Cryptocurrencies – Crypto Portal

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Basic cryptormations

What blockchain is.

Blockchain is public and can not be modified in terms of its technology history, distributed data series, grouped in time numbered “sections” and “arrays” (blocks). The first historical application of technology took place in the field of digital currencies and was the case of Bitcoin. This technology can be applied to a number of additional areas of human activity, such as vote counting, education, health, preservation and transparency of historical, cultural, financial and other records, product and service certification, social networks, banking, insurance, construction sectors, news transparency, etc. Blockchain technology comes from a network of people who create and share something in common. The network is decentralized and evenly distributed, so there is no one person on the network who is superior to another person in any way, so there is no priority (of any kind).

What bitcoin is.

Bitcoin is a consensus network that has created a new payment system and digital form of money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network operated by its users, without central authority / management or intermediaries.

What Ethereum is.

Ethereum provides open access to digital money and data-related services. It is a technology built for the community with key component ether cryptocurrency (ETH) and thousands of other applications. You do not need to provide all your personal data to use an Ethereum application. Ethereum creates the economy based on value, not surveillance. Allows you to transfer money or enter into agreements directly with someone else, without having to use intermediaries or individuals. No government or business has control over Ethereum.

What Altcoins are.

“Altcoins” are alternative currencies, ie an alternative to the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. The first altcoin created after Bitcoin was Namecoin (NMC) in 2011. Today there are thousands of digital currencies that use BTC based software and their developers have changed some details. There are also altcoins branches of Ethereum (ETH).

How Bitcoin was created.

Bitcoin is the first application of the concept called “cryptocurrency”, first described in 1998 by Wei Dai in the cypherpunks mailing list, advocating the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control the creation and its transactions, despite a central authority / management. The first specifications of Bitcoin and the proof of its concept were published in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, who to this day remains unknown whether he is a real person, a person with a pseudonym or a group of people. Bitcoin software and protocol are open to the public and any developer can inspect the code or make their own modified versions.

How controls the Bitcoin network.

There is no owner of the Bitcoin network and that is part of its uniqueness. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can not force any changes to the Bitcoin protocol, as all users are free to choose the version of the software they are using. To maintain compatibility, all users must use software that obeys the same rules. Bitcoin can only work properly with the full consent of all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this general consensus.

How Bitcoin works.

Bitcoin is considered as a mobile phone or computer application that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows the user to send and receive Bitcoins through it. In the background, the Bitcoin network shares a public ledger called a blockchain. This book contains every transaction ever processed by the network, allowing the user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the shipping addresses, allowing all users to have full control when sending Bitcoins from their own Bitcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions that use the computing power of specialized software (hardware) and earn a reward in Bitcoins for this service, a process called mining.

Can i buy part of Bitcoin?

Yes, it is possible to buy a part of Bitcoin. The smallest subdivision of Bitcoin corresponds to one hundred millionth of an individual Bitcoin or 0.00000001 BTC.

Where i can buy Bitcoin?

There are several options for buying Bitcoin. The two easiest methods are buying through an internet exchange and buying through Bitcoin ATM. The easiest way is to use an online exchange that supports credit card payment and / or bank transfer. You can also purchase Bitcoin using a Bitcoin ATM with cash or credit card and you will need to enter the address of the Bitcoin wallet where you wish to receive the Bitcoins you just purchased.

Bitcοin (BTC)Εthereum (ETH)Litecoin (LTC)Dash (DASH)ZCASH (ZEC)RIPPLE (XRP)

Url

https://www.bitcoin.com/

Bitcoin (₿) is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. The cryptocurrency was invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency began use in 2009 when its implementation was released as open-source software.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity (and thus carbon footprint) used by mining, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges. Some investors and economists have characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times. Others have used it as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin. In September 2021, El Salvador officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, in the face of internal and international criticism, becoming the first nation to do so.

The word bitcoin was defined in a white paper published on 31 October 2008. It is a compound of the words bit and coin. No uniform convention for bitcoin capitalization exists; some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network and bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account. The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Oxford English Dictionary advocate the use of lowercase bitcoin in all cases.

