Advantages

Nano (XNO) is a new form of money that's completely digital. Nano is not controlled by any person, company, or government. The development is open-source and the network is run by a global community of users. Nano can be used without having to trust or rely on any other user, developer, or operator on the network.

Nano, unlike other approaches, is scalable, instant, asynchronous, uses minimal energy, feeless (no value lost during transfers), has deterministic finality, and is secured and controlled only by its holders.

denationalized / borderless
self-sovereign
instantly verifiable
fixed supply / incorruptible monetary policy
divisible
durable / securable / low-cost of maintenance
accessible at all times
transportable / accessible globally
privacy
natively digital

feeless / no value lost
fully decentralized / permissionless
asynchronous
scalable
energy-efficient / sustainable
fully distributed supply
lightweight
low latency settlement
deterministic finality
fair & wide initial distribution
user-controlled consensus

The vast majority of other digital money projects, which use Proof-of-Work for consensus and operate on a single chain synchronous DAG (i.e. blockchain), can not reliably operate with BOTH of these properties:

fixed supply w/ no inflation (Store of Value)
feeless tx prioritization (Medium of Exchange)

These properties impact the core functions of money and other projects can only achieve one of them.

Nano does not have a central authority, coordinator, or server. The network is peer-to-peer and permissionless. Any Nano holder can run a node and engage in voting to secure the network. Voting weight distribution is fluid and controlled by Nano holders.

Because Nano does not need to pay to secure the network, it is resistant to emergent centralization due to economies of scale effects. Over time, the network has trended toward greater decentralization.

Nano's ledger is pseudonymous. All accounts on the ledger, the balances, and the entire transaction history, are public. However, the identity of the owner is anonymous.

Nano puts users in control of their privacy, allowing them to better preserve it. Users are not reliant on intermediaries like banks to prevent breaches of privacy. The feeless nature helps users to improve privacy with mixing tools, multi-accounting and other manoeuvres with no extra cost.

The ledger, and therefore the balances of all accounts, is public.

Unlike fiat money and gold, ownership and authenticity are instantly verifiable making it resistant to counterfeiting at no cost.

The supply is fixed and fully distributed. The monetary policy is incorruptible, making it a reliable store of value. No new Nano will ever enter the market.

There will only ever be a maximum of Ӿ 133,248,297.

Learn why this matters and is an essential function of money.

The smallest unit of Nano is a Raw:

0.000000000000000000000000000001

1e-30 Nano/XNO/Ӿ

Nano is one of the most divisible forms of money in existence.

Nano does not degrade over time. It has strong security guarantees and a low cost of maintenance, regardless of the amount of value being stored.

Nano is self-sovereign, controlled only by its secret key, making it resistant to confiscation, sanctions, and censorship.

All network transactions are feeless, meaning no value is lost during a transfer. Any amount of value lost during a transfer creates friction as it discourages use.

Nano does not rely on transaction fees to secure the network or prioritize transactions.

Initially, Nano has relied upon Proof-of-Work for prioritization and spam mitigation.

Starting with v22, Nano will use the account balance and the time since the last transaction to prioritize transactions. As a result, transaction flooding attacks (i.e. spam) will be financially prohibitive (i.e. you need 50% of the supply to consume 50% of the throughput) and the network provides a guaranteed minimum quality of service to all accounts.

When the network isn't congested, everything is instant. When it's congested, everyone has a guaranteed minimum throughput that's feeless.

The Nano protocol itself has no scalability limits.

Nano can scale horizontally or by increasing whatever the limiting factor is among bandwidth, CPU cycles, and disk operations.

The network runs on standard hardware, where security is achieved through cooperation, not competition. As a result, the average node uses ~25-140W.

For each transaction, it is estimated that Nano uses only 0.000112 kWh, compared to 1121.71 kWh for Bitcoin as of May 15th, 2021.

There is no inflation and has a Stock-To-Flow ratio of undefined since no new Nano will ever be created.

Nano was given away for free, proportional to time spent completing a captcha. Distribution began in 2015 and ended in October 2017, at which point the faucet had distributed Ӿ 126,248,289.

