What cryptocurrencies have been innovative (introduced new technology)

[mxa]

Which cryptocurrencies are the innovative ones (for the time they were introduced)?.

Which cryptocurrency introduced ring signatures?. Which one introduced colored coins as part of its design (As used in NXT)?.

I'm interested in free as in freedom cryptocurrencies that have been the first to bring a new technology (for instance, Peercoin with its PoS). With all of the hundreds of existing cryptocurrencies, most of which are clones, it's hard to tell what are the ones that bring improvements instead of being a pump and dump scheme or plain worthless.

Note: I have checked what are the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, but this doesn't tells me whether they have bringed something new, and with so many speculators and people who are into altcoins just for pump and dump, market capitalizatioin doesn't seems like a good indicator of innovation or even technical proficency.

Thanks in advance.

[nachoig]

From what I remember:

Ring signatures: Bytecoin BCN (but unfortunately Bytcoin is a scam with 82% premine)
First cryptocurrency with a different algo (Scrypt): Tenebrix
First PoS-only currency: NXT
First PoS-only currency after a short mining phase: Blackcoin
First currency with stealth addresses: Vertcoin
First demurrage cryptocurrency: Freicoin
First coin with multiple algo: Quark
First coin with multiple and independent algos (each algo is mined separetely and it has its own difficulty): Myriadcoin
First coin to kill the decimal places: Pennies
First coin with mini-blockchain scheme: Cryptonite
First coin with HDD mining (proof-of-capacity): Burst
First proof-of-activity coin: Node

Some of these innovations are stupid in my opinion:

First proof-of-transaction coin: Fluttercoin
First coin with random block rewards: Luckycoin
First proof-of-importance (just a proof-of-transaction in a little more sophisticated way): NEM

[picolo]

Which cryptocurrencies are the innovative ones (for the time they were introduced)?.

Which cryptocurrency introduced ring signatures?. Which one introduced colored coins as part of its design (As used in NXT)?.

I'm interested in free as in freedom cryptocurrencies that have been the first to bring a new technology (for instance, Peercoin with its PoS). With all of the hundreds of existing cryptocurrencies, most of which are clones, it's hard to tell what are the ones that bring improvements instead of being a pump and dump scheme or plain worthless.

Note: I have checked what are the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, but this doesn't tells me whether they have bringed something new, and with so many speculators and people who are into altcoins just for pump and dump, market capitalizatioin doesn't seems like a good indicator of innovation or even technical proficency.

Thanks in advance.

CLAM was innovative by its distribution and is innovative in terms of being easy to use and how it is growing with the help of just-dice and dooglus.

[MadCow]

Slimcoin - proof of burn
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=613213.0

[Crestington]

PayCon [CON] - Proof of CON https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=937480.0

Proof of Stake only and all Blocks are worth 30 Coins each plus fees.

[fundomatic]

BitShares introduced

DAC (Decentralized/distributed autonomous company) and the platform for running DACs are
quite strongly associated with BitShares. https://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics/
Although may blockchain projects qualify as DAC, the economy of running it has influenced the BitShares system.
It is yet to gain some presence and understanding (including my own) but some DAC projects are already there
in the BitShares blockchain (like PLAY of http://playshare.io/).

DPOS (Delegated proof of stake). http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS
There are currently top 101 delegates  (voted in by stakeholders) who produce blocks.
They may choose to burn (part of) the reward for producing a block thus stopping dilution and preserving the value.
Or they may keep the reward and add value to BitShares in some other way (developing, marketing etc).
The block production under 10sec is quite handy for an inbuilt decentralized exchange.

TITAN (Transfer Invisible To Any Name) http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/TITAN
It generated a new key pair (deterministically from the owner key) for each new transaction.
Useful for some cases but complicates things in others (like having same wallet/account on two machines). 

[mxa]

Thanks you for replying.

What innovations does Ethereum introduces (if any)?.

It would be great if you can mention more innovative cryptocurrencies (if there are more).

PayCon [CON] - Proof of CON https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=937480.0

Proof of Stake only and all Blocks are worth 30 Coins each plus fees.

I don't see the innovation here, it seems like a quite ordinary clone.

[billotronic]

sapience/quotient has some really interesting Skynet type stuff brewing

[gatra]

primecoin, riecoin and gapcoin all innovated different useful PoW algorithms. Regarding the technical innovative aspects, Riecoin is the best (of course, I'm Riecoin's dev).

sapience uses a lot of buzzwords but nothing technical, they didn't innovate anything yet. It's vaporware, they have a 14min video that actually says nothing, and if you ask me... it smells bad

ethereum includes a turing-complete script language that allows for lots of kinds of smart contracts. I think it's still vaporware (ie they didn't deliver yet), but there are techincal discussions were they show competence and what they claim is possible and might actually work

[TinEye]

NXT and BTS.

