Lessons Learnt and Questions Raised from the EOS Mainnet Launch

EOS Mainnet Launch. The highly anticipated EOS project has made headlines in blockchain media in the last few weeks. The coverage, however, has not always been favorable with EOS being plagued by a number of challenges, both before and after the launch of its mainnet

EOS is a blockchain-based operating system that has been developed by software company Block.One. The company is composed of notable names within the cryptocurrency space including Dan Larimer, the creator of Bitshares and Steemit, who also invented the Delegated Proof-Of-Stake consensus algorithm.

Due to its accomplished team and its promise of a highly scalable blockchain platform through which developers can build decentralized applications, its year-long token sale managed to amass over four billion dollars. This is the largest amount ever raised via an ICO and signaled a significant amount of interest and faith in the project.

Where does the money go?

The large amount of funds raised for the EOS project raises concerns over the validity of ICOs as a fundraising method. ICOs are the most common method of raising capital within the cryptocurrency space but they have come under criticism recently due to several shortcomings.

Reports estimate that about ten percent of funds raised in ICOs are lost through theft or hacking. Additionally, there is the fact that many projects hold an ICO without a product.— EOS was one of these. Moreover, Block.One was fairly vague with its plans for the money rais

Last Week Tonight - no laughing matter for EOS co-founder Brock Pierce

These concerns reached a fever pitch, eventually gaining mainstream recognition with popular TV host John Oliver referencing the project in amonologue on Last Week Tonight about the dangers of investing in crypto projects that are yet to create a minimum viable product (MVP). The EOS team issued a tongue-in-cheek response to Oliver, which was worded to agree with the safety-promoting essence of the TV hosts’ sentiment.

However, they did ensure to explain why they are a safe bet for investors. The reasons included a change in Block.One leadership (co-founder Brock Pierce left after the John Oliver segment ) as well as the utmost focus on security.

Security flaws

Only two days before its scheduled mainnet launch, a Chinese infosec company reported it had found a number of vulnerabilities in the EOS software. In a report released on May 29, Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 explained how bugs could be exploited to serious consequences for the EOS ecosystem. These included the creation of new tokens, theft of existing tokens as well as a total system takeover. Additionally, 360 stated it had revealed these bugs to the EOS team, which had then allegedly committed to postponing the release of the mainnet until the issues were resolved.

Following media coverage of the report, the EOS team clarified their position stating: “Media has incorrectly reported a potential delay in the release of EOSIO V1 due to software vulnerabilities. Our team has already fixed most and is hard at work with the remaining ones. EOSIO V1 is on schedule; please stay tuned to our EOSIO channels for official information.”

This announcement did little to allay fears with an additional blow coming when EOS announced its bug bounty program on May 31. The timing of the announcement worried a section of the cryptocurrency space and was seen as a last-ditch effort by some.

Additionally, Larimer had tweeted a $10,000 reward for any bugs found in the code. Seeing as vulnerabilities in the software of a project like EOS is likely to result in losses greater than this amount, this raised questions as to how motivated developers will be to participate in a program like this. While many will still participate in such programs, these are valid concerns for the incentivization mechanism for bug hunters in an open-source economy.

Lastly, the fact that hackers were able to gain access to a Block.ONE email client and use it to distribute a fake email that resulted in the theft of users’ money through misdirected funds further highlights the importance of security in the cryptocurrency space.

Governance in a decentralized community

One of the most discussed aspects of the EOS launch was its governance structure. The project was designed in such a way that all decisions were to be governed by its constitution. Concerns have ranged from the wording and ambiguity of the document as well as a lack of adherence to the protocols contained therein.

For instance, one clause states that no member can control more than 10 percent of the token supply. Due to the fact that Block.One holds about ten percent of the EOS token, this is seen as an attempt to assert undue control over the project. Additionally, there are concerns about how much power block producers have over the blockchain. As evidenced in leaked minutes, the block producers have an immense amount of influence, going as far as to create new tokens. There was a public outcry over this state of affairs.

