What is Wownero, why is it so special, how to mine it and where to trade it?

Wownero (WOW) — many coins, such privacy  —  is one of the newest cryptocurrencies around, sort of a meme-coin, sort of a testing-coin, sort of a serious business. Even though the community around it is still very small, together with dev team they did few very interesting things already. First off, due to lack of answers from various exchanges, they opened OTC market on #wownero freenode IRC channel. If I recall correctly, the price reached around 3000 satoshis at one point. Even after getting listed on Altex exchange with BTC and XMR pairs, OTC trade on IRC was still going on and WOW price was holding up for some time.

Mining pools started to rise out of nowhere and public interest surprised even the development team and all of the sudden ton of other things started to appear around the interwebs:
wownero.win — probably one and only unique cryptocurrency gambling website! Bet on the last character of next block in the chain! A must-do for every gambler out there!
Then there’s the Bug Labs multiple dashboard of the week  award winning dashboard — stats.wownero.info, a simple real-time dashboard with so much valuable coin info, from mining operations to trading prices!
There were some words around about creating a faucet, but up until now I couldn’t find any. Judging by public repositories found on Github, looks like Android wallet version is also in development (but this is completely unconfirmed).

Why is Wownero so special?

As a result of the recent Monero Proof-of-Work update, which was supposed to keep it ASIC-resistant, few other coins appeared and kept the old PoW and the original blockchain (Monero Classic, Original, Zero and whatnot) but two new coins were created which sticked to the new PoW. Unlike MoneroV (which is one of them and apparently not very liked by Wownero team), Wownero was forked off with a new blockchain and it happened even before the Monero implemented new PoW itself! There was also NO premine and the development team made all out of fun and as a hobby.
It is definitely worth of mentioning that Wownero is the first coin in Cryptonote family which implemented the cutting edge technologies like the latest LWMA difficulty algorithm, anti-timestamp attack patch, and finally implemented bulletproofs — the method to reduce transaction sizes and transaction fees consequently improving the network speed and making blockchain growth smaller. So, even small and definitely not recognised enough for what they achieved so far, the team keeps pushing forward incredibly well!

Fig. 1 - Wowario, one of the protagonists of Wownero story depicted  here as "attacking" Monero (image found on internet)

Mining Wownero

There are currently few nice pools around, I will use wowne.ro as an example since it’s the one which goes along the best with my idea of Wownero — a meme coin. You can find information about the other pools on mentioned http://stats.wownero.info/, but I would definitely recommend you connecting to a smaller pool because decentralisation is important! ;)

Fig. 2: wowne.ro home page

I didn’t dig too much into technicalities, but it seems to me (and judging by links on the bottom) that wowne.ro pool (not sure if pool op is Romanian) is standard Snipa’s Node JS pool, meaning that it features all the needs for a smooth mining experience. Front-end is customised version of mesh0000's poolui which usually goes along with Snipa’s pool version. Server is located in Germany, but apart from that I don’t know any other server specs. I must admit that I got used seeing this pool UI around, since the boom of Cryptonote coins, and because of that, Wowne.ro main menu confused me on the first sight, but that’s exactly why I liked it so much — the whole UI is transformed into jokes. Intro text for some reason always puts a smile on my face, and it would be great if it would be updated more often with new funny stuff. The pool includes all standard features: details about each worker, e-mail notifications, secure ports, integrated address support, adjustable payouts, small fee (apparently donating to Wownero development team too), supports NiceHash, xmr-node-proxy and others. When you download your wallet with funny version naming (another joke from Wownero devs) from official Wownero Github repository, connecting to pool is easy as connecting to any other Snipa’s pool version. After you download your favourite mining program (xmr-stak, XMRig, SRBMiner or whichever you fancy) check out the pool’s “getting started” page (link “HELP!” in main menu) and follow the detailed instructions. The pool has its own Discord support channel too, so if you’re stuck try to ask for help there. Discord channel is called “Go, Mine It!” which is support channel for some other pools too and I’m not sure how are they related, but it has a dedicated room for Wownero support too. Pool payouts are scheduled every 15 minutes and default minimum payout is 10 WOW or 25 WOW if you are mining with integrated address (directly to exchange).

Trading Wownero

As already mentioned, Wownero is currently traded on Altex exchange, but the team is pushing forward constantly and as a result, trading on Tradeogre was currently enabled and even trading platform Bisq opened a BTC pair too. Just recently, the team added applied to Tradesatoshi exchange and you can help them by simply voting for Wownero in this form. I believe that you can still get some by OTC trading on IRC too, feel free to drop by and ask!

Fig. 3 - Wownero trading on Bisq platform

All this said, my personal beliefs are only optimistic for this coin. I've seen few posts around with some disbeliefs, but the team is always prepared for a good and reasonable answer, backed up by strong facts. Even though I don't know them in person, they seem to me like a nice bunch of people :) I wish them only the best in their journey through these dangerous and chaotic crypto waters!