Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Development of altcoins

Altcoin projects can be started very quickly from a coding point of view by simply forking the bitcoin or another coin's source code, but this probably is not enough. When a new coin project is started, several things need to be considered to ensure a successful launch and the coin's longevity. Usually, the code base is written in C++ as was the case with bitcoin, but almost any language can be used to develop coin projects, for example, Golang or Rust.

Writing code or forking the code for an existing coin is the trivial part, the challenging issue is how to start a new currency so that investors and users can be attracted to it. Generally, the following steps are taken in order to start a new coin project.

From a ...