Nano (XRB)
Nano (formerly known as RaiBlocks) is designed as a pure cryptocurrency. Due to its DAG technology, it is able to offer feeless and essentially instantaneous transactions (it is literally the fastest crypto that we've encountered). It also has, in theory, unlimited scalability, and network maintainence requires minimal resources.
Mining/Staking
This project uses DAG (Distributed Acyclic Graph) technology rather than traditional blockchain. In this respect, Nano is based on the same technology as one other well known cryptoasset, Iota. According to the FAQ page on the official website, Nano "is a trustless, low-latency cryptocurrency that utilizes a novel block-lattice architecture, where each account has its own blockchain and achieves consensus via delegated Proof of Stake voting." Due to this block lattice structure, "each account has its own blockchain (account-chain), equivalent to the account's transaction/balance history. Each account-chain can only be updated by the account's owner; this allows each account-chain to be updated immediately and asynchronously to the rest of the block-lattice, resulting in quick transactions. Since blocks can only be added by each account-chain's owner, transferring funds from one account to another requires two transactions: a send transaction deducting the amount from the sender's balance and a receive transaction adding the amount to the receiving account's balance."
Development Team
The development team for this project consists of only five developers. Although their names are posted in the FAQ page on the official website, there is no accompanying information about their previous development experience.
Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors
The rebranding (from RaiBlocks to Nano) in early 2018 caused some market confusion. DAG technology is not as familiar or comfortable to many people when compared with blockchain technology.
Additional Resources
The project's main website: https://raiblocks.net
Link to Wikipedia Page: N/A
Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/RaiBlocks
Link to Twitter account: https://twitter.com/raiblocks
Link to Team information: https://raiblocks.net/page/faq (small text section part-way down page)
Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/price/Nano-XRB
Whitepaper: https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pdf