CryptoTypes: Platforms (XCC-PTF)
Introduction:
Blockchain technology began as the underlying technology for bitcoin, but it has now expanded to encompass a much broader range of uses. It’s already shaking up a lot of industries and altering a lot of processes.
With blockchain technology, an organization will surely be more powerful and will be able to execute all of its transactions more efficiently. As a result, understanding the leading blockchain platforms is critical.
The following are a few of them: Cardano, Solana, Tron and Ethereum Classic
Importance of Blockchain Platforms:
- The use of blockchain is growing in popularity these days. As a result, better and more user-friendly platforms are required for individuals to use this cutting-edge technology.
- Bitcoin’s popularity and accessibility are fast growing. Many businesses are already accepting bitcoins as a form of payment. These bitcoin users require safe and reliable venues to access their funds.
- Every day, the breadth of blockchain expands. As a result, more people are enrolling in blockchain courses. However, these newcomers will require a good platform to begin their blockchain journey.
- These are well-established and professional sites. These platforms are accessible to both pros and novices.
- Blockchain is far more dependable than old logbook systems because each transaction is encoded and linked to the previous one. This is due to the fact that blockchain is made up of a complex string of mathematical values that can’t be modified once they’ve been formed. Blockchain’s immutability and incorruptibility make it more secure and resistant to data tampering and hacking.
- In many industries, such as commerce and real estate, blockchain eliminates the need for intermediaries. This is only possible now because of its decentralized nature. Blockchain provides for faster transactions than traditional financial institutions by permitting P2P cross-border payments with a virtual currency.
- An external audit is provided whenever a trade of items is documented on a Blockchain. This audit determines where the things came from, and the blockchain ledger allows for this. This will enable exchange-related organizations to improve privacy and avoid corruption, as well as verify the integrity of exchanged items. It can also be used to track a supply chain from producer to distributor in industries such as medicine, or to provide irrefutable proof of purchase in the art world.
Cardano is one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization. It’s intended to be a flexible, long-lasting, and scalable blockchain platform for smart contract execution, allowing for the creation of a variety of decentralized finance apps, new crypto tokens, games, and more.
The native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain is ADA, which can be bought or sold on exchanges like Coinbase, same to how the Ethereum blockchain’s native coin is ETH. On the Cardano network, ADA can be used to hold assets (say as part of an investment portfolio), make and receive payments, and stake and pay transaction fees.
How does Cardano work?
Cardano aspires to be the most environmentally friendly blockchain platform available. Instead of the energy-intensive proof-of-work approach used by Bitcoin and Ethereum, it uses a unique proof-of-stake consensus process called Ouroboros. (Through the ETH2 upgrade, Ethereum will also switch to a proof-of-stake method.)
What is the proof of stake? Proof of stake employs a network of invested participants known as validators rather than a network of miners racing to solve a riddle. Validators stake their own ADA instead of giving computing power to protect the network and validate transactions like miners do.
The network chooses a winner depending on how much ADA each validator has in the pool and how long they’ve kept it there, thus rewarding the most invested players.
Other validators can attest to the accuracy of the latest block of transactions once the winner has confirmed it. The blockchain is updated when a certain amount of attestations have been made.
The network distributes the reward in ADA proportionally to each validator’s stake to all participating validators.
While being a validator entails a significant amount of responsibility, interested parties can alternatively earn ADA by “delegating” a portion of their crypto to a staking pool managed by someone else.
Solana is a blockchain platform for decentralized and scalable applications. Solana is an open-source project now managed by the Solana Foundation in Geneva, with the blockchain developed by Solana Labs in San Francisco. In comparison to other blockchains like Ethereum, Solana is substantially faster in terms of transaction processing and has significantly cheaper transaction costs.
How does Solana work?
Solana’s architecture aims to show that there is a collection of software algorithms that, when combined to construct a blockchain, remove software as a performance bottleneck, allowing transaction throughput to expand proportionally with network capacity. Solana’s architecture meets all three requirements for a blockchain: scalability, security, and decentralization.
Solana’s quickly growing ecosystem and adaptability have naturally garnered comparisons to Ethereum, the most popular decentralized application blockchain (dApps). Smart contract features are present in Solana, which are essential for running cutting-edge applications such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible assets (NFTs).
TRON is a decentralized operating system, similar to Ethereum, that was created to aid in the development of a decentralized Internet. TRON was founded in 2017 with the intention of giving digital content creators complete control over their work. TRON provides a decentralized content delivery platform.
TRON has approximately 73 million accounts and 2.8 billion transactions, making it one of the fastest-growing blockchains. It claims to be able to process up to 2,000 transactions per second, compared to Bitcoin’s 6 transactions per second.
How does Tron work?
TRX coin transactions, like those of other virtual currencies, are recorded on a public ledger. Every transaction on this ledger has a history that can be traced back to the very first transaction. TRX employs a transaction model called UTXO, which is comparable to Bitcoin’s.
Infrastructure: TRON consists essentially of a decentralized infrastructure that incorporates a gaming system, forecasts, a distributed exchange, and autonomous gaming.
ICO: A user can share any digital content for others to acquire in order to take use of the services and benefits.
Data Freedom: There would be complete data liberty. All users have unrestricted access to upload, share, and distribute content.
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a distributed cryptocurrency platform that runs smart contracts and is open-source, decentralized, and blockchain-based. The DAO, a smart contract functioning on the Ethereum blockchain, was hacked in 2016, resulting in the formation of Ethereum Classic. The original blockchain was divided in two, with the majority of users opting to undo the attack and refund the monies stolen.
Ethereum Classic makes smart contracts easier to use by allowing for decentralized governance. In other words, contracts can be enforced without the involvement of a third party, such as a lawyer.
In a real estate deal, for example, if the contract required an advance deposit to be paid by a specified date and the funds were not received, the contract may be cancelled. A distributed ledger or blockchain network contains the smart contracts. A distributed ledger is a decentralized ledger of transactions and contracts that is kept and maintained in multiple locations.
The agreement between a buyer and seller is written in lines of code within a smart contract, which executes itself based on the contract’s terms. As a result, because the code controls the contract’s execution, there is no need for external monitoring or censorship by a central authority.
How does Ethereum Classic work?
In a similar approach to how Ethereum works. The blockchain is based on “proof of work” mining, which means that people all over the world use gear and software to validate and secure transactions on the network. Miners can earn ETC in exchange.
Users can, of course, send ETC to one another, just as they can send BTC or ETH on the Bitcoin or Ethereum networks. They can also use ETC to interact with Ethereum Classic network apps, such as decentralised exchanges, where they can swap network tokens.
But the Ethereum Classic ecosystem is not as active as Ethereum or other smart contract networks, such as Solana.
The comparatively limited usage of Ethereum Classic has generated issues. Blockchains rely on a distributed set of users to run the network for security; when there aren’t enough individuals actively doing so, the blockchain becomes insecure.
Summary
These platforms have a community of diehard users and developers, as well as a multi-billion dollar market cap, good enough to rank in the top 50 of all digital assets. They have a better reputation, more investment, and a higher currency value. Platforms such as Ethereum Classic and Tron are still the underdog, but in the crypto world, that’s never been a negative thing.
The race to become the best platform would depend on technical aspects such as higher transactions per second as compared to peers.
Written by Aashutosh Chandra (aashutosh.chandra@xumitcapital.com)
