MonaCoin (MONA) is an open source blockchain-based distributed payments system that was launched in 2013. Developers remain anonymous, operating collectively under the pseudonym “Mr. Watanabe.”

The token has some popularity among Japanese investors and the team says that “Monacoin users have brought up various kinds of Mona-based web applications and services”, besides using the coin in other creative ways. 

A result of a fork from Litecoin, and although similar to Bitcoin and Litecoin in its purpose, MonaCoin differs from both on a technical level. Block times are 1.5 minutes, compared to Bitcoin’s 10 and Litecoin’s 2.5, and there are over 105 million coins compared to Bitcoins 21 million and Litecoin’s 84 million. The network is ASIC resistant as it uses the Lyra2REv2 mining algorithm. 

The project features desktop clients, but third parties like Electrum and Coinomi have light clients for users who do not wish to download the whole blockchain. MonaCoin is popular in Japan possibly because it is a highly nationalized version of cryptocurrency, or at least marketed that way. It is used in online and physical stores and the Japanese government legally recognizes it.