While decentralization is an important aspect of the free economy that Block.One claims to support, as well as the cryptocurrency space in general, the governance structure that the project is aiming to have raises questions about how governance works in a decentralized economy. Larimer explains that while the structure is likely to have growing pains, in the beginning, the end goal is “over time the community will formalize arbitration processes, constitutional amendments, division of power, and limitations of liability. In the meantime, the community is using the tools it has today to enforce its contracts and combat the blatant fraud & theft so prevalent in the cryptocurrency industry.”

Why is a mainnet transition so hard?

EOS is not the only project that has faced challenges in the buildup to and after its mainnet launch. This can be attributed to the to the fact that blockchain technology is still in its infant stage. As Qihoo 360 stated, due to the age of the industry, many vulnerabilities are likely to be revealed in this current epoch. While this may be a concerning development, it is better in the long run.

Moreover, the potential that the cryptocurrency space and the technologies surrounding it carries lend themselves to a significant amount of over-enthusiasm and speculation, which can be witnessed by EOS’ current valuation. This creates a scenario where it is easy to over promise and under deliver. While the technology is revolutionary, it is important to note that there are many moving parts that can affect how a project performs and that growing pains will be an inevitable part of every new blockchain venture.

Investing in Blockchain Alternatives

Hashgraph Blockchain Alternatives. Within the myriad permutations of blockchain protocols the battle is no longer between the duopoly of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake but a universe of spin-offs, hybrids and alternatives. Now even blockchain technology itself faces disruption by distributed ledger technologies that forgo the blockchain stack and architecture. In this first part of a series we’ll look at alternative blockchain projects and how to invest in them.

IOTA’s ‘Tangle’ is the most well-known project built on a direct acyclical graph (DAG), the most common blockchain alternative with the aim of creating a more scalable, energy efficient and time efficient network than the classical blockchain.

The protocol de jour appears to be EOS/Dan Larimer’s delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) which has spawned other projects and also hybrid protocols like resulted delegated-proof-of-stake. Tron’s proof-of-authority and Neo’s delegated byzantine fault tolerance protocol also work on a similar premise to DPoS. In fact, it almost seems the more esoteric-sounding acronyms a project can fit into its whitepaper the more credibility it garners.

Hashgraph “the blockchain killer”

Hashgraph is distributed ledger technology built on its own version of a DAG, similar to IOTA, for the age of the Internet of Things. The technologies behind this self-styled “blockchain killer” are reiterations of two thirty-year-old simple computer science algorithms, the gossip and voting protocol, which Hashgraph has reinvented as “gossip about gossip” and “virtual voting”.

The technology is secured by the so-called gold standard of security, asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance hashing, its algorithm requires no proof-of-work mining and it’s claimed it can handle hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, dwarfing even Visa.

According to the whitepaper, where Hashgraph and bitcoin differ in protocol is the efficiency in mining blocks. It posits that because a member of bitcoin’s network never knows for sure when consensus has been achieved - only a probability of confidence that rises over time - mining must be slowed down through PoW, so that if a chain does branch (fork) multiple times there is sufficiently long enough time between blocks to agree which is the real chain and to prune off the other branches.

“The hashgraph consensus algorithm is equivalent to a blockchain in which the ‘chain’ is constantly branching, without any pruning, where no blocks are ever stale, and where each miner is allowed to mine many new blocks per second, without proof-of-work, and with 100% efficiency.”       - Hashgraph Whitepaper

Gossip about Gossip and Virtual Voting

The inventor of the Hashgraph algorithm and co-founder of its parent company Swirlds is Leemon Baird, a former professor of IT and multi-tech entrepreneur who received his computer science Phd from Carnegie Mellon University in under three years - the fastest on record.

Baird describes the gossip about gossip protocol as a way to virally spread a great deal of information within the hashgraphs (packets of information): “If a new transaction is placed in the payload of an event, it will quickly spread to all members, until every member knows it. Alice will learn of the transaction. And she will know exactly when Bob learned of the transaction. And she will know exactly when Carol learned of the fact that Bob had learned of that transaction… and so on.”