Units and divisibility

The unit of account of the bitcoin system is the bitcoin. Currency codes for representing bitcoin are BTC and XBT. Its Unicode character is ₿. One bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the millibitcoin (mBTC), equal to 1⁄1000 bitcoin, and the satoshi (sat), which is the smallest possible division, and named in homage to bitcoin’s creator, representing 1⁄100000000 (one hundred millionth) bitcoin. 100,000 satoshis are one mBTC.

Blockchain

The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It is implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a hash of the previous block up to the genesis block in the chain. A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain. Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications.

Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes. To achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership each network node stores its own copy of the blockchain. At varying intervals of time averaging to every 10 minutes, a new group of accepted transactions, called a block, is created, added to the blockchain, and quickly published to all nodes, without requiring central oversight. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin was spent, which is needed to prevent double-spending. A conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, but the blockchain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.

Individual blocks, public addresses and transactions within blocks can be examined using a blockchain explorer.

Mobile payments made easy

Bitcoin when used on a mobile device allows you to pay with a simple two-step scan-and-pay. There’s no need to sign up, swipe your card, type a PIN, or sign anything. All you need to receive Bitcoin payments is to display the QR code in your Bitcoin wallet app and let the other party scan your mobile, or touch the two phones together (using NFC radio technology).

Works everywhere, anytime

Similarly to email, you don’t need to ask recipients you’re sending bitcoin to, to use the same software, wallets or service providers. You just need their bitcoin address and then you can transact with them anytime. The Bitcoin network is always running and never sleeps, even on weekends and holidays.

Choose your own fees

There is no fee to receive bitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Most wallets have reasonable default fees, and higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it’s possible to send 100,000 bitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 bitcoin.

Protect your identity

With Bitcoin, there’s no credit card number that malicious actors can collect in order to steal from you. In fact, it’s even possible in some cases to send a payment without revealing your identity, almost like with physical money. You should, however, take note that some effort can be required to protect your privacy.

Fast international payments

Sending bitcoins across borders is as easy as sending them across the street. There are no banks to make you wait three business days, no extra fees for making an international transfer, and no special limitations on the minimum or maximum amount you can send.

Url

https://www.ethereum.org/

Ethereum (ETH) is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine (Ethereum VM), the Ethereum Virtual Machine (VM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. Ethereum also provides a cryptocurrency token called “ether”, which can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant nodes for computations performed. “Gas”, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.

As an open source platform, Ethereum greatly simplifies the implementation of blockchain technology, which explains the interest of not only new startups, but also major SOFTWARE developers, such as Microsoft, IBM and Acronis. Also conventional companies such as VTB banks, Sberbank, Lufthansa and S7 airlines, as well as international charitable organizations showed interest in the platform.

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale between July and August 2014. The system went live on 30 July 2015, with 11.9 million eth coins “premined” for the crowdsale. This accounts for approximately 13 percent of the total circulating supply.

In 2016, as a result of the collapse of The DAO project, Ethereum was forked into two separate blockchains – the new forked version became Ethereum (ETH), and the original continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Origin

Ethereum was initially described in Ethereum white paper by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.

At the time of public announcement in January 2014, the core Ethereum team was Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson. Formal development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse). Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowdsale during July–August 2014, with the participants buying the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, bitcoin. While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.

Banking for everyone

Not everyone has access to financial services. But all you need to access Ethereum and its lending, borrowing and savings products is an internet connection.

A more private internet

You don’t need to provide all your personal details to use an Ethereum app. Ethereum is building an economy based on value, not surveillance.

A peer-to-peer network

Ethereum allows you to move money, or make agreements, directly with someone else. You don’t need to go through intermediary companies.

Censorship-resistant

No government or company has control over Ethereum. This decentralization makes it nearly impossible for anyone to stop you from receiving payments or using services on Ethereum.

Commerce guarantees

Ethereum creates a more level playing field. Customers have a secure, built-in guarantee that funds will only change hands if you provide what was agreed. You don’t need large company clout to do business.

Compatibility for the win

Better products and experiences are being built all the time because Ethereum products are compatible by default. Companies can build on each other’s success.

Url

https://litecoin.com/en/

Litecoin (LTC) is a decentralized cryptocurrency, a fork of Bitcoin intended by its designers to be more feasibly mined using consumer-grade hardware.

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer crypto currency that was developed on the base of Bitcoin and has an open source code. Unlike Bitcoin, the Litecoin blockchain is able to process a greater number of transactions.

