Hello, everyone!

I'm Felipe, and I want to share a bit of my journey with you. A couple of years ago, before I set out to build Atto, I was a strong believer in what cryptocurrency originally aimed to achieve—fast, decentralized, accessible digital cash for everyone, without the need for intermediaries. But somewhere along the way, it felt like much of the crypto community lost sight of that vision. Instead of "let's make digital cash work," the conversation shifted to "what's the next moonshot?" That's when I thought, "How hard could it be to create a cryptocurrency that just works for payments?"

Spoiler alert: It's really hard. What started as a fun little project to tinker with in my free time quickly evolved into something much bigger—something that I thought could be finished in a year but has kept me on my toes for much longer. The process of creating a new cryptocurrency is like peeling an endless onion—every time you think you've figured it out, there's another layer waiting for you. A lot of things needed to come together to make this work: the code, the security, the ecosystem, and the community. It turned out to be more challenging than I'd ever imagined.

If you've ever talked to me about Atto, there's a good chance you've asked, "Wait, is this just a fork of Nano?" And it's a fair question! Atto and Nano share some core principles and design philosophies, so it's easy to see why people might make that assumption. But here's the thing: Atto isn't a fork of Nano—it's a unique project built entirely from scratch, even though it draws plenty of inspiration from Nano.

Let me walk you through the story behind Atto, how it relates to Nano, and why it ultimately became its own project. Let's dive in!

Atto is on a mission to change how we think about and use digital currencies. While its ultimate goal is complete decentralization, it is intentionally starting out as a centralized currency. This might seem counterintuitive, but it's a deliberate move to build a strong foundation for a decentralized future.

In this article, we'll discuss why Atto chose to start centralized, how it plans to become decentralized over time, and what mechanisms are in place to encourage a vibrant, active network. We'll look at how rewarding voting nodes, promoting a competitive node market, and implementing decaying votes play crucial roles in this journey.

Welcome to this guide on running a node! In this tutorial, we'll walk you through the steps required to get your own node up and running. Running a node is an important way to contribute to the network's security and decentralization while helping validate transactions.

Why run an historical node?​

Historical nodes are special nodes that do not vote but ensure the network stays in sync by storing votes, notifying other nodes about transactions, and helping other nodes to bootstrap.

Currently, any node without a private key is considered a historical node.