Hashgraph’s virtual voting is proxy voting taken to the next level, where essentially no votes are cast at all over the network because stakeholder votes are inferred from their conversational history contained in the hashgraphs. The idea is that through this predictive virtual voting and gossip about gossip there is little algorithmic computing power being used and zero bytes of internet usage.

How to invest in hashgraph technology

As there has been no native hashgraph cryptocurrency, investing in this technology so far has been difficult for those who aren’t accredited investors and the only vehicle to do so was Swirlds, a private company. This March, Baird and Swirlds co-founder Mance Harmon unveiled Hedera Hashgraph, a new company dedicated to developing a distributed public network built upon hashgraph.

Hedera will have its own utility token, but the pre-sale will only be open to accredited US investors and there will be no public ICO. Participants of the network will eventually be able earn the token once the network is up and running which can be used to access applications on the network or staked to run as a node to provide security to the network. However, projects built on hashgraph can issue their own ICO and gaming platforms. Satori’s upcoming LIT token issuance will potentially be the first to ICO on hashgraph.

Another interesting application for hashgraph is for smart contracts settlement. Last year alone half a billion dollars was lost in smart contracts transactions, the most notorious being the bug in the code of the Parity wallet that resulted in$300m of ether being destroyed.

Sagewise is building a platform to integrate human adjudication with smart contracts on the hashgraph network, giving parties involved in the self-executing contracts the ability to monitor, freeze and resolve disputes.

“One of the bigger issues with smart contracts is that even if there is not an explicit bug, there might just be something in the contract that gives a single party a massive amount of control. We've seen several ICO contracts that allow the creator to freeze or in some cases even execute custom code inside the smart contract. This can defeat the purpose of using a decentralized smart contract completely and is the reason we provide tools that allow for more responsible governance of individual contracts,” said Daniel Rice, co-founder of Sagewise.

Rice said the company is considering an ICO, but nothing official has been planned.

“The fourth generation blockchain”

Hashgraph is challenging for the coveted spot of being the world’s first 'mass-adopted' public distributed ledger, with utility to encompass currencies, financial services, healthcare, IoT, gaming and nearly every other consumer touchpoint.

Accordingly, the Hashgraph team refers to itself as the “fourth generation of blockchain” in the epochs of DLT:

1. Bitcoin and altcoins: the transfer of digital currency

2. Blockchain: storing ownership of items such as land, music, stocks on a blockchain

3. Ethereum: the use of smart contracts as agreements between buyers and sellers

4. Hashgraph: fair matching of buyers and sellers to execute smart contracts and Dapps

Distributed or decentralized? Public or permissioned?

Unlike most in the DLT space the Hashgraph algorithm is not open-source but patented by Swirlds and its governance is overseen by the Hedera Hashgraph Council - a distributed group “of up to 39 renowned enterprises and organizations across multiple industries and geographies”.

Hashgraph will be governed a board of corporations in a system akin to that of Visa. The Hedera foundation will hold the majority of voting supply (tokens), which isn't ideal for stakeholder voting power but Hedera claims its control of the token supply is to prevent entities from gaining too much control of the network while its cheap. However it’s not even clear how the corporate entities are chosen or how the vetting procedure works, but all will serve two three-year terms - apart from hashgraph parent company Swirlds which will have an indefinite tenure on the council.

Interestingly, in the entirety of the Hashgraphwhitepaper nowhere do the words public, private, permissioned or decentralized appear, but the emphasis is on its “distributed” nature, which sounds like a euphemism for permissioned. So it seems strange to read on theHedera website “The hashgraph algorithm is highly decentralized - there are no leaders, miners, coordinators or block producers with special influence towards consensus. Separately, the Hedera governance model is also decentralized.”

Also Herdera's own description of the role of the governing council seems to jibe with decentralization in the sense of top-down rule setting: “The elected Governing Board will govern the council by establishing policy for council membership, regulating the network rules and tokens, and approving changes to the platform codebase.”

It sounds like Hedera is trying to do something akin to R3 with its Corda blockchain, and there is plenty of discussion around its merits.

Conclusion

While Hashgraph’s DAG infrastructure and speed sounds academically impressive on paper, its performance may suffer due to its high latency of 3 seconds - for example, its blockchain counterpart, EOS, has 0.5s latency. Whether this latency difference matters in an asynchronous network is yet to be seen in a real world simulation.