History

Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011. It was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes), increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (scrypt), instead of SHA-256), and a slightly modified GUI.

During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.

Litecoin reached a $1 billion market capitalization in November 2013. By late November 2017, its market capitalization was US $4,600,081,733 ($85.18 per coin).

In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top-5 (by market cap) cryptocurrencies to adopt Segregated Witness. Later in May of the same year, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second.

Technical characteristics

The creator of Litecoin coin – Charlie Lee, a former employee of Google – took the Bitcoin source code as a basis and created a crypto currency that needs 2.5 minutes to generate a block – this is 4 times faster than Bitcoin .

The full emission of Litecoin makes out 84 million coins, which is also 4 times more than of Bitcoin. The start reward for a block made out 50 Litecoins, and now it is 25 Litecoins. The Litecoin generation speed reduces twice for every 840, 000 blocks. It is supposed that about ¾ Litecoins will be generated by 2020.

Litecoin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm. The equipment for using this algorithm is more expensive than on SHA-256, which is used by Bitcoin. As the process requires more memory, graphics processors suit better for the Litecoin mining.

Your Money

Litecoin (LTC) is decentralised money, free from censorship and open to all. Send low cost private, secure, borderless payments to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Blockchain Secured

The Litecoin blockchain is the largest global scrypt based network, operating with 100% uptime since 2011 securing and tracasting billions of dollars of value.

Decentralised Finance

There’s no approval needed to join the new age of money. Download your free wallet to join and invest in the future of finance.

Evolving and Immutable

Litecoin development pioneers technologies including Lightning for instant global settlement of funds and Atomic Swaps for cross blockchain trustless trading.

Url

https://www.dash.org/

Dash is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users, which are called “masternodes”.

History

The currency was launched in January 2014 as “Xcoin” by Evan Duffield, as a fork of the Bitcoin protocol. It is an altcoin and in its early days it was subject to pump and dump speculation. It was rebranded as Darkcoin, which received press for being used in dark net markets. In March 2015, it rebranded again with the name Dash as a portmanteau of ‘digital cash’. As of August 2016, Dash is no longer used in any major dark net markets worth noting.

In early 2017 Duffield, who lived in the Phoenix area, and some other people working on Dash took space in a business incubator at Arizona State University. The Dash DAO later funded a blockchain research lab at ASU.

As of April 2018, Dash’s market capitalization was around $4.3 billion and it was one of the top 12 cryptocurrencies.

As of February 2019, Dash was the most popular cryptocurrency in Venezuela according to Der Spiegel.

Design and governance

Dash was designed to allow transactions quickly and to have a swift governance structure in order to overcome shortfalls in Bitcoin. What makes Dash different from Bitcoin is that it splits its rewards into three categories: 45% goes to miners, 45% goes to masternodes (these are computers that additional services in the network and have a significant investment in Dash tokens), and 10% goes towards its decentralized governance budget.

Governance

Governance is handled through a form of decentralized autonomous organization in which decisions are made on a blockchain via masternodes. Masternodes perform standard node functions like hosting a copy of the blockchain, relaying messages, and validating transactions on the network, and in addition act as shareholders, voting on proposals for improving Dash’s ecosystem. Anyone with 1,000 Dash Coins (DASH), the protocols native cryptocurrency, can become a masternode owner. Along with masternodes, the system includes standard nodes and miners. The system’s decentralization has been criticized due to a mishap, which allowed too many coins to be distributed at release. This concentrated the wealth to a small group, giving them disproportionate power in decisions over the currency’s future.

Payments Infrastructure for Developers

Enable your application with the financial power of the Dash cryptocurrency — borderless, instantly transferrable, and supported by a decentralized cloud providing robust payments infrastructure.

Application Data Storage

Enhance your financial applications with robust user metadata. Leverage the blockchain to store data in a document-oriented database.

Identities & Usernames

Robust, flexible user data structures that are fully decentralized and always available. Usernames make it easier than ever to transact.

Url

https://z.cash/

Zcash is a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide enhanced privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Zcash is based on Bitcoin’s codebase. It shares many similarities, such as a fixed total supply of 21 million units.

