Merit is a new cryptocurrency that is purpose-built to be used daily by technical and non-technical users alike. Merit believes that a truly human-centered cryptocurrency must be built on three pillars: safety, simplicity, and community. Each of Merits innovative features is driven by one of these core principles.
What makes Merit different? Growth mining (through Proof-Of-Growth), a focus on community stewardship, and a much simpler user experience. Because Merit is invite-only, the blockchain keeps track of how impactful each member has been in growing the community. In addition to rewarding classic security miners, Merit rewards users who increase the networks reach, use, and diversity. We believe that adoption is key to the longevity, viability, and security of any cryptocurrency, and made growth a core design-principle of Merit.
Features
Growth Mining: Merits innovative approach to Proof-of-Growth makes mining a cryptocurrency drastically more approachable to the broader population. Growth Mining rewards users based on their impact in growing the Merit community. These rewards help democratize the distribution of Merit and reward activities that are just as valuable to the security and longevity of Merit as traditional security mining.
Cuckoo Cycle POW: Merit splits block rewards 50/50 between classic PoW security mining and PoG growth mining. Merit's PoW algorithm is the memory-bound, graph-theoretic, Cuckoo Cycle created by John Tromp. The memory-bound approach has a number of interesting advantages, such as lower power-consumption, heat-dissipation, and deep ASIC-resistance.
Aliases: Merits invite-dynamics allow users to create an alias that is stored on the blockchain. Instead of sending to 34-character hexadecimal addresses, you can send Merit to @adil. Its as easy to send Merit as it is to send a DM.
Escrow: The robust MeritLink protocol allows users to send Merit via SMS or email to users who do not even have a Merit Wallet yet. If the recipient doesnt have a wallet, the MRT is stored in escrow on the blockchain for them to access once they are a member of the community. Further, MeritMoney transactions can have expiration dates and an optional password to make them even more secure. This gives users the peace-of-mind of knowing that they send their Merit to the right person and that only that person will be able to unlock the money. And it is easily re-claimed when the expiration date is reached.
One-Click Mining: Security mining shouldnt be restricted to technically advanced users. We built one-click mining directly into our lightwallets so that anyone who joins Merit can help secure the network. The Merit desktop lightwallet even automatically detects the GPUs on your machine and lets you select which ones to mine with.
Invites: Merit is an invite-only network, which drives security and stewardship advantages. This invite-only dynamic enforces referential integrity for Proof-of-Growth, and also helps to make Merit indestructible. Merit does this without promoting spammy behavior because Merit Invite Tokens are scarce, so users are best served by being thoughtful about who they bring into the network. Get An Invite
Cancellable Transactions: The robust MeritMoney protocol also solves one of the most widespread problems in the history of commerce: human error. Accidentally send the wrong amount of Merit to someone? Or accidentally key in the wrong address? These are everyday occurrences for most of us and, and are handled elegantly with Merit. Merits escrow links can be cancelled up until the point where the transaction has been accepted by the recipient.
Indestructible: You cannot burn or destroy Merit by sending it to an address that does not belong to another user. Because Proof-of-Growth Aliases, and Invite Tokens, an address must be beaconed to the network and must receive an invite token before becoming fully valid. This empowers peers on the network to refuse any transaction that is sent to an address that does not actually belong to someone.
Vaults: Merit vaults add multiple layers of protection without sacrificing decentralization or forcing a user to understand and use cold storage. Vaults utilize purpose-specific keys, whitelists and rate-limiting to help keep your MRT safe. These features are enforced at the protocol-level, not by a central party. Soon, Vaults will even include decentralized key recovery through Merits upcoming Guardian feature.
Further advantages and features can be found on the Why Merit section of the website.
Technical Founders; 20-year Friendship; Successful Track Record! Adil Wali is a successful serial entrepreneur who has started 3 venture-backed companies in eCommerce, including ModCloth, which was a $150M+ fashion retailer.
Maxim Khailo led the machine learning team at HERE that took imagery and footage and turned it into metadata on maps. He is also the creator of the powerfully decentralized FireStar project.
Merit has done no significant paid marketing to-date, nor has it done an airdrop. Merit has grown entirely organically through community stewardship.
This is a visualization snapshot of the Merit network today:
This is a graph of wallet growth on the Merit Network:
More details on the growth rate and PoG iteration can be found in this recent blog post.
Merit believes in software over hype.
There is a lot of great Merit Software you can check out:
Merit Web Wallet: An easy-to-use WebWallet that stores all secrets on the client-side!
Merit Desktop Lightwallet: An easy-to-use lightwallet that lets you interact fully with the Merit Protocol, and one-click mine with multiple CPUs/GPUs.
Merit Core Client: Full-node core client that syncs the entire blockchain and allows you to be a peer on the network.
Merit Android Wallet: A mobile lightwallet that makes it easy to take Merit on the go!
Merit iOS Wallet: A mobile lightwallet that makes it easy to take Merit on the go!
Merit Market: A simple decentralized market that allows you to trade MRT and BTC, with two-sided escrow.
Merit Mining Pool:Merit's first mining pool implementation, zero fees.
Merit CLI Miner: Merit command-line miner that is stratum-compatible.
Merit BlockStats: Merit stats summary, including blocktime, mining difficulty, and suplly. (Community-Made)
Merit has never done an ICO. There will be a total of 100M Merit distribution; with 4-year having intervals. Merit has a genesis block, and the Merit Foundation currently has no near-term plans of selling MRT.