EOS’ Dan Larimer said: “There is a difference in quantity and quality, validated versus unvalidated. If all you’re trying to do is order events without consideration of validity Hashgraph can work, but if you need to do dependent relationships between them I don’t think it’s so scalable.”

It also sounds like it has swapped out EOS’ “delegated block producers” for “distributed governance” and replaced them with the interests of corporations, which is anathema to the decentralized ethos but will be attractive to legacy world hegemonies that want to make the transition to the top of the “distributed” world.

As an investment opportunity, retail or not, this is something to pay close attention to@BPI

Token Cyronium Dibackup Emas, Dorong Usaha Kecil dan Menengah

Cyronium Token Dibackup Emas. Cyronium, proyek token ICO yang dikembangkan oleh PT Santara Daya Inspiratama, dibangun dari platform NXT. Dengan berbasis dari platform NXT itu, membuat Cyronium mampu punya ruang gerak yang lebih luas, dengan memanfaatkan fiturchild chain.

Artinya di Cyronium, dapat menampung banyak varian bisnis yang masing-masingnya bisa menjalankan ICO sendiri diatas Cyronium. Terkait dengan program ICO yang dijalankan itu, pihak Cyronium dalam situs resminya mentargetkan kurang lebih 10.000 UKM / bisnis di segmentasi serupa.

Dengan pendanaan yang diperoleh dari ICO, Cryronium mengalokasikan 31% perolehan dana ICO itu untuk mendorong pemilik usaha kecil dan menengah agar memperoleh tambahan modal guna memajukan usaha mereka. Jika usaha binaan tersebut mulai berkembang dan mandiri, maka usaha itu juga dapat membangun platform ICO sendiri.

Tujuan itu tidak lain agar di platform Cyronium bisa membentuk ekosistem ekonomi yang besar. Harapan itu bisa terbuka dengan mempertemukan investor dengan jaringan bisnis di dalam Cyronium.

Seperti Apa Ekosistem Cyranium?

Secara umum, platform Cyronium menggabungkan teknologi blockchain dengan logam mulia sebagai underlying assetnya. Jaminan yang didasarkan pada logam mulia itu diharapkan bisa menjadi aset investasi yang lebih stabil.

Di dalam ekosistemnya, Cyronium mempunyai dua ekosistem bisnis yang dijalankan. Pertama adalah PT Santara Daya Inspiratama yang bertindak sebagai penyedia sistem marketing, marketplace, hingga managemen tim. Pada Cyronium, spesifikasi PT Santara Daya Inspiratama itu berlaku sebagai sebuah perusahaan berbasis teknologi dengan spesialisasi di bidang cryptocurrency sekaligus marketingnya.

Kedua adalah PT Ciptalintang Aji Dana yang secara khusus sebagai pihak produsen digital asset Cyronium. Secara khusus, PT Ciptalintang Aji Dana memang lebih banyak bergerak dalam hal penelitian dan pengembangan logam mulia, mineral, dan gas alam. Perpaduan dua ekosistem bisnis di Cyronium inilah yang membuat platform ini mempunyai ruang gerak lebih luas.

Mardigu Wowiek Prasantyo selaku CEO PT Santara Daya Inspiratama menilai bahwa perkembangan mata uang digital berbasis kripto sudah berkembang pesat sejak tahun 2015. Dunia kripto, pada akhirnya memang membuka peluang-peluang investasi baru yang bisa dieksplorasi.

Dalam siaran persnya, Mardigu, sosok yang sudah tak asing lagi dimata para pegiat media massa ini menganggap sejauh ini masyarakat masih banyak keraguan untuk berinvestasi di cryptocurrency. Alasan yang paling banyak muncul tidak lain karena selama ini mata uang kripto dipandang sebagai manipulasi mata uang dan tidak punya underlying asset. Persepsi itulah yang mendorong Mardigu dan timnya mulai menggarap Cyranium sejak tahun 2016.