Transactions can be “transparent” and similar to bitcoin transactions in which case they are controlled by a t-addr, or they can be “shielded” and are controlled by a z-addr. A shielded transaction uses a type of zero-knowledge proof called zk-SNARKs, which provides anonymity to the coin holders in the transaction. Zcash coins are either in a transparent pool or a shielded pool. As of December 2017 only around 4% of Zcash coins were in the shielded pool and at that time most cryptocurrency wallet programs did not support z-addrs and no web-based wallets supported them. The shielded pool of Zcash coins were further analyzed for security and it was found that the anonymity set can be shrunk considerably by heuristics-based identifiable patterns of usage.

Zcash affords private transactors the option of “selective disclosure”, allowing a user to prove payment for auditing purposes. One such reason is to allow private transactors the choice to comply with anti-money laundering or tax regulations. “Transactions are auditable but disclosure is under the participant’s control.” The company has hosted virtual meetings with law enforcement agencies around the U.S. to explain these fundamentals and has gone on the record of saying that “they did not develop the currency to facilitate illegal activity”.

While miners receive 80% of a block reward, 20% is given to the “Zcash development fund”: 8% to Zcash Open Major Grants, 7% to Electric Coin Co., and 5% to The Zcash Foundation.

Low-fee transactions

Zcash supports fast transactions with a low fee of .0001 Zcash. Zcash is supported on a large number of top wallets and exchanges.

Address and transaction privacy

Zcash offers two types of addresses: shielded and transparent. Shielded addresses are not visible and transactions between shielded addresses do not reveal either address, the transaction amount or the contents of the encrypted memo field. Transparent addresses and transactions between them are publicly viewable on the Zcash blockchain, in the same way that Bitcoin addresses are viewable.

Encrypted memos

A memo field is available for shielded transactions. This allows the sender to include relevant information to the receiver, completely encrypted. This is useful for passing along messages and instructions, or to ensure compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act “Travel” rule.

Viewing keys

Owners of shielded addresses can disclose transaction details for regulatory compliance or auditing. The owner has the option to disclose all incoming transactions and the memo field, but does not have access to the sender address unless identifying information is included in the memo field. Zcash will soon support full viewing keys that reveal all transaction values in and out of the address.

Payment disclosure

Either the sender or receiver of a transaction may disclose transaction-specific details to 3rd parties as may be needed for visibility, compliance or auditing. The receiver may disclose a transaction value and memo but does not have access to the sender’s address. This is currently an experimental feature.

Url

https://ripple.com/

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. Released in 2012, Ripple is built upon a distributed open source protocol, and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. Ripple purports to enable “secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks”. The ledger employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP.

In December 2020, Ripple Labs and two of its executives were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for selling XRP tokens, which the SEC classified as unregistered securities.

History

Ripple was conceived by Jed McCaleb and built by Arthur Britto and David Schwartz who then approached Ryan Fugger who had debuted in 2005 as a financial service to provide secure payment options to members of an online community via a global network. Fugger had developed a system called OpenCoin which would transform into Ripple. The company also created its own form of digital currency referred to as XRP to allow financial institutions to transfer money with negligible fees and wait-time. In 2013, the company reported interest from banks for using its payment system.

By 2018, over 100 banks had signed up, but most of them were only using Ripple’s XCurrent messaging technology, while avoiding the XRP cryptocurrency due to its volatility problems. Representatives of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), whose market dominance is being challenged by Ripple, have argued that the scalability issues of Ripple and other blockchain solutions remain unsolved, confining them to bilateral and intra-bank applications. A Ripple executive acknowledged in 2018 that “We started out with your classic blockchain, which we love. But the feedback from the banks is you can’t put the whole world on a blockchain.”

Ripple relies on a common shared ledger, which is a distributed database storing information about all Ripple accounts. Chris Larsen told the Stanford Graduate School of Business that the network was managed by a network of independent servers which compare their transaction records, and that servers could in theory belong to anyone, including banks or market makers. Ripple validates accounts and balances instantly for payment transmission and delivers payment notification within a few seconds. Payments are irreversible, and there are no chargebacks.

Ripple Labs continued as the primary contributors of code to the consensus verification system behind Ripple. In 2014, the protocol gained access to the US banking system amid concerns over security and a lack of regulation.

Fast

Payments moving across the XRP Ledger settle in 4 seconds.

Scalable

XRP consistently handles 1,500 transactions per second, 24×7, and can scale to handle the same throughput as Visa.

