Hence, while is a single purpose system, positioned itself as a protocol which is able to host multiple single purpose systems/ applications.
· If we send to an account having private key, acts as a currency.
o Read/ Write Storage.
o Call other contracts.
Technology Brief:
and have the same basic principle. Every (full) node on the processes every transaction and stores the entire state.
· uses a Turing complete programming language (Solidity), which means that anything can be calculated with enough computing power and enough time. is developed in a stack-based language.
· Block time in is 10 minutes compared to 10–19 seconds of .
· Similar to Orphan Blocks, has Uncle Blocks (Rejected Blocks). However, unlike the network, network incentivizes Uncle Block miners. This neutralizes the effect of network lag while distributing rewards.
· stores the most recent state of the network (unlike ) along with the transaction list of the . achieves this through the use of Patricia Trees as a part of state .
Consensus Model and :
uses a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus model almost similar to .
As on as on 24th February 2019 below is a comparison of and active nodes.
’s hashing algorithm is SHA-256, which can be performed efficiently using ASIC Miners. Problem with specialized miner, with extremely large organisations, with greater hash power, takes up huge percentage profit from the network.
The hashing algorithm is Ethash, designed to require more memory to make it harder to mine using ASICs. This allows for to have greater decentralization. has somewhat succeeded as there are no dedicated ASIC’s available to mine .
Security:
Some important examples:
51% attack: runs at a higher hashrate than its counterpart. As a result, the monetary cost of a hacker to perform 51% attack on is proportionately greater.
Some example of security features in :
Halting Problem: prevents attackers from creating programs that keeps on running on everyone’s computers for ever.
Execution expiry: If execution could stop at halfway through, it might be possible to perform weird attacks on contracts, eg: execution to expire when one half of changes are made and other half not made. Gas prevents that by reverting an execution.
Replay Attack: Every transaction has to have a unique incrementing nonce. If Paul sends 20 ETH to Robert, Robert should not take out that transaction and reinsert into the to gain 20 more ETH. Nonce prevents that.
Transaction Model:
eliminated the prevalent Transaction Model of granting trust to a central authority (in case, the central authority is compromised there is a Risk of Failure of the prevalent Transaction Model). uses the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) scheme while uses the Account Based model.
Every block in Block chain has a Gas Limit. If a miner, wants to fill a block, he will fill it with transactions that gives most profit, so every transation specifies a Gas Price (amount of ether willing to pay per unit Gas) and also specifies the maximum amount of gas that’s its willing to take.
If in a transaction:
· Execution takes up less gas. The transaction pays only for the computational steps that it uses.
· Execution goes Over the limit. All the execution gets reverted.
Industry Sectors:
has succeeded in getting the attention of multiple industries which has opened the window to a wide horizon of industry Dapps.
enabled the industries to create Sandboxes and run Proof of Concepts. can be considered as the Foundation towards mass of .
Looking forward:
and solves different real life problems and can co-exist.
What does the future hold?
has rolled out Segwit, and now, Lightening Network, to increase scalability. Rootstock Project (RSK) is adding value and functionality to the ecosystem by enabling smart-contracts, near instant payments and higher-scalability.
for now faces huge scalability issues, as seen during running Cryptokitties! It thrives towards a Proof of Stake Consensus mechanism through Casper.
Big Projects like have moved to their own Mainnet and using their own Consensus Algorithm (DPoS).
ICOs are dying out, STOs will be the next big thing.
Zilliqa is the first project to implement Sharding.
promises to be the first Peer reviewed protocol, which will kick start the Staking Era!
That’s a future to live and die for! There will be causalities. There will be winners. Buckle up and enjoy the thrill!
Sources:
Published at Sun, 24 Feb 2019 11:06:20 +0000
