The Elements Project
=================================
This is the integration and staging tree for the Elements Project, a series of
improvements and extensions to the Bitcoin protocol.

What is the Elements Project?
-----------------
Elements is an open source collaborative project where we work on a collection
of experiments to more rapidly bring technical innovation to Bitcoin.  Elements
are features that are proposed and developed in this technical community that in
arbitrary combinations can be fashioned into sidechains.

https://github.com/ElementsProject/elementsproject.github.io

Learn more on [the Elements Project website](https://www.elementsproject.org).

What is Bitcoin?
----------------
https://www.bitcoin.org

Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to
anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate
with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried
out collectively by the network. Elements Alpha is the name of open source
software which enables the use of this currency.

For more information, as well as an immediately useable, binary version of
the Bitcoin Core software, see https://www.bitcoin.org/en/download.

What is Elements Alpha?
-----------------------
https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements/tree/alpha

Elements Alpha is the Elements project's first experimental test chain.

Compared to Bitcoin itself, it adds the following features:
 * [Confidential Transactions][confidential-transactions]
 * [Segregated Witness][segregated-witness]
 * [Relative Lock Time][relative-lock-time]
 * [Schnorr Signatures][schnorr-signatures]
 * [Additional opcodes][opcodes]
 * [Deterministic Peg (pegged to Bitcoin's testnet currency).][deterministic-peg]
 * [Signed Blocks][signed-blocks]

Getting Started
---------------
See alpha-README.md for build and use instructions.

License
-------
Elements Alpha is released under the terms of the MIT license. See [COPYING](COPYING) for more
information or see http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.

[confidential-transactions]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/confidential-transactions
[segregated-witness]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/segregated-witness
[relative-lock-time]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/relative-lock-time
[schnorr-signatures]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/schnorr-signatures
[opcodes]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/opcodes
[deterministic-peg]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/deterministic-pegs
[signed-blocks]: https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/signed-blocks
