What is Ravencoin?
A Bitcoin-derived protocol focused on one job: making it cheap and easy to issue and transfer real on-chain assets.
Ravencoin in one read.
Ravencoin is a proof-of-work blockchain forked from Bitcoin in 2018 with one opinionated change: native, first-class support for issuing and transferring on-chain assets. Everything else — UTXO model, address format, signing — is recognisable to anyone who has used a Bitcoin wallet. The differences are deliberate and small, and they add up to a chain with a very specific job.
Ravencoin launched on 3 January 2018 — Bitcoin's ninth birthday — as a fork of the Bitcoin codebase with one focused change: first-class support for asset issuance.
The chain inherits Bitcoin's UTXO model, address structure, and proof-of-work security, then adds a small set of asset-specific opcodes and consensus rules. The original white paper framed the project as a chain for assets — for tokenising real-world things, for issuing tickets, shares, collectibles, or in-game items — rather than as a competing payment network.
What's different from Bitcoin
The headline differences are easy to memorise. Block time is one minute instead of ten. Block reward is 2,500 RVN instead of a tiny BTC reward. Total supply cap is 21 billion — a thousand times Bitcoin's 21 million. Mining uses KAWPOW (a memory-hard ProgPoW variant), chosen specifically to resist ASIC concentration so that consumer GPU miners stay competitive. And the protocol has native support for issuing, transferring, and burning assets at the consensus layer.
- Block time: 1 minute (vs Bitcoin's 10).
- Block reward: 2,500 RVN (halves every ~4 years).
- Supply cap: 21,000,000,000 RVN (1000× Bitcoin).
- Algorithm: KAWPOW — ASIC-resistant, GPU-mineable.
- Asset layer: built into the protocol, not bolted on.
The security model is Bitcoin's: proof-of-work consensus, UTXO outputs, ECDSA signatures over secp256k1, BIP-39 seed phrases, and BIP-32 hierarchical deterministic wallets. If you have used a Bitcoin wallet before, the mental model carries over almost completely — addresses, change outputs, confirmations, fees, and recovery all work the same way. Electrum RVN exposes the same wallet shape with the Ravencoin asset layer added on top. For a plain-English tour of the protocol's asset design, see Assets 101.
The protocol treats named assets as first-class objects. You can issue an asset, decide its rules (supply, divisibility, reissuability), pin metadata via IPFS, and move it the same way you move RVN. No smart-contract layer is involved — the rules are enforced by network consensus, which makes the trust surface simpler and the failure modes fewer. The cost is constraint: you get exactly the behaviours the protocol exposes, not arbitrary computation.
How RVN differs from Ethereum tokens
On Ethereum a token is a smart contract the issuer wrote and the EVM runs; on Ravencoin the same primitives — name, supply, transfer rules — are baked into consensus, so there is no contract author to trust or to compromise. The trade-off is flexibility: ERC-20s can implement arbitrary logic, Ravencoin assets cannot. For most real-world tokenisation use cases — a name, a supply, a transfer model, optional restrictions — the protocol-native approach is sufficient and significantly safer.
For day-to-day use, hold RVN in a Ravencoin-aware self-custody wallet such as Electrum RVN on the desktop, optionally paired with a Ledger or Trezor. Exchanges and multi-coin mobile wallets are convenient but give up custody or do not expose the asset layer. For RVN specifically, the dedicated-client experience is significantly better than the generic-wallet one.
KAWPOW is a memory-hard proof-of-work algorithm derived from ProgPoW, deliberately tuned to favour consumer GPUs over specialised ASIC hardware. In practice that means a single gaming-grade graphics card can mine RVN economically, and the hashrate distribution across the network stays meaningfully decentralised — no factory-built mining farm gets the lopsided efficiency advantage that turned Bitcoin mining into an industrial business. Block time is roughly one minute, which makes confirmations feel responsive without flooding the chain with orphan rate problems.
Supply schedule and emission curve
Ravencoin's supply cap is 21 billion RVN — exactly one thousand times Bitcoin's. The block reward started at 5,000 RVN, halved to 2,500 in 2022, and halves again roughly every four years on the same Bitcoin-style schedule. There is no premine, no founders' allocation, no instamine — every RVN in circulation was mined under the same rules as the one mined tomorrow. The emission curve is fully predictable; anyone can compute total supply at any future block height.
A Ravencoin address starts with the letter R and encodes a destination for funds. Like Bitcoin, Ravencoin uses an UTXO (unspent transaction output) model: your "balance" is the sum of unspent outputs sitting at addresses you control. When you send RVN, the wallet selects UTXOs, signs a transaction that spends them, and broadcasts. A confirmation is a block that includes (or follows) your transaction. Most exchanges and services credit a deposit after 60 confirmations — roughly one hour at one-minute block time — which is the rough equivalent of six Bitcoin confirmations.
- Addresses begin with R (mainnet) and are case-sensitive.
- Balances are the sum of UTXOs sitting at your addresses.
- Block time is ~1 minute; 60 confirmations is the common 'final' threshold.
- Transaction fees are tiny compared to most major chains.
Ravencoin adds a small set of asset-specific opcodes on top of Bitcoin's transaction format. Issuing an asset reserves a globally unique name, sets a supply, and burns a small fixed RVN amount to the network. Transferring an asset is a normal transaction with an extra output type. The chain itself tracks balances, supply, and ownership — there is no smart contract to write, audit, or upgrade. For most tokenisation use cases that is a strict improvement on the EVM model; for use cases that need arbitrary logic, it is a hard constraint by design.
Frequently asked
Continue with Electrum RVN
- Ravencoin tokens explained — deeper dive on the asset layer
- Ravencoin asset wallet — do it in the wallet
- download Ravencoin wallet — install the wallet to follow along
Run your own Ravencoin wallet.
Open-source, lightweight, and built for the desktop user who wants real control over keys and assets. Download the wallet directly from our download page — signed installers for every operating system.