The Art of Crypto Currencies: A Comprehensive Analysis of Popular Crypto Currencies

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of popular cryptocurrencies, exploring their functionalities, mining methods, security threats, and comparing their features to understand their role in the evolving digital economy.

Contribution

It offers an in-depth explanation of cryptocurrency mechanisms, threat mitigation strategies, and a taxonomy comparison of five leading cryptocurrencies, which is a novel comprehensive overview.

Findings

Analysis of mining methodologies used by popular cryptocurrencies

Identification of common security threats and mitigation techniques

Comparison of features among five major cryptocurrencies

Abstract

Crypto Currencies have recently gained enormous popularity amongst the general public. With each passing day, more and more companies are radically accepting crypto cur-rencies in their payment systems, paving way for an economic revolution. Currently more than 700 crypto-currencies are avail-able at Coindesk alone for trade purposes. As of November 2016, the Crypto currencies hold a total market share of over 14 Billion USD1 [5]. With no centralized institution to monitor the movement of funds, Crypto currencies and their users are susceptible to multiple threats. In this paper we present an effort to explain the functionality of some of the most popular crypto currencies available in the online market. We present an analysis of the mining methodologies employed by these currencies to induce new currency into the market and how they compete with each other to provide fast, decentralized transactions to the users. We also share, some of the most dangerous attacks that can be placed on these crypto currencies and how the overall model of the crypto currencies mitigates these attacks. Towards the end, we will present taxonomy of the five highly popular crypto currencies and compare their features.