Distributed

Run by a decentralized network of 150+ validators globally.

Stable

XRP’s seven-year track record of stable technology and governance makes it ready for institutional and enterprise use.

Eco-Friendly

The XRP Ledger settles XRP transactions instantly without the energy costs associated with proof of work (or mining).

Cardano (ADA)Monero (XMR)Eos (EOS)Neo (NEO)Bcash (BCH)

Url

https://cardano.org/

Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.

Cardano was founded in 2015 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. The development of the project is overseen and supervised by the Cardano Foundation based in Zug, Switzerland. It is the largest cryptocurrency to use a proof-of-stake blockchain, which is seen as a greener alternative to proof-of-work protocols.

Background

The platform began development in 2015 and was launched in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum. Hoskinson left Ethereum after a dispute with one of its co-founders, Vitalik Buterin; Hoskinson wanted to accept venture capital and create a for-profit entity, while Buterin wanted to keep it running as a nonprofit organization. After leaving, he co-founded IOHK, a blockchain-engineering company, whose primary business is the development of Cardano, alongside the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. The platform is named after Gerolamo Cardano, while the cryptocurrency itself is named after Ada Lovelace. The Ada sub-unit is the Lovelace; one Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelaces.

Technical aspects

Atypically, Cardano does not have a white paper. Instead, it uses design principles intended to overcome issues faced by other cryptocurrencies such as scalability, interoperability, and regulatory compliance.

Cardano uses a proof-of-stake protocol named Ouroboros; this is in contrast to Bitcoin and Ethereum, which use proof-of-work protocols. Proof-of-stake blockchains use significantly less energy than proof-of-work chains. In February 2021, Hoskinson estimated the Cardano network used 6 GWh annually, less than 0.01% of the 110.53 TWh used by the Bitcoin network as estimated by the University of Cambridge. Cardano reached a market cap of $77 billion in May 2021 and solidified its position as the biggest proof-of-stake cryptocurrency.

Within the Cardano platform, Ada exists on the settlement layer. This layer is similar to Bitcoin and keeps track of transactions. The second layer is the computation layer. This layer is designed to be similar to Ethereum, enabling smart contracts and applications to run on the platform.

Proof-Of-Stake And Ouroboros: The Most Environmentally Sustainable Blockchain Protocol

Ouroboros is the first peer-reviewed, verifiably secure blockchain protocol, and Cardano is the first blockchain to implement it. Ouroboros enables the Cardano network’s decentralization, and allows it to sustainably scale to global requirements without, crucially, compromising security.

The protocol is the culmination of tireless effort, building on foundational research, and is propelled by a vision for more secure and transparent global payment systems, and a means to redistribute, more fairly, power and control.

The Highest Standards In Development, Rooted In Science

Cardano is developed using evidence-based methods: a novel combination of formal methods, which are normally found in critical high-stake applications, and an agile approach, which helps the project remain adaptable and responsive to emerging requirements and new innovations. To support global applications, systems, and solutions, we believe security assurance is not a choice: it’s a requirement. Our protocol implementations and platform integrations are first researched, challenged, and mathematically modeled and tested before they are specified. These specifications then inform development which, in turn, is independently audited. The result is a codebase offering an unrivaled level of assurance.

Unparalleled Security - And The Makings Of A Trustless World

Cardano makes it possible for any actors that do not know each other – and have no reason to trust one another – to interact and transact, securely. It’s a platform for building trust where none might naturally exist, opening up whole new markets and opportunities. Through Ouroboros, Cardano is provably secure against bad actors and Sybil attacks. Every transaction, interaction, and exchange is immutably and transparently recovered, and securely validated using multi-signature and a pioneering extended UTXO model.

Open And Incentivized Participation

With a committed community at its core, Cardano is an open-source project developed through open participation. To ensure the longevity and health of the network, Cardano features an incentive mechanism that rewards users – either as stake pool operators or stake delegators – for their participation. The platform is built and expanded through enhancement and improvement protocols. Cardano’s governance system gives everyone a democratic voice; ada holders can submit or vote on proposals to upgrade the platform or help determine the direction of development. The governance model uniquely positions Cardano for future growth and development, and allows it to introduce new capability tailored to its user’s needs. It ensures Cardano and its community can continuously fund and decide upon platform and ecosystem improvements.

