In this chapter, we introduced you to the overall cryptocurrency landscape. We discussed a number of altcoins in detail, especially Zcash and Namecoin. Cryptocurrencies are a very active area for research, especially around scalability, privacy, and security aspects. Some research has also been conducted to invent new difficulty retargeting algorithms to thwart the threat of centralization in cryptocurrencies.
Further research needs to be carried out in the areas of privacy and especially scalability of blockchain.
Now you should be able to appreciate the concept of altcoins and various motivations behind them. We also discussed few practical aspects, such as mining and starting a new currency project, which hopefully will give you a strong foundation, enabling you to explore these areas further. Altcoins are a fascinating field of research and they open many possibilities...