This article is aimed to educate on the topic of Bitcoin mining. As Bitcoin is a large driver of the overall market, its wise to understand the dynamics of how it is mined. We shall over: Overview of bitcoin mining – what is entailed Mining rewards / schedule Difficulty Hashrate Mining pools Hash Ribbons / Miner Capitulation and Buy Signals…
The below characteristics have were highlighted in a post from the CasperLabs CTO Medha Parlikar: Accounts in Casper are more than just a key pair – they have a full data structure around them. Each account has ‘Associated Keys’ and each associated key has a weight. The default is 1. Accounts can have up to 1000 associated keys. Accounts also…
One of the most well-known applications of quantum computers is breaking the mathematical difficulty underlying most of currently used cryptography. As cryptography is fundamental to blockchains, we discuss how/if this poses a risk. Before we begin, it is important to understand some of the types of encryption: Symmetric Encryption In symmetric cryptography data is encrypted and decrypted using a single…
Many often wonder what are the following types of crypto exchanges, therefore we have complied this brief article to highlight key differences: CEX (centralized exchange) DEX (decentralized exchange) CEX Centralized exchanges are marketplaces which we are all likely familiar with. A central controlling authority such as the London Stock Exchange (Equities) or Binance/Coinbase (Crypto) create infrastructure where you first are…
In this article we shall discuss the concepts of sharing (multi-processing) using the base cases extracted from Proof-Of-Work blockchains and then conclude with how CSPR is researching and developing their methodology for sharding. Typical POW blockchains have an issue with scalability. As the blockchain grows, so does the amount of data stored on each computer in peer to peer network….
CSPR Price Forecast (10 year): We will show how using 2 models, we can estimate a long term future CSPR token value of $105 per token. Consideration before reading Before continuing, I wanted to warn that some of the predictions using the models give truly phenomenal future values across the crypto space. The best way to digest these figures is…
In the previous post on Casper CBC, we saw the foundation of a consensus protocol framework of “correct-by-construction” consensus protocols that each shared the same proof of Byzantine-fault-tolerant consensus safety, allowing refinements and improvements without needing to re-prove safety each time. The issue of liveness was not addressed however. The development of the Casper Highway Protocol by CasperLabs provided Strong…
What is CBC : Correct-by-Construction? In an earlier post we saw how consensus protocols form the very fundamentals of blockchains where independent nodes validate transactions on the network, i.e. the very basic concept of decentralized ledgers. There are then two critical security properties that we must consider for any consensus protocol: safety and liveness. Safety: A protocol is safe if…
Consensus protocols form the very fundamentals of blockchains where independent nodes, validate transactions on the network, i.e. the very basic concept of decentralized ledgers. A network becomes susceptible to attack if any malicious entity gains control of 51% of the network (known as a 51% attack). Before we move on to cover the principals of CBC (Correct-By-Construction) protocol, as used…
Nothing-At-Stake, Long Range Attacks & Dynamic Availability
Nothing At Stake The principal of a Nothing-At-Stake issue with Proof-Of-Stake blockchains is that validator risks nothing when creating blocks on a different chain. This can be illustrated by considering a fork into chain A and B. As a block producer (validator) gets rewarded for producing blocks, with the aforementioned fork the validator can choose to work on (1) only…