Scalable And Environmentally Sustainable

Ouroboros allows Cardano to scale to global requirements with minimal energy requirements. Unlike other blockchains, Cardano does not require exponentially more energy to increase performance and add blocks. The performance-sustainability balance is achieved through a combination of novel approaches, including multi-ledger, side chains, and parallel transaction processing through multi-party state channels.

The network proliferates as the number of stake pools increases, while parameters are set and adjusted to measure the attractiveness of specific stake pools. This is a network that rewards participation directly. Cardano is designed to ensure that those who act in the best interests of the network are also acting in their own best interests. This ensures the development of a healthy ecosystem, and, in turn, the endurance, health, and robustness of the network, now and into the future. The combination of sustainability and scalability allows Cardano to achieve the throughput required to meet the evolving demands of global systems: financial, logistics, identity, societal.

Url

https://www.getmonero.org/

Monero (/məˈnɛroʊ/; XMR) is a decentralized cryptocurrency. It uses a public distributed ledger with privacy-enhancing technologies that obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading monero, transaction amounts, address balances, or transaction histories.

The protocol is open source and based on CryptoNote, a concept described in a 2013 white paper authored by Nicolas van Saberhagen. The cryptography community used this concept to design Monero, and deployed its mainnet in 2014. Monero uses ring signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, “stealth addresses”, and IP address obscuring methods to obfuscate transaction details. These features are baked into the protocol, though users can optionally share view keys for third party auditing. Transactions are validated through a miner network running RandomX, a proof of work algorithm. The algorithm issues new coins to miners, and was designed to be resistant to ASIC mining.

Monero has the third largest developer community among cryptocurrencies, behind bitcoin and Ethereum. Its privacy features have attracted cypherpunks and users desiring privacy measures not provided in other cryptocurrencies. It is increasingly used in illicit activities such as money laundering, darknet markets, ransomware, and cryptojacking. The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has posted bounties for contractors that can develop monero tracing technologies.

Background

Monero’s roots can be traced back to CryptoNote, a cryptocurrency protocol first described in a white paper published by Nicolas van Saberhagen (presumed pseudonymous) in October 2013. The author described privacy and anonymity as “the most important aspects of electronic cash” and called bitcoin’s traceability a “critical flaw”. A Bitcointalk forum user “thankful_for_today” coded these ideas into a coin they dubbed BitMonero. Other forum users disagreed with thankful_for_today’s direction for BitMonero, so forked it in 2014 to create monero. Monero translates to coin in Esperanto, and the Esperanto moneroj is sometimes used for plural. Both van Saberhagen and thankful_for_today remain anonymous.

Monero has the third largest community of developers, behind bitcoin and Ethereum. The protocol’s lead maintainer was previously South African developer Riccardo Spagni. Much of the core development team chooses to remain anonymous.

Monero is the leading cryptocurrency focused on private and censorship-resistant transactions.

The majority of existing cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have transparent blockchains. Transactions can be verified and/or traced by anyone in the world. This means that the sending and receiving addresses of these transactions could potentially be linked to real-world identities.

Monero, on the other hand, uses various privacy-enhancing technologies to ensure the anonymity of its users.

Monero transactions are confidential and untraceable.

Unlike selectively transparent alternatives (e.g. Zcash), Monero is the only cryptocurrency where every user is anonymous by default. The sender, receiver, and amount of every single transaction are hidden through the use of three important technologies: Stealth Addresses, Ring Signatures, and RingCT.

Because every transaction is private, Monero cannot be traced. This makes it a true, fungible currency. Merchants and individuals accepting Monero do not need to worry about blacklisted or tainted coins.

Monero is electronic cash that allows fast, inexpensive payments to and from anywhere in the world.

With Monero, there are no wire transfer or check clearing fees, no multi-day holding periods, and no fraudulent chargebacks. Because Monero is decentralized, it is not constrained by any particular legal jurisdiction and provides safety from capital control.

Monero is a grassroots community attracting the world’s best cryptocurrency researchers and engineering talent.

The Monero Project is at the forefront of cryptocurrency privacy and security. Its Research Lab and Development Team are constantly working on new, innovative technologies. Since its launch, the project has received contributions from over 500 developers located all around the world.