CYRO – Token Cyronium

CYRO adalah nama token Cyronium yang dibangun berdasarkan platform NXT. Pilihan basis platform NXT yang digunakan, tidak lain karenaArdor mempunyai fitur child chain yang dapat berdiri secara mandiri meski masih terhubung dengan Ardor.

Secara khusus, Ardor memang dilepas di public sebagai sebuah platform “blockchain as a services”. Child chain di dalam Ardor, memberikan kemudahan bagi para pengembang dalam membangun sistem berbasis blockchain.

Ibaratnya, pengembang tidak lagi terlalu terkuras energinya hanya untuk membangun blockchain, sehingga pengembang bisa berkonsentrasi saja dalam fungsionalitasnya. Karena berbasis dari Ardor, maka untuk penyimpanan asetnya juga lebih mudah, karena sudah cukup terakomodir dengan menggunakan wallet dari Ardor juga.

Cyro ini adalah token dibackup emas LBMA 24 karat. Dalam setiap 1 CYRO nantinya dibackup dengan 20 gram emas. Oleh karena itu, nilai per Cyro itu sebanding dengan nilai 20 gram emas tersebut. Di dalam whitepapernya, pihak Cyronium menerangkan bahwa emas fisik sebagaiunderlying asset Cyronium akan disertifikasi keasliannya oleh PT Antam. Emas itu kemudian akan disimpan di dalam box deposit milik PT Ciptalintang berlokasi di LE Freeport Singapura.

Detail token Cyro:

Total Supply: 50.000 Cyro

Token Based: NXT

Crowdsale: 15 Mei – 27 Juli 2018

Harga Token: 1 Cyro = 2.127 USD

Website: ICO-Cyronium

Whitepaper: Whitepaper-Cyronium

Announcement: Bitcointalk

Reasons Why Bitcoin Markets Stay Optimistic

Bitcoin Market Staying Optimistic. On June 23, CNBC Fast Trader organized an event dedicated to presenting the "Bitcoin Cemetery," an ingenious introduction to BKCM founders and cryptocurrency investors, Brian Kelly's discussion of recent bitcoin correction and future price trends.

Three Reasons Why Bitcoin Is Not Dead

At CNBC Fast Trader, Kelly outlines the top three reasons bitcoin will recover in the medium term to previous support levels at more than $ 10,000:

• Negative sentiment from investors indicates that there will be the bottom

• Positive developments in the Japanese currency exchange market cryptocurrency

• The disbursement of MT Gox Bitcoin is delayed until 2019

Referring back to the basic rules of investment, Kelly notes that during periods where the market is very bullish and optimistic, it is better to sell and see the timely opportunities to get in and when the market is too pessimistic, it is wise to look for entry positions.

Given the negative sentiment towards the market of cryptocurrency by investors, Kelly explained that the major correction of the cryptocurrency market is likely to come out down in the near future, possibly in the next two to three months to start a mid-term rally in the fourth quarter of this year.

More importantly, Kelly stated that the Japanese government's move to tighten regulations, clean up cryptocurrency markets, and legitimize Japan's cryptocurrency sector is a long-term positive development, as it will prevent major hacking attacks such as Coincheck's security breaches and allow investors in the public market to gain confidence in local exchanges.

Kelly said:

"The Japanese market is ordered to improve business conditions by the government. That's actually a good thing. Short duration will be a little difficult because they stop new accounts from entering but they are actually cleaning the system. They make sure it's stronger. Make sure it's better for people. "

South Korea, the third largest cryptocurrency currency exchange market behind the US and Japan, has also begun preparing a cryptocurrency regulatory framework for managing cryptocurrency exchange as a bank, to prevent hacking and money laundering, while legitimizing cryptocurrency sectors to protect investors and setting broad industry standards for business.

No More The disbursement of MT Gox

Throughout 2018, several Mt. Sell-off sales of tens of thousands of bitcoins cause the market to crash, preventing BTC from gaining momentum over a certain period.

Kelly stressed that the delay of Mt. Gox bitcoin sell-off until early 2019 is an optimistic factor to consider, as the main factor for the potential sell-off market has been eliminated, at least in the medium term.

