Crypto Academy - Season 3 - Week 2 - Homework by professor @awesononso / The Genesis Block: The Beginning of the Beginning

Hello Steemian, good afternoon and welcome to my homework task for today. It's always a pleasure doing my homework task on this wonderful community, @cryptoacademy. The community is on the forefront ensuring that the Steemit community and the world at large are adapted into cryptocurrency. I sincerely thank the management team, the CryptoAcademy professor's, and the CryptoAcademy students, for there effort ensuring that every member of the Steemit Community are cryptocurrency guru's. I say thank you to the Steemit community. This week homework is about the genesis block, the Bitcoin genesis block and it significance.

The Genesis Block

In life, there is a beginning, a starting point, a starting stone or stage, there must be a beginning and it must start somewhere or a place. In the Blockchain world or sector, the first mined block of a blockchain is called the Genesis Block, it has no referrer or reference block but will be a reference block to many blocks to come. It is the first block upon which all blocks of the blockchain will be build on, and all blocks will reference to it.

This first data on a blockchain are on the genesis block, that is to say that the genesis block is a very important block to any blockchain and it is unique because it is the only block on any blockchain that have no predecessor block, in some blockchain, the rewards mined by genesis block are not spendable. Also In some blockchain, the genesis block is called block number 0 while some blockchain also called it block number 1, depending on what the blockchain wish to call it.

Bitcoin Genesis Block

The fascinating and intriguingly stories about the Bitcoin genesis block is unique from other blocks in any blockchain, not just for the message on the Bitcoin genesis block, but that the next block which is block 1, was generated six(6) days after block 0. A block takes an average of 10mins to generate, but it took almost 6day to generate another block, this is one of the fact that make the Bitcoin genesis block the genesis of all blocks.

More than 12 years ago, the Bitcoin network was launch by Satoshi Nakamoto and it changes the financial structure of the world. Satoshi Nakamoto launch the Bitcoin blockchain on January 3, 2009, which has mined more than 600,050 blocks to date. Satoshi launch the Bitcoin network just two months after he publishes the Bitcoin whitepaper on October 31st, 2008. The Bitcoin genesis block is special and has some unique characteristics when been compared to its successor blocks.

One of the Uniqueness of the Bitcoin genesis block is that, it has 50 BTC as its mining reward and it remains unspendable to date. It is easier mining the Bitcoin genesis block and with more than 500% more rewards than what is obtainable now. You need a warehouse and some sophisticated equipment before you can mine today and with 6.25BTC as reward, which is much less reward than that of the genesis block.

This is the block hash of the Bitcoin genesis block:-
000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

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The genesis block data

This is the first two blocks of the Bitcoin blockchain, you can see that there's a 6days different between there timestamp, which makes block 0 special

Block 0/ Genesis Block timestamp

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Block 1 timestamp

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To honor the unknown Satoshi Nakamoto, some members of the cryptocurrency community, over the year have been sending small amount of Bitcoin into the genesis block’s transaction address, this has increased the amount of Bitcoin into the genesis block to 68.13 BTC, which now make it a difference of 18.13 BTC than it originally 50 BTC.

The genesis block reward were sent to this wallet address and have remained there unspendable.

Wallet address:-
1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

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The genesis block also has a message in the coinbase input area, coinbase transaction is an encoded transaction on a block that reward the miner automatically first.

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The block 0 coinbase transaction data

source the output data where the HEX input message are found.

This is HEX Sigscript message found inside the Input of the coinbase transaction:-

5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73

As I converted the HEX to ASCII, the HEX message became readable as:-
>"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

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This message was also published by the times' newspaper of 3rd January 2009, which is the same day Bitcoin was launch. Though it has no definite meaning but many believe that it is referring to cryptocurrency as the solution to the financial bill out of banks.

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the genesis block message

Significance of Bitcoin Genesis Block

1. It is the beginning of a technology revolution. It revolutionizes blockchain technology and make it more popular than it was before.

2. It is the foundation that links other blocks on the blockchain. Every other block on the Bitcoin blockchain are generated according to the form of the genesis block. It's the map way of the Bitcoin blockchain

3. It is the start of cryptocurrency and the first cryptocurrency transaction was performed there. It is the origin of cryptocurrency.

4. Many cryptocurrency Blockchains use the Bitcoin genesis block as there basic example.

5. Many financial opportunities was open because of it and also many technological opportunities were open as well.

The Steem Genesis Block

The Steem genesis block was created on the 24 of March 2016. The Steem genesis block is called block 1 and I am going to visit the Steem genesis block, you have to visit https://steemworld.org.

Click on Block Explorer.

Then enter 1 to display the Steem genesis block

Now you're in the Steem genesis block and all the block details is displayed, you can click on sign-in to login

Enter your username and password to sign in

You have logged in

##Conclusion

The Genesis Block acts as the fundamental building reference block for Bitcoin and many other blockchains. This origin block, started the initial creation of a revolutionary financial instrument that changes the entire financial landscape. The Bitcoin genesis block is a fundamental figure in the cryptocurrency community because everything started with it. It's also the basic for every other blockchain. Though there have been much advancement in Technology over the years but all of them have Bitcoin genesis block as there reference point.

Thank you professor @awononso for taking us back to the beginning.