Numerous forums and chat channels are available for anyone to join, and the community is always welcoming new members.

Url

https://eos.io/

EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol based on the cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second.

History

Based on a white paper published in 2017, the EOSIO platform was developed by the private company block.one and released as open-source software on June 1, 2018. In order to ensure widespread distribution of the native cryptocurrency at the launch of the blockchain, one billion tokens were distributed as ERC-20 tokens by block.one. This provided the distribution to allow anyone to launch the EOS blockchain once the software was released. The CEO of block.one, Brendan Blumer, announced that block.one would support the EOSIO blockchain with over one billion USD in funding from the token sale and ultimately block.one raised over four billion USD to support the blockchain during the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) period.

The original test net, Dawn 1.0, was released on September 3, 2017, with test net versions Dawn 2.0 released on December 4, 2017, Dawn 3.0 on January 25, 2018 and Dawn 4.0 on May 7, 2018. The name of the cryptocurrency EOS comes from Ancient Greek Ἠώς, “dawn”.

EOSIO’s Dawn 1.0 was launched on the EOSIO mainnet on June 1, 2018, and is currently operating under version 2.1.0.

In September 2019, block.one agreed to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges related to the $4 billion unregistered ICO for a $24 million penalty. The settlement did not require a restitution offer, registration of tokens, or any disqualifications.

Who is Block.one?

Block.one – a producer of highly scalable, high-performance, open-source software – is at the forefront of developing the next generation of the internet. We make it our mission to build a more secure and connected world.

Why build on EOSIO? How is it different from other blockchain technology?

EOSIO is an open-source platform that provides industry-leading transaction speeds and a sub-second block time latency rate, allowing developers to perform transactions at a lower cost through efficient resource management.

EOSIO is also designed to allow for a higher degree of configurability, particularly valuable for the creation and management of programmable infrastructures. This allows architects to deploy public or private blockchain networks, and implement a suitable default or custom governance protocol through executable smart contracts.

EOSIO is different from other blockchains because it provides upgradeable smart contracts, and is built on C++.

Why should people pay attention to blockchain technology?

Blockchain technology profoundly changes how businesses operate and are structured. In the following video , the Block.one team explains why you should pay attention now, to what blockchain means for the future.

What is an EOSIO “smart contract”?

A smart contract combines a legal contract with a form of computer code to automate the execution of specific terms of an agreement between parties in an objective way. Some distinguishing characteristics of EOSIO smart contracts include being written in C++ and the capability of sustaining upgrades after deployment without disrupting the blockchain network.

Url

https://neo.org/

Neo (formerly Antshares) is an open-source decentralized blockchain decentralized application platform founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang. Since its rebranding to Neo from Antshares in 2017, the project’s vision is to realize a “smart economy” by utilizing blockchain technology and smart contracts to issue and manage digitized assets.

The Neo network runs on a proof of stake decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism between a number of centrally approved nodes, and can support up to 10,000 transactions per second. The base asset of the Neo blockchain is the non-divisible Neo token which generates GAS tokens. These GAS tokens, a separate asset on the network, can be used to pay for transaction fees, and are divisible with smallest unit 0.00000001. The inflation rate of GAS is controlled with a decaying half life algorithm that will release 100 million GAS over approximately 22 years.

A total of 100 million Neo were created in the Genesis Block. 50 million Neo were sold to early investors through an initial coin offering in 2016 that raised US 4.65 million, with the remaining 50 million Neo locked into a smart contract. Each year, a maximum of 15 million Neo tokens are unlocked which are used by the Neo development team to fund long-term development goals.

The core of the Neo feature set revolves around tools that allow developers to efficiently deploy and scale smart contract applications on the Neo blockchain. X.509 Digital Identities allow developers to tie tokens to real world identities which aids in complying with KYC/AML and other regulatory requirements.

Neo 3.0

Neo 3.0 or N3 was first announced by Erik Zhang in 2018 as an upgrade to the current Neo protocol (also known as Neo legacy) N3 improves on previous versions, it has more powerful and complete features, a highly modulated design,

Due to the extent of improvements being implemented in the N3 update, certain features are not backwards compatible with the existing Neo legacy blockchain, therefore the N3 updates will be implemented through a new genesis block.

Neo is an open-source community driven blockchain platform.

