Nano (XNO) is a native cryptocurrency built on its own independent Layer-1 blockchain, using a block-lattice architecture in which every account operates its own individual chain that updates asynchronously.
Transactions confirm through Open Representative Voting (ORV), a delegated consensus mechanism, without mining or transaction fees. Designed as digital money for everyday payments, Nano targets fast, feeless value transfer. It originated under the name RaiBlocks (XRB) before being rebranded to Nano in January 2018.
Nano's core differentiator is that it charges no transaction fees and confirms transfers in under a second, distinguishing it from proof-of-work and fee-based proof-of-stake networks.
This feeless model is enabled by the block-lattice structure and Open Representative Voting rather than a fee market. In 2026, a community stress-test tool, "TheNanoButton," processed 363 million requests from 1.36 million unique visitors with sub-second confirmation, demonstrating network throughput under load. Nano is also being explored for machine-to-machine AI-agent payments via the x402 protocol.
Nano (XNO) functions purely as a utility and payment coin; it is not a governance token, since holders have no on-chain protocol voting rights.
Holders use XNO to transfer value peer-to-peer with zero fees and near-instant settlement. Instead of staking or locking funds, holders may delegate their balance's voting weight to a "representative" node, which participates in Open Representative Voting to confirm network transactions on their behalf. There is no staking yield, collateral use, or fee-payment mechanism, since the network itself is feeless.
Nano launched via a fair, feeless distribution with no ICO, pre-mine, or venture allocation; the entire initial supply was given away for free.
Mainnet genesis occurred on October 24, 2015, under the original name RaiBlocks (XRB), which was rebranded to Nano in January 2018. From October 2015 to October 20, 2017, approximately 126,248,289 XNO were distributed through a CAPTCHA-solving faucet, alongside a 7,000,000 XNO developer fund, fixing total supply at 133,248,297 XNO with no funds raised.
Nano (XNO) runs on its own independent Layer-1 blockchain rather than as a token on Ethereum, Solana, or any other network.
It uses a block-lattice architecture, in which every account maintains its own individual chain that updates asynchronously and in parallel, instead of sharing one global ledger. Consensus is reached through Open Representative Voting (ORV), a delegated proof-of-stake-like mechanism in which XNO holders delegate voting weight to representative nodes that vote to confirm transactions. No mining is involved.
Nano was founded by Colin LeMahieu, a software engineer specializing in high-performance and distributed computing, who began development in 2014. He published the whitepaper "Nano – Digital money for the modern world."
Originally released as RaiBlocks (XRB), the project was rebranded to Nano in 2018, when LeMahieu became a director of the Nano Foundation. George Coxon is also named as a Nano Foundation director.
The Nano Foundation, a not-for-profit organization described as built by volunteers, maintains and promotes the Nano network today.
A related but separate group, the Nano Collective, supports open-source contributors through community sponsorship. The Foundation has stated it will never raise Nano's maximum supply to fund its own operations. Following the 2023 collapse of Silvergate Bank, its former US banking partner, the Foundation's remaining developer-fund holdings (reported at roughly 300,000 XNO) were used to help satisfy Silvergate's creditors, reflecting funding strain from that failure.
Nano is governed through Open Representative Voting (ORV): XNO holders delegate their balance's voting weight to representative nodes, which vote to confirm transactions. This serves as both the consensus and governance layer, rather than a separate proposal-voting system.
Protocol development is coordinated through the Nano Foundation's open-source GitHub organization, described as nonprofit and volunteer-driven rather than centrally controlled. Community-run infrastructure also plays a practical decentralization role; the node ArmourNode reached "Principal Representative" status within an hour of its March 2026 launch.
The Nano Foundation commissioned a third-party protocol audit from Red4Sec, conducted October–November 2018, covering cryptography, network performance, and source code.
The audit found no critical vulnerabilities, one High-severity issue in a third-party library (LMDB), fixed in the V17.1 release (January 2019), and two informational notices. Nano itself was not hacked in the 2018 BitGrail incident; that was a security failure at a third-party exchange, whose operator a Florence court later found liable.