Crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners'Course- Homework Post For Task 3 : The Genesis Block by @giftye
QUESTION 3
INTRODUCTION
Good day professor @awesononso, hello fellow Steemians. It's my pleasure to be a part of this wonderful platform,and having the opportunity to get involved with the homework task activities
.
The question I choose to research is that of number 3 in course. I would start by stating that the introduction of cryptocurrency into the global market has turned around the lives of so many.
As we progress in the discussion, we'll get to find out just how much.
WHAT IS A CRYPTOCURRENCY?
A cryptocurrency is a virtual or digital currency that is made secure by cryptography. Which enables it to be almost impossible to double-spend or even counterfeit. Cryptocurrencies are many,and majority of them based on blockchain technology are decentralized networks
.
One defining factor of cryptocurrencies is that they are not produced and distributed by any central body or authority,which makes them theoritically immune to governmental influence or manipulation
.
KEY DEFINING FEATURES OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES
- As fiat currency(E.G- NGN,USD,EUR,JPY, etc) is to the physical world, cryptocurrency(E.G- BTC,ETH,LTC,BNB, etc) is the same to the Crypto world.
- It's a form of digital money or asset that is based on a distributed network across vast number of computers.
- Blockchains are vital constituents of many cryptocurrencies,they are organized methods for protecting transactional data.
Cryptocurrencies are systems that has made secure online payments possible (which are separated in terms of digital tokens). The word "Crypto" refers to the vast cryptographic techniques and encryption algorithms that secures the various ledger entries the virtual tokens are represented by,such as hashing functions, elliptical curve encryption, and public/private keys.
TYPES OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES
The very first blockchain based cryptocurrency to be created was Bitcoin,which has managed to retain it's position as the most valuable and the most valuable cryptocurrency. Following it,are thousands of alternate cryptocurrencies (alt coins) with different functions. Some of these coins are extensions(forks) of bitcoin,while others were built from the scratch as new currencies
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The launching of bitcoin was in 2009 by either a group of persons or an individual known as "Satoshi Nakamoto"(still unclear till date). There were about 18.8million bitcoins in circulation and with a market cap of about $858.9 billion in Aug .2021
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Bitcoin as the world leading cryptocurrency has some competition,in the likes of LITECOIN,PEERCOIN,NAMECOIN, ETHEREUM,CARDANO,EOS,MONERO,etc. These were actually spawned by the success of bitcoin, referred to as "altcoins".
As at Aug.2021,the aggregate value of all existing cryptocurrencies was over $1.8 trillion,with bitcoin representing an approximate value of 46.5% of the total value.
WHAT IS CRYPTOGRAPHY AND HOW DOES IT MAKE CRYPTOCURRENCIES SECURE?
CRYPTOGRAPHY
This is the study and act of sending encrypted messages from one point to another(two parties) or between more than two parties. Cryptography offers a pseudonymous and secure transactions of digital currencies,with no third party requirements
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ANALYSING THE WORD "CRYPTOGRAPHY"
- "Crypto" is a word that means "secret" in Greek - which gives us an idea of what cryptography is all about.
- The word "graphy" means "to write" in Greek.
- Which means - Cryptography is the act of writing secret messages.
The message is encrypted (made secret) by the sender,which makes the content of the message obscure to a third party,and later decrypted(turned back into ordinary language) by the receiver
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Cryptocurrencies make use of cryptography in order to make transactions anonymous. In other words,you don't need any personal information about someone before making a secure transaction with them,and don't also need a bank, government,or a credit card company.
HOW CRYPTOGRAPHY MAKES CRYPTOCURRENCIES SECURE
EXPLORING THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK
DETAILS OF THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK
SUCCESSFULLY LOGGED IN
IMPORTANCE OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
A pseudonymous person(or group of persons) invented Bitcoin with the name Satoshi Nakamoto,whose idea was proposed in form of a white paper which was posted as a cryptographic message in 2009
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The major issue that Nakamoto solved was the double-spend issue. Because there was nothing preventing a user to spending and making multiple copies of their assets,as bitcoin was just a code. By the public-private key encryption arrangement, Nakamoto was able to offer a solution
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Bitcoin,as well as many other cryptocurrencies function with this public-private key encryption. Which enables them to be trustless- and offers safe and secure transactions between strangers.
- Symmetric Encryption Cryptography
Here,it encrypts the original message at the source using the same secret key,sends the encrypted message to the receiver,and then also decrypts the message once it gets to it's destination.
Example- representing alphabets with numerals: If c is 00, o is 01,m is 02,and e is 03, a message like "come" will appear in it's encrypted form as "00010203", and this message will be sent over the network like this to the recipient (s). It gets decrypted by the recipient once received,using the same method in reverse
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This method tries to offer easy implementation with low operating cost,but suffers from scalability issues.
- Asymmetric Encryption Cryptography
This method makes use of two different keys- public and private- for encrypting and decrypting information. The public key can be distributed publicly,it functions like the address of the recipient,while the private key is handled by the owner alone.
Using this method,one can encrypt a message with the recipient's public key,which can also be decrypted only by same recipient's private key
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This method seeks to offer two vital functions of encryption and authentication for cryptocurrency transactions.
Elliptical curve cryptography is the asymmetry that is used for bitcoin.
- Hashing
This method is useful in verifying the integrity of data in a transaction. It helps in maintaining the blockchain data structure,and also encodes users' account addresses,this is an important part of the encryption process of transactions between accounts
.
EXPLORE THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK AND SIGN IN AS A PROOF OF COMPLETION
- The steem Genesis Block is referred to as "block 1"
- I first log into https://steemworld.org
- I clicked on block explorer.
- I clicked ok on the pop up of the block number.
SIGNING IN AS A PROOF OF COMPLETION
- From the website https://steemworld.org
- I clicked on sign in at the top right end
- Then I logged in with my username and private posting key respectively.
CONCLUSION
The bottom line is that ,when it comes to cryptocurrency, anonymity and concealment are the other of the day. And all these various cryptographic techniques try to make sure that these goals are achieved,and to ensure that users and their activities remain concealed to the necessary extent on the network.
Thanks once again for this wonderful class,and the opportunity given to me to participate in it.
I hope my submitted homework meets your standards.
ALL SCREENSHOTS WERE TAKEN FROM STEEM WORLD.ORG
cc: awesononso
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