It is the most feature-complete blockchain platform for building decentralized applications. Neo enables developers to digitize and automate the management of assets through smart contracts. It also provides powerful native infrastructures such as decentralized storage, oracles, and domain name service, creating a solid foundation for the Next-Gen Internet.

NeoFS

NeoFS is a distributed, decentralized object storage network. Used to its fullest potential, NeoFS can act as the host infrastructure for an entirely new class of truly decentralized applications.

The network also provides benefits for traditional web applications. It is designed to function as a drop-in replacement for expensive centralized data silos, granting developers full control over where and how their application data is stored and accessed. Stored data is always encrypted, and can be set to be decryptable by all or locked down with secure, granular access lists. NeoFS users always remain in complete control of their data.

Malicious nodes that do not correctly store data are mitigated through zero-knowledge data validation techniques, and replication mechanisms provide a reliable service even in the event of a storage node failure. Even in a naturally chaotic decentralized environment, NeoFS provides a reliable service.

NeoID

Decentralized identity tools provide much-needed solutions for user authentication in blockchain-based applications. Although many services may be accessed freely by any user, other specific use cases may depend on verification of specific attributes to function properly.

Oracle

Smart contracts represent a revolutionary breakthrough for the way that we do business online, but adoption of the technology remains slow. There are many barriers to overcome before decentralized applications are ready for the mainstream, but one of the most notable is the inherent limitation for contracts by the data they have access to. Most existing blockchain applications must rely purely on transactions as a source of input data.

dBFT 2.0

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin and the eponymous Nakamoto consensus mechanism to the world, the value of trustless and borderless transaction settlement was realized for the first time.

Bitcoin and the many blockchains that followed typically achieve consensus with probabilistic finality. In other words, the transaction settlement is not necessarily guaranteed. In most cases, settlement becomes more difficult to overturn as the transaction becomes more deeply embedded in the blockchain.

This is adequate for the needs of some applications, such as low-priority transfers or the simple storage of value. But for most user-facing or highly liquid applications, more reliable assurances are required regarding transaction settlement.

Url

https://bitcoincash.org/

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is a spin-off or altcoin that was created in 2017. In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash split further into two cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.

History

Since its inception, Bitcoin users had maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency. On 21 July 2017, bitcoin miners locked-in a software upgrade referred to as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 91, which meant that the Segregated Witness upgrade would activate at block 477,120. Segwit controversially would enable second layer solutions on bitcoin such as the Lightning Network. A key difference of opinion between Bitcoin users was over the running of nodes. Bitcoin supporters wanted to keep blocks small so that nodes could be operated with less resources, while some large block supporters find it acceptable that (due to large block sizes), nodes might only be run by universities, private companies and nonprofits.

A group of bitcoin activists, developers, and China-based miners were unhappy with Bitcoin’s proposed SegWit improvement plans meant to increase bitcoin’s capacity and pushed forward alternative plans which would increase the block size limit to eight megabytes through a hard fork. Supporters of a block size increase were more committed to an on-chain medium of exchange function.

In June 2017, hardware manufacturer Bitmain, described the would-be hard fork with the increased block size as a “contingency plan”, should the bitcoin community decide to fork implementing SegWit. The first implementation of the software was proposed under the name Bitcoin ABC at a conference that month. In July 2017, mining pool ViaBTC proposed the name Bitcoin Cash. In July 2017 Roger Ver and others stated they felt that adopting BIP 91 (that would later activate SegWit) favored people who wanted to treat bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency. The fork that created Bitcoin Cash took effect on 1 August 2017. In relation to Bitcoin it is characterized variously as a spin-off, a strand, a product of a hard fork, an offshoot, a clone, a second version or an altcoin.

At the time of the fork anyone owning bitcoin came into possession of the same number of Bitcoin Cash units. The technical difference between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin Cash allows larger blocks in its blockchain than Bitcoin which, in theory, allows it to process more transactions per second. Bitcoin Cash was the first of the Bitcoin forks, in which software-development teams modified the original Bitcoin computer code and released coins with “Bitcoin” in their names, with “the goal of creating money out of thin air”. On 1 August 2017 Bitcoin Cash began trading at about $240, while bitcoin traded at about $2,700. On 20 December 2017 it reached an intraday high of $4,355.62 and then fell 88% to $519.12 on 23 August 2018.

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