"Mt. Gox will undergo rehab and they will distribute the remaining $ 1 billion worth of bitcoin. But here's what's great about it, they will not distribute it until the 1st quarter of 2019. Everyone suddenly thinks that there will be a surge of sales. Not happening now, "Kelly explained.

Three factors outlined by Kelly can push the next mid-term BTC rally and positive developments in the Japanese and South Korean cryptocurrency currency market will allow the market to grow with the stability and confidence of investors, which will be of great value in the long term@BPI

Does Blockchain Have Competition?

Competition Blockchain Againts Hasgraph. Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are heralded by many as the most potentially impactful technological advancements since the internet. But what if the blockchain technology used to create all of these cryptocurrencies is just a stepping stone to something better?

That’s the claim made by Hashgraph, a distributed ledger technology with many of the same applications as blockchain. Hashgraph is secure, decentralized, cost-effective, and can process transactions faster—and more fairly—than any blockchain.

Considering that, maybe the articlesdeclaring Hashgraph to be the future of decentralized technology have some merit. Then again, they make some lofty claims, of which it’s hard not to be skeptical. Not to mention the fact that blockchain has nearly a decade-long headstart in both development and public acceptance. Even if Hashgraph is as good as advertised, competing with blockchain is still a monumental challenge.

With those points in mind, let’s take a deeper look at Hashgraph technology and go from there.

How Does Hashgraph Work?

The figure to the left is a hashgraph, the data structure alternative to blockchain.  

For simplicity, there are only 4 columns in this graphical representation. Each column represents a full node in the network, so you can imagine that there would be hundreds or even thousands of columns on an actual hashgraph.

Each circle represents an event, which is analogous to a block in the blockchain. In other words, events store data about transactions. Additionally, every event has the hashes of two recent events below it and is digitally signed by its creator. This enables Hashgraph to achieve cryptographic security in much the same way as a blockchain.

Every line connecting one event to another represents one node randomly syncing with another. When a node syncs to another node, it shares all of the events it knows that the second node doesn’t know yet. This syncing process is, fittingly, called gossip, and it continues forever as the hashgraph grows upwards.

The colored circles in the figure are special events called witnesses. It would take a while to explain how witnesses are differentiated from ordinary events. So, rather than do that, let’s just discuss what they do. Witnesses are the key events that carry out Virtual Voting as part of Hashgraph’s consensus algorithm.

The result of this Virtual Voting is that Hashgraph can reach consensus on the validity of transactions without costly Proof of Work (PoW) computation, and it can process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. Ultimately, this is one of the biggest reasons that Hashgraph is a potential competitor for blockchain.

If you’d like to understand how Hashgraph works in greater depth, you can learn more by watching videos on the Hashgraph website or reading theirwhitepaper.

Comparing Hashgraph and Blockchain

Before diving into a comparison of Hashgraph and blockchain, it’s important to note that Hashgraph is not an open-source project. That means that the claims made about its abilities have not yet been independently verified. However, they are being independently reviewed now, and the Hashgraph team has stated that they are confident in the outcome.

One particular claim that raises eyebrows is that Hashgraph can process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. One of the factors limiting processing speed is the state (i.e. storage) of the blockchain or hashgraph. As more transactions are carried out, nodes must store more information, decreasing processing speed. It will be interesting to see whether Hashgraph has a plan to sidestep this problem.

With that being said, Hashgraph is not attempting to get ordinary people to invest through an ICO, and doesn’t otherwise give the impression of having any ill intent. So, for the sake of this comparison, we will assume that its claims are valid, as there is no reason to believe that they are not.

Let’s start by looking at one of the most contentious issues in the blockchain space today…

Transaction Processing Speed

Bitcoin’s blockchain typically processes less than 10 transactions per second. That’s why Bitcoin’s viability as a currency for mass adoption has been under question, and why Bitcoin Cash was created. Second-layer solutions like theLightning Network may be able to improve scalability drastically, but their implementation is still a ways off.

Hashgraph, meanwhile, boasts that it can process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, making it the significantly better option for micropayments and low-fee, fast transactions in general.

