"Feathers" is an established name among Russian-speaking users for the altcoin Feathercoin (FTC). It is one of the early alternative cryptocurrencies that appeared after Bitcoin and sought to offer more accessible mining and fast transfers. The network is based on the Scrypt hashing algorithm, which was initially positioned as more resistant to specialized equipment and friendly to mining on graphics cards.
Feathercoin belongs to the family of forks based on Litecoin and inherits many of its technical principles: open source code, a decentralized network and a Proof-of-Work system. The project was developed by the community and used a number of protective mechanisms against attacks on the network, which was relevant for small coins with a low hashrate.
Like most first-wave altcoins, Feathercoin is interesting primarily from the standpoint of the history of cryptocurrency development: it shows how enthusiasts experimented with issuance parameters, block generation speed and algorithms. Knowledge of such projects helps to better understand the evolution of the altcoin market and the role of the Scrypt algorithm in the early ecosystem.