Nano's distribution was widely accessible as it had only two requirements: knowledge of its existence and a device capable of connecting to the internet. Most other distribution methods (ICO, mining, etc) have additional barriers (wealth, hardware, etc).

Ӿ 7,000,000 (~5%) was set aside as an initial developer fund. This fund has since been exhausted. The Nano Foundation has transitioned to a volunteer-led model, continuing its mission to build the most efficient digital currency possible.

Because the distribution process was conducted on-chain, it is publicly available to be reviewed and audited by looking at the Core Faucet and Landing account.

A few notable statistics compiled by u/hanzyfranzy:

The median faucet user got Ӿ 192.76 from the faucet.
There were a total of 130,814 faucet receive addresses.
The biggest faucet recipient received Ӿ 1,724,105, likely from abusing the Captchas at the very beginning. These types of accounts appear to be very rare and they seem to have sold much of their Nano long before the initial runup in 2017.

Nano's distribution is notable as 95% of the supply was given away for free. Nano has been fully distributed since 2017.

Transactions achieve irreversible finality. Once a transaction achieves a quorum of support, it is settled.

Typically, Nano transactions settle in under one second, oftentimes around 300ms. Prior to final votes (v22), it was able to settle in around 100ms.

It takes Bitcoin transactions about one hour to reach a 0.1% chance of potentially being reversed.

Traditional bank transfers, using ACH and Swift, can take anywhere from 1-3 days to settle. Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems are available only for banks and can only be used domestically as they are operated by central banks.

Nano may be the fastest cross-border settlement network in existence.

Nano is secured and controlled by Nano holders, as they have exclusive control over the delegation of their voting weight. Node operators, nor developers, nor any other entities have any ability to overrule the will of Nano holders.

For example, control of Nano's scalability is decentralized and in the hands of Nano holders collectively. They alone determine how voting weight is distributed and what version or hardware the network operates on by delegating to node operators as they see fit.

Nano blocks are small (~200 bytes), yet stateful, meaning it contains all the information about an account at that point in time: account number, balance, representative.

A minimal block size allows for lightweight communication resulting in ultrafast transaction confirmation times.

Stateful blocks combined with a block-lattice structure allow for operation using pruned ledgers, enabling Nano to operate with far less storage space and be more easily embedded in applications with the potential of operating on a ledger as small as 2Mb.

Nano is like physical cash: it can be given to someone without losing value (i.e. fees) and the transfer is instant. It is not reversible. You are responsible for handling it. If you lose your wallet, you lose your money. Your nano can be given to others to hold for you but you need to trust they won't lose it or take it.

Nano is unlike physical cash: it takes no space, regardless of how much you hold. You can hand it to anyone regardless of the distance in between. It can not be counterfeited.

Nano is like gold: it cannot be produced at will and is scarce.

Nano is unlike gold: the supply is fixed and there will be no more of it found/created. It can be verified in an instant at no cost. It takes up no space and costs very little to store, regardless of how much you have.

Nano is like a bank: it is secured at all times of the day, even while you are sleeping.

Nano is unlike a bank: it doesn't require any trust to hold your money and protect your privacy. It is always open, even on holidays. The account balances and history are verifiable by anyone. Your money can't be loaned out, leading to credit bubbles. It operates without any reliance on a central bank, an administrator, or large overhead costs. It is accessible anywhere that has access to the internet.

Nano is like Bitcoin: it is decentralized, making it permissionless, self-sovereign, and censorship-resistant. The development is open-source and the network is run by a global community of users. It can be used without having to trust or rely on any other user, developer, or operator on the network.

Nano is unlike Bitcoin: it is feeless, instant, irreversible, scalable, and energy-efficient. Making it more inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and useful as a base layer for settling value. Nano's security and network are controlled only by its holders. Since Nano has no mining, it does not have to deal with any of its issues: inflation, high resource consumption & waste, conflicting interests, value loss (i.e. fees), value extraction, etc).

Inspired by "Bitcoin is like..." by Oleg Andreev