Fairness

Another factor on which Hashgraph differs from blockchain is ‘fairness’. With blockchain, miners have the ability to choose the order in which transactions appear in the block that they mine. That means that miners can, in theory, manipulate the order in which they process transactions to somehow benefit themselves or harm a party that they dislike. Hashgraph simply doesn’t have this possibility, as they use Consensus Time Stamping to achieve fairness in the order that transactions are processed.

Mining and Sybil Attacks

Here’s where Hashgraph makes their big trade-off to achieve the outcomes discussed above. Hashgraph does not use Proof of Work (PoW), making it far less costly to process transactions relative tomining on the blockchain. However, this comes at the cost of security. Let me explain.

In peer-to-peer networks, one of the attacks that you might face is what’s known as a Sybil attack. This is where an adversary controls multiple nodes on a network by creating false identities, opening the possibility for an individual to gain control of a large percentage of the network.

Bitcoin is extremely Sybil resistant. This is because all miners in the Bitcoin network are trying to mine the next block and earn the block reward, so they are incentivized to use their full computational power. As a result, it’s impossible for an attacker to create more blocks on the blockchain by generating false identities and running more nodes, as they are still limited by their computation power. This is represented on the middle pie chart in the figure above, in which each new identity created by a dishonest node simply takes some of the computation power from an existing dishonest node without adding to the pie.

What happens when you don’t have block rewards incentivizing node operators to use all of their computing power? Quite simply, each node uses the minimum computing power needed to keep the network running. It’s possible, then, for an adversary to create multiple identities, run multiple nodes, and control a larger percentage of the network than the honest nodes. This is represented on the pie chart to the right in the figure above, in which each new dishonest node increases the percentage of the total computing power that’s controlled by dishonest nodes.

Hashgraph has not yet achieved the same level of Sybil resistance as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Ultimately, that is one of the most significant reasons that Hashgraph will struggle to gain the trust of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

However, Hashgraph has addressed the concerns about Sybil attacks, which you can read about here. Being less Sybil resistant isn’t the end of the world by any means, and Hashgraph still has tons of very useful applications at a fraction of the cost of Bitcoin. It just doesn’t have quite the same degree of security in this particular respect.

The Hashgraph Team

Hashgraph was created by Leemon Baird. Baird earned his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the US Air Force Academy before moving on to earn his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the co-founder and CTO of Swirlds Inc, which builds software using the Hashgraph consensus algorithm.

Swirlds Inc’s other co-founder is Mance Harmon, who also has an impressive background in computer science and tech entrepreneurship.

For more information about Baird, Harmon, or Swirlds, check out the Swirldswebsite. You can also get involved with Hashgraph through their Meetup.

Competitors and Challenges

Currently, Hashgraph has not released any plans for an ICO. In fact, it’s not clear whether or not Hashgraph technology will ever be utilized by a decentralized cryptocurrency. For now, Hashgraph’s funding comes from private enterprise businesses who may utilize the technology for centralized applications.

However, there is some precedent for a non-blockchain-based cryptocurrency. That would be IOTA, whose ‘tangle’ closely resembles a Hashgraph.

One obvious improvement that Hashgraph has over IOTA is that nodes can bundle transactions together, whereas each ‘event’ in IOTA is a single transaction. Therefore, Hashgraph’s throughput can be faster, while the bandwidth and storage space necessary for a new node to join the network is smaller.

For now, IOTA has no reason to worry about losing a piece of their market to Hashgraph. We’ll be sure to update you in the event that Hashgraph releases news about a potential ICO in the future.

Last Thoughts

Hashgraph does indeed offer some improvements over blockchain technology.

However, when it comes to computers, you don’t get big points for 20% improvements. You need an order of magnitude improvement to really shake things up. Given that Hashgraph is more susceptible to Sybil attacks than blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, it may not be the answer for fast, secure, and decentralized micropayments.

Furthermore, part of the value of blockchain is that it is relatively easy to understand, which makes it a more likely candidate for mass adoption and extensibility. Hashgraph would struggle more in this respect, as the technology is quite complex and takes a lot of time to understand.

