Verge (XVG)
Verge is marketed as a privacy coin. However, it has privacy features (privacy is optional) rather than being intrinsicly private. Does this matter? It depends on how private you need your transactions to be. If you need casual privacy, then perhaps Verge is just fine. If you need complete and absolute privacy in all respects, then Verge may have some shortcomings. Verge has a transparent ledger that allows anyone to view all of its transactions, but protects user identities and locations by integrating both Tor and I2P to not expose IP addresses. Verge is designed as a pure cryptocurrency.
Mining/Staking
Consensus for Verge is achieved through Proof of Work (mining). At the present time (early 2018), it appears that a newly mined block gives the miner 1560 new coins.
Development Team
Verge was originally created as a fork of Bitcoin in 2014, and was initially called DogeCoinDark. It was renamed in 2016 to become Verge. The founder, known as Sunerok, is anonymous. Some of the other members of the development team go by their internet handles, but have known real-life identities. You can find more information on the Verge project website.
Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors
There are a number of cryptoassets claiming to be private in various degrees. The list includes Monero, Aeon, Pivx, Zcash, Zcoin, and more. Each of these different cryptos has varying degrees of privacy. Criticis of Verge tend to point out that the Wraith Protocol (the name for Verge's optional privacy feature) is not actually a protocol, it's just a re-implementation of a combination of Tor address routing and stealth addresses, and only limited data points of any given Verge transaction are obfuscated.
Additional Resources
The project's main website: https://vergecurrency.com
Link to Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verge_(cryptocurrency)
Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/vergecurrency
Link to Twitter account: https://twitter.com/vergecurrency
Link to Team information: https://vergecurrency.com/#about
Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/coins/XVG
Whitepaper: https://github.com/vergecurrency/Verge-Blackpaper