto currency as it would require a great deal of memory to be used on the ASIC and in turn require too much physical area on the ASIC to be viable as an efficient mining device.  

So this currently makes the Verus coin perfect for mining with a standard CPU.  I am actually using my laptop to type this article and I’m also mining in the background at the same time. Yes, it took me a few days but I gained some Verus coins which need to run to maturity.

                             

Facts about the Verus Coin

The Verus coin was launched mid May 2018, is a hybrid Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS)  fork of the Komodo coin.

I use the Komodo graphical wallet to hold, stake and also mine Verus coins.  I have also since used the Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) on another of my systems.   At time of writing, there are currently no pools, so any mining is yours to keep and use once the time locked rewards are released.  


Coin stats.

Name:  Verus - VRSC
Max Supply: 83,540,184
Algorithm: VerusHash PoW/PoS – 50/50 + DPoW
Block time: 1 minute

Getting started - Holding and Mining the Verus coin

In the future, I see Verus being used as a preferable digital privacy currency as much as any other popular privacy coin.  If I could look into a crystal ball, then I see a great future with Verus (VRSC) fast becoming a top 100 coin.  VRSC is already trading on the DigitalPrice Exchange https://digitalprice.io  but it is possible for anyone to grab some coins by mining them and the more people mining the more widespread and valuable it will become.
 
The great thing is that mining can take place on standard equipment as opposed to specific, dedicated expensive hardware as mentioned above.  Obviously the higher Spec. CPU systems will stand the best chance to mine blocks the fastest but as I have already said, I have successfully mined coins on my laptop whilst using it for everyday tasks including watching videos and listening to music!  

To get started, you need to head on over to the official website: https://veruscoin.io (Please do take care to use the correct address and make sure you can see the green padlock symbol at the start of the Web address and by all means check that the SSL Server Certificate is valid and current)

Once on the main Web page, you will see the Download section that will lead you to the latest version of the Agama Wallet software compatible with your own system.  
It is worth noting that you should currently only download the Agama wallet from https://veruscoin.io  because the Verus team has enhanced these wallet installations to add Verus support.  The Agama wallet also supports other Komodo coins.

Whilst you are here, you really should take a good look around the website including the very informative white paper and why not also subscribe to their newsletter!  

At the moment, new releases for download are coming out often which highlights the active and on-going support.  There is also a growing and active community which is of course the whole point of the Verus project.

Once you have downloaded the your wallet software, it is simply a case of starting the Agama Wallet (in the case of the GUI download) and then selecting the Verus coin, setting up a few options and get mining!.  
To be honest, I managed this in a few minutes with the help of a guide that is available on ‘Bitcointalk’.  The link can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4070404.0
Basically, there are about five lines of instructions that got me up and running.  There are also YouTubers you can search for who show the setting up part in action.


The System requirements

64bit CPU/OS, CPU with AES-NI and AVXinstructions

Windows, Linux (Ubuntu tested) 

Mac High Sierra. 4GB Memory

                             

The people behind Verus

It is important to point out that Verus is a community project, so you wont find a CEO or co-founder anywhere,  however there are currently five developers listed on the main Web page.  
Michael J Toutonghi is the Lead Developer who has a wealth of experience, including being a Former Vice President and Technical Fellow at Microsoft.  Michael is also a recognized founder and architect of Microsoft's .Net platform,  ex-Technical Fellow of Microsoft's advertising platform, ex-CTO, Parallels Corporation, experienced distributed computing and machine learning architect.

There are four other developers, including the lead developer of Komodo.  Michael’s son who is a University Computer Science Student, is also a developer and has made some mining and usability improvements as well as making a significant contribution to the very informative Verus white paper.   With all their skills and experience, the team’s ‘about’ info is impressive and well worth looking at especially because ‘you’ are also included amongst them!   

In summary,  Verus is planning to create a platform upon which to build voting and even election systems that support their vision of enabling a better society through blockchain.

A major recent news announcement highlighted a breakthrough which saw the latest software release give an astonishing 20 times the hashing power over the previous release. This, as far as we know, has resulted in Verushash being the fastest hash algorithm running on a CPU in the world!  


Verus the new, mineable privacy coin looks like a total winner and the sooner you find out more and get on board the better.  If you want more information then please check out the following links:

Verus Website:  https://veruscoin.io/
Discord Channel:  https://discordapp.com/invite/VRKMP2S
BitcoinTalk Info:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4070404.0
GitHub:  https://github.com/veruscoin/veruscoin
Current Exchange:  https://digitalprice.io/order?url=dal-btc

                              

Andrew Willis, 12th July 2018