Ravencoin (RVN) is the native token of a Bitcoin fork that is optimized for peer-to-peer transactions. Its name comes from a “Game of Thrones'' reference, and its white paper opens with: “In the fictional world of Westeros, ravens are used as messengers who carry statements of truth.”

Ravencoin launched in mid-2018, and its RVN token didn’t trade above $0.10 until April 2021, as the crypto market was hitting an all-time high. In the same month, Ravencoin flew to highs of $0.28. A year later, ravencoin had plunged to $0.04, wiping out the April 2021 gains.

Ravencoin trades on several leading cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Huobi Globa, Bittrex and Gate.io. The market for ravencoin is far smaller than rival Bitcoin forks, like bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV. Its social media presence is small and development has largely fallen off.

Ravencoin made four major changes to the Bitcoin protocol. The fork cut Bitcoin’s block reward time from about 10 minutes to one minute, increased the maximum coin supply from 21 million to 21 billion, changed the mining algorithm to remove the reliance on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) hardware and altered the block reward to 5,000 RVN.

In addition, Ravencoin lets users create and trade assets, an innovation that the Ethereum blockchain made popular. Assets include non-fungible tokens (NFTs), security token offerings and real estate deeds. No major projects rely, however, on Ravencoin.

To create assets, users must burn RVN tokens. While traders can create assets on Bitcoin, through layer 2 platforms like Counterparty, it isn’t easy. Moreover, when creating an asset that resembles a Bitcoin-based NFT, the NFT is attached to the wallet and to the bitcoin used to create that asset; if the bitcoin in the wallet is sent to another address, it’s possible to accidentally destroy the NFT.

Aside from those differences, Ravencoin is similar to Bitcoin. It’s a decentralized network for sending assets between wallets, with transactions confirmed on an immutable ledger by proof-of-work miners. Its supply halves about every four years, and its total supply will likely be in circulation by 2140, just like Bitcoin.

Ravencoin was founded by Tron Black, Bruce Fenton and Joel Weight. Both Black and Weight work for Overstock.com, an U.S. internet retailer that specializes in selling furniture. Weight is that company’s chief technology officer, while Black works for Medici Ventures, the retailer’s blockchain arm. Fenton was the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation from 2015 through 2018, and once worked for Morgan Stanley.

The protocol doesn’t operate through a decentralized autonomous organization, but through hard forks. Its GitHub page is public and open source.

In June 2020, Ravencoin was exploited after hackers instantly mined 315 million RVN coins, or 1.5% of its maximum supply. The development team decided not to delete those coins, because they were sold to a cryptocurrency exchange and mixed with other RVN coins that were mined legitimately.

The coin is popular with cryptocurrency miners because of its high block rewards. Because many blockchains have switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, Ravencoin is one of the few remaining options for power-hungry miners.