The Genesis Block by @nackasnelson

Due to the digitalization of the world, cryptocurrencies have been part of the daily activities of people because of their decentralized nature. This can be seen as Nigeria has gone cryptorize by being the first country in Africa to create cryptocurrency known as eNaira with this, there is a need for us all to understand the importance and origin of the Genesis Block.

1a) What is the Genesis Block?

A group of persons or persons is known as Satoshi Nakamoto on 03^th March 2009 built and launched the first-ever Blockchain technology which is known as the Genesis Block. Genesis means creation and in the Bible where God created the world and where it originated.

Genesis block stands as the beginner block of the blockchain whereby it explains the way and how the other blocks are formed with all the blocks form being connected by hash and are all linked to the genesis block.

The Genesis block is the origin of other blocks on any blockchain with each of those blocks being connected to their previous block. Considering the genesis block as the blueprint of other blocks, there is, therefore, no other block before it. The block(Genesis block) is the foundation of any blockchain and the fundamental block is known as the initial block or block 0(zero) or block 1(one) in the blockchain.

Features of the Genesis Block

With the genesis block being the first block, it has six (6) unique features which are very important to be looked into as seen below.

1) Enhanced Security

Since a blockchain is an idea of a decentralized authority it eliminates the central authority where anyone can arrange the characteristic of the network for their benefit by encrypting each block thereby increasing its security.

2) Distributed ledgers

All users of the blockchain keep a ledger by distributing computational power across other computers for a better outcome.

3) Decentralized Technology

There is no governing authority, not a particular person controlling the system but rather a group of nodes that keeps the network thereby making it decentralized.

4) Makes it Faster

Blockchain users can easily carry out fast transfers which interns save time.

5) Consensus

The consensus helps the blockchain in its decision making

6) Immutability

On the blockchain, every node of the network has a copy of the digital ledger which checks the validity of every transaction which is being added, and if many think it to be valid, then it will be added to the ledger thereby promoting transparency.

b) What are the significances of the Genesis Block?

With countless importance of the Genesis Block in the blockchain world which has powered the cryptocurrency world, we will be looking at a few

• The uniqueness of The genesis block in a blockchain is because it doesn't make use of a blueprint not does it reference other blocks and also its mining rewards are unspendable.

• Unlike centralized systems such as banks with central control and detailed explanation of decisions not open and made known to everyone, the Genesis block is decentralized in such a way that all its rewards, block height, transaction receipts are being made available for users to see thereby promoting transparency in the blockchain.

• With the Genesis block being the blueprint of the blockchain, it maintains the structural arrangement of the content of the genesis block every other block thereby controlling the things which are needed for a new block to be mined.

• The Genesis block helps as a guideline in the orderliness of a blockchain thereby explaining how data on a blockchain is to be stored.

c) Explore the Bitcoin Genesis block and indicate how many transactions so far and the number of bitcoins.

When the creation of Bitcoin became a reality after a group or person in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto did its first transaction giving birth to what we are looking at today which is the Genesis block (Block 0) and also lead to the creation of other cryptocurrencies.

The Genesis block is also known as the block reward and at the time of the creation of Bitcoin was in 2009 the block reward was 50 BTC and after the first halving which took place on Nov 28 2012 saw it reduced to 25 BTC and on July 9, 2016, that is 4 years later it underwent it second halve reducing it again to 12.5 BTC and on May 11, 2020, it went through the third halve reducing it again to 6.25 BTC and we will be expecting the 4 halve in 2024.

In exploring the Genesis block of bitcoin, we follow the following steps

1. First when open the blockchain
2. Then we click on the explorer section
3. Then we input the address of block 0
4. We then click on BTC
5. We then use the link blockchainto access the presently available bitcoin.

From the above screenshot,
Hash address: 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
Confirmations: 708,016
Block height: 0
Miner: Unknown
Number of transactions: 1
Block Reward: 50.00000000 BTC
Recipients address: 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b

Click on the wallet address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa where the first BTC was sent when it opens, we see the following information
Address: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa
Transactions: 3,100
Total received: 68.52387865 BTC
Total sent: 0.00000000 BTC
As at the time my post was created.

From the above screenshot, it can be seen that that last transaction was sent on 03-11-2021 at 05:10 am and the amount of BTC sent was 0.00152428BTC.

The transactions seen above a carried out by miners as a form of accolade to Satoshi Nakamoto.

Conclusion

We have in detail the origin of Bitcoin from its Genesis block and how it came to existence. The Genesis block is the origin of blockchains and cryptocurrencies transactions and this all started from the BTC Genesis block.

Thanks, prof @awesononso for such an awesome topic that has made me learned so much.

Cc: @nane15