Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W1 - Favorite Blockchain Network by @whitestallion.

Introducing Blockchains

Defining what Blockchains are: Blockchains are ledgers that are extremely uneasy to change in other words, they are immutable. The usage of this technology spans from making records of transactions, having accurate sourcing of business assets, and bonding trust in the tech space. What I meant by assets is that any property be it landed or intellectual can be integrated into blockchain. For example, cars, houses, patents, and so on. The question may likely be? Can I record anything on Blockchain? The answer to that question is YES!

The importance of blockchain cannot be over-emphasized. If you have a business that involves interacting with a large number and groups of people, you may need to know what databases are and how you could include their operation in running your business. Using MySQL, you will be able to retrieve information about certain items in your catalog faster than when you decide to manually check, one after the other. The ability of you to retrieve information when needed is a pivotal aspect of business operations. Thus, blockchain is gold in business running. It permits you to retrieve and deliver information faster and more accurately. If you sell Cars, you may be able to use blockchain technology to track new orders, payments made for cars bought on credit, supply of new stock, and other business operations. All these will help you run your business with fewer errors as all transaction history will be made available to members thus, leading to more trust in your business. Subsequently, your business will be trusted with bigger and better opportunities.

Furthermore, some of the key elements of blockchain include:

• One of the elements of blockchain technology is the unchangeable nature of its distributed ledger. As formerly stated, all transactions recorded using blockchain technology are safe. There is no shadow of duplicating them thus, they remain as authentic as they can be.

• No participant in the space has the power to alter records. If errors are encountered during entry, fresh records will be put in place and they will both be visible to all.

• Smart contracts allow for the automation of transactions. This is what is responsible for the speed of blockchain technology.

Importance of this technology:

• There is greater trust and security in businesses as a result of this technology. You can choose to give special access to members of your network and anyone who is not part of your community will have access to community information. Interestingly, after all, members come to a consensus, and nobody has the authority to delete a transaction. For businesses that operate using logs, the ledger that is allocated among members makes time-wasting inexistent.

The Bitcoin Network.

Bitcoin has become a household name in the tech space. With all things being considered, it won’t be termed wrong to address it as the Father of Cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a crypto incentive blockchain. The Blockchain network has been evolving since its creation. Furthermore, a lot of other Blockchains have been fashioned by using the Bitcoin model. This network's versatile nature has caught the attention of private bodies and governments of nations; apparently, we all believe the Bitcoin network will stand the test of time and be impactful in the finance world.

When we consider the Bitcoin blockchain we understand that the major structures on this platform are finance-related. For instance, person H could send X amount of Bitcoin to person B. This creates a locational-structured information pattern such that, we can tell where each user stands. More so, the network makes vast possibilities for the 'internet of things' in essence, this blockchain could be applied to more things such as cars that would self-drive whenever they successfully receive some form of payment.

While it may be difficult to give out detailed information about the history of this blockchain, we understand that first of all, it is a decentralized system that allows peer-to-peer transfer of funds with zero intermediaries. The blockchain was introduced by a group of folks known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Interestingly, the network has a reward system. You can get more Bitcoin through a process known as mining. You can also exchange it for other services and products.

Some of the challenges facing this network are a large number of illegal transactions and the dangerous levels of emissions that may result in global warming from its mining process. However, there have been breakthroughs in the network. El Salvador has adopted it as a legal tender. The network published its white paper in 2008. The word Bitcoin is a compound word of BIT and COIN.

The Blockchains' ledger operates by taking a record of transactions operated on the platform thereon. There are a chain of blocks that have contained in them, hashes. To save time and increase productivity, nodes in the network validate every transaction to ledgers. This is carried out on an average of 10minutes per transaction. Some of the reasons why I love this network is that there is no central authority in charge of its operation thus, there is freedom. The distributed nature of its ledger has proven to be an advantage in its operation. In addition, anybody can mine Bitcoin. Is it not interesting that anybody can partake of this technology by just mining? The Bitcoin network was created on 3rd January 2009. I could go on and on, telling the general summary of this network but, let me stop here and relate some of its earliest shortcomings.

The Earliest Shortcomings of the Bitcoin Network

Understand that there are cons to all pros. One of the major shortcomings of the network is scalability. This describes the ability of the network to handle a large amount of transaction data carried out on this platform. This is because of the limited size and frequency of the network. Furthermore, all the transaction that is carried out on the network is stored as blocks. See that, the throughput of the network is affected by the size of each original block which is about 1MB. The creation time of each block as stated earlier is 10 minutes. The team has considered ways to improve efficiency. By using technical optimization, there could be a decrease in the number of resources needed to compute, receive, process and eventually record transactions. This will reduce the weight that lies on the network. Furthermore, the LIGHTENING NETWORK is a solution that seeks to improve the network’s scalability without letting go of trust. The operational model is such that users will fund transactions which will in turn switch open channels that will help fasten transactional speed. El Salvador accepted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 because of this improvement.

Furthermore, the network saw another upgrade in 2017. Taproot was designed to help the network's scalability, privacy, and security. The idea was generally accepted. Schnorr’s signature was integrated to permit complex operations on the network. The network made use of the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm until the integration of the former stated.

What changes do you think would make the network better?

Remember I stated that the network operates using a public ledger which means, no single authority manages the operation of the network. Miners make do with complex computers to solve puzzles to collect Bitcoin. This allows new Bitcoin to be made available which permits miners to be rewarded with a fraction of Bitcoin. There has been an enormous increase in mining operations over the years in response to the up and down movements of the network. You could secure for yourself a steady means of income by running heavy-duty computers, solving these complex maths but damaging the atmosphere at the same time. I propose that a better way of rewarding users or a mining system is created. The traditional mining procedure is detrimental to environmental sustainability. The government of nations could legislate laws that would make offenders answerable to the government. This will solve the environmentally degrading act of mining and we will have a better globe.

Write about a project that is built on your favorite blockchain?

Several projects are built on the Bitcoin platform. I will be highlighting one of these projects. The Omni Layer. It is paramount to note that the Omni layer is not a Cryptocurrency platform but, it is a project that allows for operations such as complex exchange operations, smart contracts, and so on.

It is easy for users to create custom tokens representing assets to provide operations such as financial transactions. It is more or less a peer-to-peer platform. Without intermediaries, users can transfer funds to one another. This was created in the year 2013 by JR Willet. Interestingly, the interface and experience are a copy of the traditional Bitcoin platform with just a few additional features. It is placed highly in Bitcoin’s TCP and does its operation like hypertext transfer protocol. Some of the features of this platform include a decentralized crypto exchange which allows users to sell generated Cryptocurrency in the marketplace. You could also make do with the customized assets feature that allows users to trade customized tokens and IP rights. It is a great platform that substantially improves Bitcoin's network.

Conclusion

Having said all, implementing blockchain technology into all facets of human existence is going to solve a lot of problems ranging from trust in businesses, to access to information from databases via ledgers and smart contracts, and so on.

I'm certain that the world is yet to begin the journey into the WEB3.0, as I expect more groundbreaking innovations to emerging in the coming years. Yes, there are limitations in the usage of this technology. I spoke about the negative environmental impact the traditional mining method has on the atmosphere, all things being equal if these challenges are substituted with viable solutions, the tech world is going to be a better place.