RaiBlocks (XRB) Rebrands, BitGrail Drama Continues Frustrating

It's been a momentous few days for the project formerly known as RaiBlocks, to say the least.

Mainly, that's because RaiBlocks has formally rebranded to "Nano." The move was first announced in a January 31st Medium post by the Nano team:

The Core Team wanted a name that represented the simplicity and speed of the project, and Nano does just that. The new logo uses several nodes, playing on the block-lattice design of the network, that connect to form an “N.” All social media accounts will be updated to reflect the name and logo changes. The new website is nano.org."

But the entirety of the switch isn't completed just yet, as there's still a few more things to do.

As the devs explained:

Addresses will continue to start with xrb_ for the moment. In the future we will introduce nano_ addresses with the rest of the current addresses being consistent.

On a superficial level, the name change seems like a very strong one. "RaiBlocks" was certainly good enough and resonated with people in the cryptoverse, but "Nano" is much sleeker and much more liable to catch on in the mainstream.

It's familiar, catchy, and simple: all the ingredients you want in a name.

And that was the precise rationale for the rebrand, per the former RaiBlocks' team announcement:

In November, the team gathered to discuss the future of Raiblocks and develop plans to further the project’s growth. One topic discussed was the name itself (“Is it, ray or rye?,” “Ditch the Blocks!,” “Just call it Rai!”). Feedback from the community suggested that improvements could be made to better resonate with the public and a mainstream audience. Because of this, our team made the decision to rebrand."

Two thumbs up, we say.

In the picture below, you can see the project's new logo in the n-shaped series of blue "nodes" that comprise a pictorial representation of a block lattice. Pretty cool!

Sounds good, looks good. A job well done it seems.

But BitGrail drama continues

Fury has mounted in the Nano community after the exchange operator of BitGrail surreptitiously instituted KYC ("Know Your Customer") measures without forewarning, and then froze countless users XRB.

Then, to everyone's horror, BitGrail announced they'd be liquidating all non-EU customers' XRB. Users will receive back bitcoin instead of XRB, making affected investors cry foul.

We'll have to see how the situation plays out in the coming days, but it's definitely a bad look for BitGrail.

Nano to Binance soon

In the beginning days of January 2018, XRB won Binance's "Community Coin per Month."

As such, the XRB project won the right to a free listing on Binance. So the move has been officially announced, but the Binance team has clarified that the "exact listing time will be announced separately."

That will be a huge development for Nano, as Binance seems like the king of cryptocurrency exchanges right now. It'll definitely open up the XRB market to lots of new investors, as BitGrail has been a chokepoint hitherto.

Image via Medium.com