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 heard about Atto and Nano, you might wonder, "Is Atto just a fork of Nano?" It's a fair question! After all, Atto and Nano share many of the same goals and even some design ideas, so it's easy to see why people make that assumption.

But here's the key thing: Atto is not a direct fork of Nano; it’s a unique project built from scratch, even though it draws plenty of inspiration from Nano.

In this post, we'll explain how Atto relates to Nano, what makes it different, and why it was created as a new 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.