That being said, the centralized applications for Hashgraph range far and wide. For existing private institutions, it may make more sense to implement Hashgraph than a blockchain, given its superior efficiency.

Whether Hashgraph ever becomes relevant in the cryptocurrency space remains to be seen. As to whether it will make blockchain obsolete, as some have speculated, that answer is much clearer—blockchain is still king in the land of cryptocurrencies@BPI

Masjid di London Buka Layanan Infak dan Sedekah dengan Bitcoin

Infak dan Sedekah dengan Bitcoin. Anda mungkin mencari cara baru untuk memberi sedekah Ramadan? Masjid Shacklewell Lane di Dalston, London timur, menerima sumbangan dalam bentuk bitcoin dan mata uang kripto (cryptocurrencies) lain untuk memperluas basis pendonor dan mengurangi biaya penukaran mata uang, kata para pemimpin masjid tersebut.

"Untuk seorang pendonor yang punya rekening bitcoin atau ethereum, menukar mata uang kripto ke dalam, misalnya, pound atau dolar, bisa merepotkan. Masjid mengambil alih kerepotan penukaran mata uang tersebeut," kata Lukasz Musial, konsultan blockchain yang membantu masjid menyiapkan teknologi bitcoin.

"Untuk para pendonor, hanya butuh klik tombol transfer ke rekening yang disediakan oleh badan amal. Dari pandangan masjid, hal ini membuka aliran dana sumbangan baru dari seluruh dunia," tambah Musial mengomentari tentang bitcoin.

Masjid Shacklewell: Bitcoin Tetaplah Uang

Beberapa ulama, seperti Mufti Agung Mesir, mengatakan bahwa bitcoin tidak diizinkan menurut Hukum Islam.

Tapi, Abdalla Adeyemi, imam Masjid Shacklewell, membela keputusan untuk menjadikan bitcoin sebagai salah satu alternatif beramal dan bersedekah.

"(Karena) bitcoin sama layaknya dengan mata uang lain. Bitcoin…diterima oleh sekelompok orang. Kami sendiri tidak memperdagangkannya ... kami badan amal," kata Adeyemi.

Masjid Shacklewell mengatakan pihaknya adalah satu dari beberapa organisasi yang menerima mata uang kripto dari ratusan di London. Dan langkah tersebut membuahkan hasil.

Pihak masjid mengatakan pihaknya yakin jumlah donasi yang diterima akan berlipat ganda tahun ini menjadi lebih dari 10 ribu pound (setara US$ 13.300).@BPI

Will Vechain Values ​​(VEN) Continue Increasing Or Will Fall This Year?

Vechain (VEN) Price. After the famous and booming digital currency last year, the crypto market has now been flooded with multiple digital currencies. But some digital currency projects are more prominent than others, and VeChain is one of them. The VeChain project resumed in 2007, although its digital currency was launched a few years later.

Last year was friendly for the digital currency because it was able to secure the position of number 16 on the list of the world's top digital currencies. At the time of writing, the coin was ranked 17th with a market capitalization of $ 1.75 billion. In this article are some predictions of the price of digital currency.

What You Need to Know about VeChain (VEN)

VeChain is a unique project due to the fact that it offers a blockchain based solution to real-world industry problems. VeChain is made by DJ Qian and Sunny Lu, and mainly focuses on supply chain solutions when first started.

Over the past few years, it has evolved to offer services to many industries, including logistics, agriculture, retail, goods, and automotive. VeChain is currently working to provide a network similar to Ethereum where developers can build decentralized applications and smart contracts.

VeChain Price Predicted 2018

This prediction method depends entirely on the data and does not consider anything else. Based on the technical analysis of the coin, Wallet Investor has estimated that the digital currency value is expected to reach $ 12 in the next twelve months.

Tradingbeasts.com also estimates that the coin will trade in the range of $ 8 to $ 11.8 by the end of this year.

Predicted Price According to Experts

Roger Ver is one of the strongest voices in the crypto industry, and he believes VeChain (VEN) has a bright future for trying to solve real-life problems and has many applications serving multiple industries@BPI

VeChain (VEN) traded here !!!