The Cannacoin Community Foundation: Defining Our Legacy Amidst the Stellar Cannacoin Confusion

Posted on March 17, 2025, at 4:20 PM PDT, by Cannacoin Blogger

The Cannacoin Community Foundation, since its inception in 2014, has pursued a singular mission: to harness blockchain technology as a bulwark against the financial exclusion plaguing the cannabis industry. As of March 17, 2025, with our *Smoke* initiative slated for release no earlier than April 1, a pertinent clarification arises concerning an entity known as Stellar Cannacoin. This analysis delineates the Foundation’s provenance, technical framework, and community ethos, while addressing the unauthorized appropriation of our name. Further insight resides at blog.cannacoin.org.

Foundational Roots and Technical Identity

Emerging from the Northwest Green Thumb (NWGT.org) forum, the Foundation launched Cannacoin on March 28, 2014, as a Scrypt-based Layer-1 blockchain, initially employing Proof of Work (PoW) before transitioning to Proof of Stake (PoS) on December 9, 2014, at block 370,000 (Cannacoin Community Foundation, 2025a). This shift, yielding a 2% annual staking interest, reflects a commitment to sustainability and equity, with a supply capped at 13.14 million coins—4.625 million mined via PoW—eschewing pre-mines or ICOs. Our Scrypt protocol, distinct from Bitcoin’s SHA-256, leverages memory-hard computation to broaden participation, aligning with our ethos of inclusivity (Percival, 2009; Nakamoto, 2008).

The Stellar Cannacoin Conundrum

A separate entity, Stellar Cannacoin, surfaced circa 2022 on the Stellar blockchain, offering a faucet, staking via StashApp, and liquidity pools (Stellar Cannacoin, 2022). While it shares a cannabis-crypto nexus, we must assert unequivocally: the Cannacoin Community Foundation has no affiliation with Stellar Cannacoin. Evidence suggests they adopted our name without consent, a practice not uncommon in intellectual property disputes—cf. the Stellar Blade trademark litigation, where a Louisiana firm contested Sony’s use of a similar moniker (Yahoo, 2024). Our priority remains our original blockchain, not the Stellar network, and this misnomer risks confounding our community’s legacy.

Mission and Market Relevance

The Foundation’s raison d’être is to redress the $45 billion U.S. cannabis market’s banking impasse, a byproduct of federal Schedule I classification (Flowhub, 2025). Cannacoin facilitates decentralized transactions, seed-to-sale tracking, and, soon via *Smoke*, advanced integrations like DeFi and NFTs (Cannacoin Community Foundation, 2025b). This contrasts with Stellar Cannacoin’s liquidity-focused model, underscoring our divergent trajectories. Our efforts target systemic change, not mere nomenclature mimicry, within a sector where cash-only constraints imperil safety and growth.

Community as Cornerstone

Our governance is a collective endeavor, uniting growers, dispensaries, and technologists under a decentralized ethos reminiscent of BitTorrent’s resilience (Cannacoin Community Foundation, 2025a). Leadership—spanning Subcreative (founder, resigned), Brent Kohler (Project Director since 2019), and Tom Burkhardt (Assistant Director since 2019)—honors contributors like the late Phil Cohen while engaging via Discord and Reddit. This stands apart from Stellar Cannacoin’s community, which, while active, operates under a borrowed banner unrelated to our decade-long endeavor.

Reaffirming Our Path

As we approach *Smoke*’s debut—no sooner than April 1, 2025—the Foundation reaffirms its primacy as the authentic Cannacoin steward. Stellar Cannacoin’s emergence, while noteworthy, does not dilute our mission or technical lineage. We invite scrutiny and engagement at blog.cannacoin.org, where our narrative—rooted in 2014’s pioneering spirit—continues to evolve, distinct from any latter-day imitators.

References

• Cannacoin Community Foundation, 2025a. Cannacoin Wiki. Available at: https://wiki.cannacoin.org (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Cannacoin Community Foundation, 2025b. Smoke by Cannacoin: A Peer-to-Peer Digital Cannabis Cash System. Available at: https://cannacoin.org (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Flowhub, 2025. 2025 Marijuana Industry Statistics. Flowhub. Available at: https://flowhub.com/cannabis-industry-statistics (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Nakamoto, S., 2008. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Available at: https://bitcoin.org (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Percival, C., 2009. Stronger Key Derivation via Sequential Memory-Hard Functions. Self-published. Available at: http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Stellar Cannacoin, 2022. Try Cannacoin. Stellar Cannacoin. Available at: https://stellarcannacoin.org (Accessed: 17 March 2025).
• Yahoo, 2024. Sony And Shift Up Sued Over Stellar Blade Name Rights. Yahoo Finance. Available at: https://www.yahoo.com (Accessed: 17 March 2025).