What to mine on MinerGate
Zcash [ZEC]
Zcash is a decentralized privacy-centered currency, allowing users to partly conceal the details of their transactions, such as sending and receiving parties and the amount. It is possible due to innovative technology the developers have come up with, zero-knowledge proving. Zcash is a fork of Bitcoin protocol, thus they share some similarities, such as the total amount of coins to be minted and block reward halvings. Advanced privacy is the main major improvement.
Ethereum [ETH]
Ethereum is currently the most ambitious blockchain project. It runs its own cryptocurrency, called Ether, but goes beyond being just digital currency. Ethereum is a decentralized platform that allows building smart contracts: decentralized applications (dapps) that run as they coded without any possibility of censorship, downtime, fraud or third parties interference. The applications can move value through Blockchain and represent the ownership of property. The big idea behind Ethereum has attracted millions of users (crypto-enthusiasts, miners, investors) and boosted the market value of Ether coins, making it the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.
Ethereum Classic or Ether Classic is a cryptocurrency that emerged in the result of the Ethereum blockchain fork which occurred in July, 2015. Two networks appeared: Ethereum, with changed code, and Ethereum Classic, supported by community members, who believed in the original ideology of the Ethereum.
Litecoin [LTC]
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world. It is based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs from Bitcoin in that it can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware. Litecoin provides faster transaction confirmations (2.5 minutes on average) and uses a memory-hard, scrypt-based mining proof-of-work algorithm to target the regular computers with GPUs most people already have. The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million currency units. One of the aims of Litecoin was to provide a mining algorithm that could run at the same time, on the same hardware used to mine Bitcoins. With the rise of specialized ASICs for Bitcoin, Litecoin continues to satisfy these goals. It is unlikely for ASIC mining to be developed for Litecoin until the currency becomes more widely used.
Bytecoin [BCN]
Bytecoin is a first CryptoNote-based cryptocurrency. A CPU-mined coin, it"s primary advantages are extraordinary transaction untraceability and unlinkability features. BCN is stated to be much more anonymous than Bitcoin and all its existing forks. The developers claim a person's right to privacy is their primary concern and strictly observe their own privacy. Bytecoin was started on July 4th, 2012.
BCN is based on CryptoNote, an open-source technology for anonymous cryptocurrencies. It utilizes ring signature and one-time addresses for completely anonymous payments. CryptoNote is designed in a way, which makes block chain analysis impossible. CryptoNote is focused on CPU-mining in order to make the special purposes devices useless.
Monero [XMR]
Monero is a new coin using the CryptoNote protocol. It's based on Bytecoin, which was coded from scratch and is not a descendent of Bitcoin. XMR was launched on April 18, 2014.
Monero-Classic [XMC]
Monero-Classic is a coin that appeared in April 2018 after Monero (XMR) hard fork. That time four new coins were created, however, only XMC stayed alive and got its niche and community.
It uses the same Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, but, compared to its mother-coin, Monero-Classic is ASIC-friendly, so when most of CryptoNight coins goes against, you still can use your CryptoNight-aimed equipment to mine Monero-Classic (XMC). It can also be mined not only with ASICs, but also with GPU and CPU, so a decent home PC is enough to start mining Monero-Classic.
Bitcoin Gold [BTG]
Bitcoin Gold is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. At block 491407, Bitcoin Gold miners will begin creating blocks with a new proof-of-work algorithm, and this will cause a bifurcation of the Bitcoin blockchain. The original Bitcoin blockchain will continue on unaltered, but a new branch of the blockchain will split off from the original chain. The new branch is a distinct blockchain with the same transaction history as Bitcoin up until the fork, but then diverges from it. As a result of this process, a new cryptocurrency born.