BITCOIN, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, PUBLIC CHAINS - STEEMIT CRYPTO ACADEMY SEASON 5 - HOMEWORK POST FOR TASK 05
INTRODUCTION
Good day Everyone,
Warm greetings to everyone at SteemitCryptoAcademy Community, My name is Al-amin and I am here again to present my homework post for Task 05 of the introductory course given by Professor @stream4u of SteemitCryptoAcademy Community. In this presentation, I will be giving my presentation on Question (3) from Task 5: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Public chains by Professor @stream4u.
source 
QUESTIONS
(3) What Is Public Chain and What will be the Advantages and Disadvantages of Public Chain?
What Is Public Chain?
A public chain is a purely decentralized, self-governed and autonomous digital public platform that is accessible to anyone. In other words, this means anyone can have access to a public chain, read and write information on a public chain as it is doesn't require any permission to join.
source Due to the fact that a public chain lacks restrictions, anyone on the internet can get access to it and start sending transactions and validating blocks.
Public chain depends on transaction validators and to validate transactions, the network makes use of two consensus mechanisms which are the Proof-of-Work (PoW) or the Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Two main public chains are;
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
Compared to a Private chain, a public chain provides better transparency and it is more decentralized as you do not need permission from anyone to join and no third party has control over the entire network.
Stored data on a public chain is immutable. Just like sunlight, everyone has access to it but nobody controls it.
Also note that public chain transactions cannot be tracked to the sender because the network offers anonymity. Anyone can add or download nodes to the network, and every node can read and write on the system's ledger.
What will be the Advantages and Disadvantages of Public Chain?
In accordance with the instruction of this question, I will be listing the Advantages and the Disadvantages of a public chain below;
Advantages:
- A key advantage of the public chain which to me is the most important is its Transparency, because of that and how nobody has control over it is why it is considered as a monetizing network that everyone trusts.
- The infrastructure of a public chain is completely decentralized. The network does not need any central authority to function.
- Anyone that is connected to the internet can go download a copy of the blockchain and has total authority to access and modify it to their preference.
- A public network is totally immutable, which means nobody can tamper with the network or steal private data.
- Each infrastructure that is part of a public chain is created to function with maximum security.
- The public chain is originally anonymous in nature, so anyone that goes to access it knows that their private information is not known to the network.
Disadvantages:
- One is the biggest problem of a public chain is its lack of speed, while other private chain networks like Visa can process over 1000 transactions per second, a public chain like bitcoin uses a second to process less than 5 transactions.
- Anyone can access a public chain without the need to provide their identity, just like that they become part of the network with full processing power.
- A public chain consumes so much energy and it also has high capital costs.
- A large amount of information and transactions that are handled on a public chain causes it to have performance redundancy.
- Some public chains suffer from integration issues.
CONCLUSION
Now that I understand what a public chain is, I can implement or modify any blockchain-based mechanism successfully using public chains.
I know that with all the differences of a public chain, there is no disputing the fact that blockchains for various sectors around the world are the future.
I also learnt about the advantages and the disadvantages of a public chain
I want to Thank professor @stream4u for this fantastic course and SteemitCryptoAcademy community for the opportunity. Thank you for reading through my post.
cc; @shemul21