NXT was the first purely PoS, and now handles a huge number of assets. BTS introduced market pegged assets to solve the volatility problem which so far has been working well.

[mxa]

Thanks for the replies.

primecoin, riecoin and gapcoin all innovated different useful PoW algorithms. Regarding the technical innovative aspects, Riecoin is the best (of course, I'm Riecoin's dev).

I see. Primecoin doesn't sees much development or activity. What are the differences between Riecoin and Gapcoin and why do you think that Riecoin is more innovative?, is it because it has a more sophisticated PoW function than Gapcoin?.

[mxa]

Go to my Sig

Could you please share with me in which way it is innovative?. Thanks.

[markm]

Namecoin introduced the database-in-the-blockchain setup, with use as a kind of DNS as its example application for such data; and it also introduced Merged Mining.

I0Coin, one of the SHA256 merged mined coins, introduced fixes for the massive-RAM-use problem that family of merged mined coins were all eventually going to notice; the others, maybe including namecoin maybe not I am not sure, adopted those RAM-usage fixes from I0Coin. (Not sure if namecoin addressed that problem yet or not.)

Oh and also, of course, DeVCoin (DVC) introduced a whole new way of distributing minted coins. (Initially to authors of free open-source software, later also to authors of free open source writings (see Devtome), eventually intended to branch out to free open source 3D printers and print-specifications, free open source spacecraft, free open source music, graphics, images and so on and so on...)

-MarkM-

[MicroGuy]

Goldcoin was the first to introduce a 51% attack defense in 2013.

The gen 2 client being released this month will also make GLD the first mineable cryptocurrency written in Java and the first to support multiple currencies.

[mxa]

I0Coin, one of the SHA256 merged mined coins, introduced fixes for the massive-RAM-use problem that family of merged mined coins were all eventually going to notice; the others, maybe including namecoin maybe not I am not sure, adopted those RAM-usage fixes from I0Coin. (Not sure if namecoin addressed that problem yet or not.)

Please elaborate. Is it a client-level fix or protocol-level?. If it doesn't changes anything fundamental (Like Bitcoin that AFAIK, introduced the blockchain and Peercoin that introduced PoS), then it's not an innovation, it's just normal software maintenance.

Goldcoin was the first to introduce a 51% attack defense in 2013.

I found the marketing paper (It's not a whitepaper, and definitely not an academic paper) that claims to have solved the problem. There is a thread in this forum about it which explains how it fails to solve anything and instead serves to expose the incompetence of those developers.

The gen 2 client being released this month will also make GLD the first mineable cryptocurrency written in Java and the first to support multiple currencies.

It may be a first, but writing the first Java client for a mineable cryptocurrency is not an innovation, it doesn't introduces any new technology, it just makes use of existing ones in a obvious way (but I can't discard that it introduces an actual innovation that I'm not aware of).

Nonetheless, thanks for sharing the information.

[Nxtblg]

Oh and also, of course, DeVCoin (DVC) introduced a whole new way of distributing minted coins. (Initially to authors of free open-source software, later also to authors of free open source writings (see Devtome), eventually intended to branch out to free open source 3D printers and print-specifications, free open source spacecraft, free open source music, graphics, images and so on and so on...)

-MarkM-

How's Devcoin coming along?

[MicroGuy]

Goldcoin was the first to introduce a 51% attack defense in 2013.

I found the marketing paper (It's not a whitepaper, and definitely not an academic paper) that claims to have solved the problem. There is a thread in this forum about it which explains how it fails to solve anything and instead serves to expose the incompetence of those developers.

If you read the entire thread, Akumaburn does try his best to explain how and why this time-tested system works.

[unamis76]

Beyond Bitcoin, Tenebrix, Litecoin, Namecoin and Fluttercoin were definitely innovative.

[MicroGuy]

The gen 2 client being released this month will also make GLD the first mineable cryptocurrency written in Java and the first to support multiple currencies.

It may be a first, but writing the first Java client for a mineable cryptocurrency is not an innovation, it doesn't introduces any new technology, it just makes use of existing ones in a obvious way (but I can't discard that it introduces an actual innovation that I'm not aware of).

My understanding is the new GLD client introduces several new innovations including a rewritten codebase with multi-threaded design.