Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W1 - Favorite Blockchain Network by @churchangel
Hello every one very glad to be a participant in the new initiative that has been implemented by the steemit crypto academy, I hope to learn more while participating in the engagement contest.
1: Tell us about your favorite Blockchain network, its history, and why it's your favorite.
2: Does the network has some earliest shortcomings and how has the network's team taken care of the problem?
3: What changes do you think would make the network better?
4: Write about a project that is built on your favorite Blockchain.
1: Tell us about your favorite Blockchain network, its history, and why it's your favorite.
BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN
It goes without saying that Bitcoin today is the pioneer for all cryptocurrencies, The idea of decentralized finance was conceived and published to the public in a whitepaper titled Peer to Peer Electronic cash system where he explained how the new system would attempt to tackle the double spending problem other attempts to create Electronic cash had in the earlier phase, other attempts were not successful because none could figure out a way to tackle the Double spending issue, Bitcoin solved the double-spending problem with a peer to peer network system and the Hash-based proof of work algorithm, the paper which was released to the public by the mysterious author Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 October.
Bitcoin was created as a digital currency with no physicality that can be transacted between different individuals, can be sent and received between users without third parties and each transaction is recorded and stored onchain on the blockchain ledger which is published publicly in the blockchains public ledger.
The following year 2009 bitcoin was released to the public as an open source software afterwhich the first activity performed on it was done by the creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto mining the first ever 50BTC in the first ever block which is today referred to as the genesis block.The first transaction to ever be performed on the blockchain was done by Laszlo Hanyecs purchasing pizzas for 10,000BTC tokens which opened a gateway for thousands of transactions at the time.
Bitcoin is my favorite blockchain because one can regard to it as the pioneer to all cryptocurrency and it is on some occasions referred to as the father of all crypto, it created a path for all cryptocurrency to be created and showed how much potential the defi has and not too long after other cryptocurrencies were birthed with ideas or concepts similar to bitcoin. A few years after bitcoin launched we saw the likes of Litecoin and namecoin popping up to provide the public with alternatives to the bitcoin blockchain and a few more years down the road others like the ethereum were seen down the line with more modified and better applications.
The second reason why I would pick bitcoin as my favorite is cause of its the most vastly recognized blockchain and has the most use cases or real-life appliances than most other cryptocurrencies, we can see cases of different merchants all over the world are on a daily basis accepting bitcoin as a method of payment hence its a day trading volume and market transaction seems to by far exceed every other cryptocurrency.
Thirdly it is no news that as BTC falls other cryptocurrencies are seen to follow a similar behavioral pattern and fall while if BTC is seen to rise most of the other cryptocurrencies are seen to rise in concurrence with it this is because BTC accounts for more than half of the cryptocurrency market cap hence it pulls the market heavily in any direction it moves toward.
Does the network has some earliest shortcomings and how has the network's team take care of the problem?
The Bitcoin blockchain is known for its very slow network transaction speed accounting for 5-10 Transactions per second only which was very meager compared to the centralized payment system on the ground at the time that had a TPS of 1500. Bitcoin's slow TPS was a result of the small block size.
Bitcoin had a lot of chunks of data coming in and a very small block size which can not process all the data as they are coming in hence this led to a backlog and data chunk in the blockchain, which lead to a delay in the processing of transactions in the blockchain and solutions were sought for the problem
Number one solution that was implemented was the hard forking of the BTC blockchain which led to the creation of Bitcoin cash in 2017 where the blockchain was split into two, The Bitcoin cash was an exact replica of Bitcoin but in this case, it was created with a lot more block size increasing the block size from the original 1MB to 8MB which did help in reducing some weight off the Bitcoin blockchain and data were processed a little bit faster.
The second solution to the Bitcoin scalability was implemented in 2018 when the lightning network was introduced to the Bitcoin blockchain, what this does was that instead of carrying out each everyday transaction on-chain and getting charged or getting delayed for processing payment a solution was proposed to carry most This this transaction off-chain. These transactions are carried out between two or more parties in an off-chain network where transactions are processed and carried out almost instantly and without almost fee-less after which transactions will be recorded on-chain and payments are disbursed accordingly, what this solution did was to also help reduce data chunks on-chain and carry some of the weight to the off-chain network so more space can be allowed in the main on-chain blockchain.
What changes do you think would make the network better?
The Bitcoin blockchain is not without shortcomings, the most noticeable one at the moment is so far the
Proof Of Work consensus algorithm electricity problem, although the Consensus Algorithm is safe but it is not eco friendly as it requires a lot of power and electricity to run and this is taking a toll in the environment.
In the article in this link and the screenshot posted above, we can see that Bitcoin's energy consumption is compared to that of different countries energy consumption
In my own personal opinion, I would say that changing the Blockchain consensus algorithm can be a very good move towards rectifying bitcoin’s high electricity consumption problem, they are other proven and very effective blockchain consensus algorithms that have been seen to be as good as the POW like the DPoS or the PoS which have been seen to be more eco friendly and as well very secure if the bitcoin blockchain can implement a different blockchain consensus algorithm it would go a long way and help the environment.
in a nutshell a change of the consensus algorithm could solve one of the biggest problems that the bitcoin blockchain faces currently
Write about a project that is built on your favorite Blockchain
LIGHTNING NETWORK
The lightning network is a Layer 2 blockchain solution designed to handle more often and micro-transactions that can be done off-chain and later recorded on-chain to confirm transactions. The lightning network is a network specifically designed to handle the day-to-day microtransaction, it is built on top of the bitcoin blockchain which offers a solution to the reoccurring bitcoin scalability issue. The sole aim of creating the lightning network in 2018 was to reduce the congestion on the bitcoin blockchain by recording transactions off-chain so as to give for more transactions on the bitcoin blockchain network.
The Lightning Network is a Layer 2 solution that transacts off-chain but still maintains the bitcoin network security to enable way much faster validations and exchange of assets for a much lesser transaction fee and wait time, each transaction in the lightning networks begins and ends in the bitcoin blockchain.
CONCLUSION
The Bitcoin blockchain is known to be the father of all cryptocurrencies not only because of the fact that it was the first cryptocurrency to be created but also because of the fact that it influences the cryptocurrency in general by a lot, Bitcoin paved way for all cryptocurrencies to be birthed and till date, no crypto has been seen to match it in volume or value.
Yes indeed. Thanks for your feedback
Bitcoin has a very strong influence over other coins no wonder when it bearish the whole market is also bearish. Thanks for the knowledge
You are welcome. Thanks for the feed back
Bitcoin succeeded where other attempts to create electronic cash failed. I didn’t know Proof of work had that much energy consumption. Your article taught me a lot thank you
I totally agree with you on the suggested change in the consensus algorithm of the bitcoin network, it can solve the energy consumption problem. Great post