Ghost is a decentralized ecosystem that was launched in 2020 with a simple goal, privacy. Transacting privately and with anonymity is a basic human right. Most people believe that you are safe to use Bitcoin because it’s the first cryptocurrency or it has strong privacy features. The latter couldn’t be farther from the truth. It is relatively easy to trace back the origins of each transaction and ultimately reveal the identity of the user. Ghost is engineered to obfuscate transactions throughout the network on both the receiver and senders end and conceal all elements of said transaction through bleeding edge cryptography.
The team behind Ghost has a strong belief of privacy for all with the ease of transacting regardless how tech savvy a user may or may not be. Ghost provides protection to all users and financial freedom.

## Who are the original Founders of Ghost?

Ghost’s origins date back to Particl, a privacy-focused and decentralized cryptocurrency that was launched in 2017. Particl is a fork of Bitcoin. In early 2020 the team behind Ghost forked Particl’s core and began work on code revisions and additions, and thus GHOST was born.
Originally, there were a few developers who still wish to remain anonymous, that started looking at developing a new privacy coin that is fully decentralized and offers unparalleled privacy. Josh Case is one of the Co-Founders that brought this vision to fruition. It should be noted that John McAfee is also regarded as one of the Co-Founders of Ghost. Although McAfee’s involvement with the project is limited to just advertising.
In an effort to make the Ghost ecosystem more decentralized, Josh Case stepped down from any authoritative roles. Since then, the project has been in the community’s hands ever since. Following Ghost’s interim governance model, the community decides the direction of the project.

## What makes Ghost different?

There are a variety of features that distinguishes Ghost’s unique code. One of the project’s foremost importance is decentralization. Ghost wants to become the standard when it comes to trustless systems.
Ghost operates on a Proof-of-Stake consensus method. This allows users to secure the blockchain by staking their coins, which in turn the users gain rewards for doing so. Users who have the status of “Ghost Veteran”, are those that hold enough coins to be eligible for bonus rewards from the network. Veterans earn additional rewards that are distributed once a month to all eligible vets, including the daily staking rewards. This makes Ghost’s staking rewards some of the highest in the industry.

Privacy is executed through a couple of special attributes. Where other privacy coins have ‘selective anonymity”, Ghost by default obfuscates every transaction on both the receiver & sender end. This is achieved with Dandelion++ . To further increase the anonymity of the user, Ghost also uses confidential transactions and RingCT, all while running Bulletproofs to decrease fees and speed up transaction times.
There are several other implementations that will be added to the blockchain in the future, see our roadmap for details.