In 2013 and 2014, demand for anonymous cryptocurrencies steadily increased as cryptocurrency enthusiasts quickly realized that on-chain Bitcoin payments are not as private as most investors originally though. In an attempt to ameliorate this problem, Dogecoin Dark was created in September 2014 with the two-pronged goal of maximum anonymity and true decentralization.

Almost two years after launching Dogecoin Dark, the team re-branded to Verge with the same privacy and decentralization goals.

Verge leverages a variety of technologies to pursue its goal of an extreme-privacy cryptocurrency.

Wraith protocol offers Verge investors a toggle switch in the Verge core wallet allows users to chose to transact in total privacy via stealth addressing or not. This optionality to initiate an onchain transaction with the standard level of privacy expected when making a Bitcoin transaction or to transact with a Monero-esque level of privacy.

Tor is a message encryption privacy tool that Verge default integrates into its wallets to ensure privacy for peer-to-peer information messaging.

I2P tunneling offers a high level of redundancy to information requests and transfers across the network. When a network participant wants to contact another node for the first time, I2P routes the communication request through a custom distributed hash table (DHT) that finds similar existing tunnels with other users.

Verge supports atomic swaps too, which supports their goal of decentralization by allowing cross-chain value transfers (or swaps) between chains that both support atomic cross-chain trading without the need for a trusted third party to monitor and arbitrate the exchange. Verge supports this by implementing BIP65 Check Lock Time Verify (CLTV).