Iron Fish was recently added to the NiceHash hashrate marketplace and mining platforms, but what is it? Should you start mining IRON? Find out more about this unique and fascinating project in our guide.

Overview

Iron Fish is a Layer-1 chain based on Proof of Work. Every single Iron Fish transaction is encrypted, hiding sensitive user information on who the sender, recipient, or the amount of transaction was with an accompanying zero-knowledge proof (ZKP). Every Iron Fish wallet has a private key, public key, and a viewing key. The creator of the wallet has the ability to share out this view key and reveal their transactional history.

This latter factor is a huge advantage compared to other privacy focused coins out there, as it enables users of the coin IRON to remain compliant with tax authorities and regulations. By providing view-only access when needed, privacy is the default, but wallet information can still be viewed by authorized parties. 

Goals

Iron Fish takes an interesting approach to blockchain technology, as their goal is to become the equivalent of SSL/TLS to the interent, but to blockchains. Ths means that all other blockchains would eventually be able to use Iron Fish as a type of 'protocol' for securing and enhancing their privacy. The Iron Fish network is multi-asset capable which means that a trusted bridge operator can integrate Iron Fish support to enable users to bring their assets from any other chain to Iron Fish and transact on their privacy-enabled network. As noted in their homepage:

"Our mission is for Iron Fish to be the privacy layer for all crypto, letting assets from other chains be transferred over to Iron Fish to gain the benefit of privacy."

Mining

As you know from this article, NiceHash recently added support for the Iron Fish network, so buyers and sellers of hashrate can start mining. 

The Iron Fish blockchain algorithm dynamically adjusts the mining difficulty to achieve 60-second average block times, by either increasing or decreasing mining difficulty if previous blocks are observed to be coming in too fast or too slow. The Iron Fish algorithm is based on the Blake3 hashing algorithm.

The current block reward is 20 $IRON.

IRON coin

The $IRON coin is the Iron Fish network cryptocurrency. It serves as a medium of exchange, the currency for transaction fees, and as the reward issued to miners on the network. It has aggressive inflation in the first couple of years in order to shift the majority of token supply to miners and other community members more quickly.

More information

To summarize, Iron Fish has a huge potential to become the default privacy enhancer of choice, all the while staying compliant with future laws and regulations. It has a good chance of finding mainstream support once the user friendly features are fully launched, and we will be following it closely.

Find out more about this project with massive potential on their homepage, or follow them on Twitter for updates and news.