Crypto for Humans^TM

Nimiq is a frictionless payment protocol powered by a browser-based blockchain.

Web-native: It has been designed from the ground up to work directly with the latest web technologies such as JavaScript, WebAssembly, WebRTC, IndexedDB (while providing fallbacks) which means that browsers (and the web applications they run) are first-class citizens in Nimiq.

Since it’s impractical to try to download the complete blockchain history in the browser, Nimiq supports Nano clients which can synchronize with the rest of the network (without sacrificing security) in seconds thanks to Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work (NiPoPow):

Nimiq uses the EdDSA (Ed25519, specifically) Schnorr variant which allows for smaller public keys and signature sizes (32 and 64 bytes, respectively) while improving security by being able to produce signatures without requiring a random number generator, which may be broken and thus compromise the private key.

The use of Schnorr also allows for multi-signature schemes which require less on-blockchain data (still only 64 bytes) while improving privacy (multisig signatures and accounts are indistinguishable from regular signatures and accounts). Finally, they also allow for the use of scriptless scripts directly with Nimiq.

Another important feature that Nimiq has is that, unlike Bitcoin, the balance of each address is stored in a cryptographic data structure, the Accounts Tree, which allows the generation of mathematical proofs of the balance of a given account for a specific moment in time (i.e. block height) so that Nano clients running in web browsers are able to independently verify the validity of a given transaction.

Finally, Nimiq has native support for Hashed Time-Locked Contracts, which enable a wide variety of different scenarios, such as Atomic Swaps that allow users to exchange crypto-assets between different blockchains in a decentralized way (without the need for a trusted third party) or with payment channels.