-Ardor- | -ByteBall- | -DASH- | -FOXT- | -Monero- | -Gulden- | -NXT- | -Ripple- | |
Сomputer geeks are not the only ones who are thrilled to bits with cryptocoins in their wallets. Nowadays, virtually everyone is tempted by their potential.
The "crypto" subword in conjunction with coin/currency just emphasizes the fact that they based on plenty of cryptographic technique in order to be the digital currency and enable its transactions to have place.
Let's take a look on the first ever cryptocurrency i.e bitcoin (BTC) released in 2009. BTC is centred on the concept of decentralized, distributed blockchain - a digital ledger that being visible to public is shared across the computer network and records all confirmed bitcoin transactions. Each new block in this chain is chronologically ordered and contains allowed number of current transactions and cryptographic hash formed on the ground of the previous block content. Eventually the blokchain fork/s may arise but finally the only one will survive, namely that one on which the majority of miners were working. This gives a self-sustainable mechanism to the blockchain itself .
So far so good, but you may ask, well, blockchain is the digital ledger, but where are bitcoins, what is bitcoin itself? You may be surprised to know that bitcoin/s is/are nothing more than a special string of ones and zeros in that ledger. However to be called bitcoin/s such string must poses a number of properties and the most important one is the following: it should contain two unique digital signatures one of them for a current owner of bitcoin/s the other - for previous one, to be precise, for their wallets. Each of these two signatures is wallet's public address or public (verification) key. The private part or private (signing) key of the wallet which is mathematically related with relevant public key in btc string and proves ownership of that btc is saved in the wallet file of the person who owns the balance. If the wallet matches the private key it has with some addresses in confirmed transactions then the sum related to those addresses go to its balance and owner of the wallet has the right to spend it. He/she do it by signing the following transaction with the wallet's private key, not disclosing it, as only pertaining public key leaves his/her computer. Using that public key others can verify the transaction that is the ownership of the sum in it. The verification procedure implemented in bitcoin protocol requires the puzzle solving work that can not be done other way than trying random binary strings to be concatenated with the block under validation to find the hash that lies in the predetermined range. Such proof-of-work (PoW) scheme secures bitcoin blockchain from possible attacks and the whole processes for block validation is called mining. The difficulty of PoW increases with computational power involved. This days the level of difficulty is so high that only ASIC miners (often combined into pools) can solve the puzzle in a feasible time. That miner/pool who solve/find the given block gets a reward, currently, of 25 btc. This way bitcoins are generated
As with bitcoin all modern cryptocurrencies are also centered on the cryptographic blockchains but different from that one of btc. Some of them use PoW scheme to validate transactions, while others are centred on Proof of Stake (PoS) system based on algorithm that validates transactions (generating corresponding block) upon an amount of active coins within the network and gives the the proportional chance to all not empty wallets to get reward of transaction fees included in that block. Such architecture does not require much computations to run thus securing power effective nodes.
"Whatis" will enlighten you about various aspects of best cryptocoins to invest in, it will describe how to get coins into your wallets, how to create your own coins, how to trade various assets and many, many of HowTos that may change our whole life.