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The world of digital money is so diverse and changeable that it is hardly possible to physically embrace and illuminate all the cryptocurrencies that represent it. Often, you just notice somewhere in the depths of consciousness the emergence of a new representative of this large pleiad and safely forget about it, until you accidentally come across information that somehow catches your attention. You start digging deeper and it turns out that the coin that you betrayed to oblivion is rapidly developing, approaching the first lines of various ratings.
Brief story
The beginning of the subject of our conversation was laid back in 2004 by Canadian programmer Ryan Fugger. He then worked on the Ripplepay payment system, which he launched in 2005. The development of the company took place at a moderate pace, but steadily, and after 6 years it was decided to create a decentralized network without mining, but with a higher speed than the cue ball. At this stage, the team added another member – Chris Larsen, who eventually led Ripple Labs. In 2012, a subsidiary of Ripplepay, the company OpenCoins, appeared. Its activity was focused on payment functionality and its improvement.
How to become the owner of Ripple?
In the distinctive features of the new cryptocurrency, we figured out, now let’s talk about how there are ways to get it into the property.
Well, the easiest way is to go to some specialized exchange or exchanger where Ripple is represented and buy coins. It is easier to do this through the exchange office. There is no need for registration, it is enough to pay for the purchase with funds from a bank card and coins will be transferred to your wallet.
The process of buying through a stock exchange is somewhat more complicated. You will need to register for an American specialized service and replenish the balance there. That is, you must have some kind of cryptocurrency (cue, lightcoin, etc.), which you will pay Rippl. However, there is nothing difficult in this process either, the standard procedure.
Cryptocurrency Ripple and its features
One of the features of this crypt, which can be seen “with the naked eye”, is the total mass of coins on the market – there are 100 billion of them. All this set has already been mined by Ripple Labs, that is, it is impossible to mine this digital currency. The company is engaged in the free distribution of its product. A little later we will focus on this process in more detail, but for now, let us return to the features.
There is only one serious feature left, which, perhaps, will plunge many into shock (so that we should leave the faint-hearted to retire). The fact is that in the process of conducting monetary transactions, the currency is destroyed. Well, are you already in shock? Jokes are jokes, but this really happens and this is how – the commission for each transaction, amounting to 0.00001 dollars, does not get to the miners, as in the PTS network, but is simply destroyed. On the one hand, this is, of course, a trifle, but, on the other hand, after each transaction, the money in circulation becomes, if not much, but less.
Why such oddities? All for the sole purpose of avoiding scam attacks. Now an attacker who creates hundreds, thousands, or even millions of mini-transactions aimed at hindering the normal functioning of the network becomes unprofitable such as “subversive” activity. In the event of an attack, the commission will increase to a level that is guaranteed to make an attempt by fraudsters to be unprofitable. For a normal user, the loss of a tiny commission does not make “weather”, but for a spammer with millions of operations, the loss can result in a significant amount.
Is it worth investing in Ripple?
Of course, everyone gives the answer to this question to himself. But good to know and expert opinion. And they, besides those listed above, mark several other points in favor of Rippl.
To begin with, the support of the market value of the coin is due to its potential growth in the eyes of large financial organizations and institutional depositors. The company is protected from problems with regulatory bodies, because its work is carried out in accordance with the law, and the board of directors consists of quite influential and well-known people who, if something happens, can influence the situation.
This cryptocurrency was created on January 18, 2014, by developer Evan Duffield, who took Litecoin / Bitcoin code as a basis. It was originally released under the name XCoin, and ten days later, on January 28, 2014, it was renamed Darkcoin (“dark coin”) to emphasize its purpose for secret payments. Finally, in March 2015, it was re-branded again and assigned the name “Dash, friendly to regulators,” an acronym for the phrase Digital cash.
Why Dash is better?
Dashcoin cryptocurrency is a lot like Bitcoin, but at the same time, it has a lot of advantages. One of the first key differences is to call the unique X11 Algo algorithm written by Duffield, which is a two-tier structure that provides high anonymity and excellent payment protection. At the time when transactions through Bitcoin can be traced using the appropriate key points and algorithms, in Dash, all links between payments and account are erased, excluding the possibility of any manipulations.
Loyal following
The first thing that made the creators of Dash – branded Bitcoin and Litecoin label “pseudo-anonymous.” Since the data on all transactions (amount, time, addresses of the sender and recipient) are stored in the public blockchain, financial transactions can be monitored and compared through special software. For example, if a person decides to purchase an air ticket for BTC, then the passport data left by him can be linked to the Bitcoin address and see his entire financial history.
Speed
If it’s not privacy that matters, but speed, then another method is available for “digital cash” transfers in Dash – InstantSend. When using it, it is not miners who check transactions that are produced, but 6–10 randomly selected masters, powerful and smoothly running servers. As a result, the transfer of crypto money from one address to another occurs almost instantly.
Flexibility
According to the developers, the Dash management model is superior to the Bitcoin model. While Bitcoin development is dependent on community input, the Dash network is funded by the transaction fees it generates.
Low cost
High-speed translation using InstantSend on the Dash network costs a few pence. It is cheaper than Western Union or PayPal. And the fee for the usual transfer, which will last about 2.5 minutes, will be scanty $ 0.001.
How to buy Dash
You have two main ways to buy Dash: exchange Bitcoin for Dash or buy it directly through fiat. The easiest way to buy Dash is if you already have Bitcoin. Bitfinex, Kraken, ShapeShift and Bittrex are several popular exchanges that allow you to trade Dash. Buying Dash through fiat is a little more difficult because there are not so many platforms. The sites that offer fiat-to-Dash are BitPanda and Kraken.
Dash wallets
Wallet Dash is based on a Bitcoin wallet for a Bitcoin currency called Bitcoin Core QT wallet and is equipped with the Darksend service for the fastest and most anonymous transactions. Also, the wallet is equipped with special functionality – PrivateSend, and InstantSend.
The wallet program can be downloaded from the official Dash website. After installation, it will take some time to synchronize, but after going through all the necessary procedures, you get a much faster and safer product than a competitor.
Should you invest in Dash?
Currently, Dash has strong support from well-known venture capital companies, namely Venture 51 and Core Innovation Capital. In general, the prospects for Dash in 2018 seem to be very bright. In addition, Dash is now working with TenX and issuing its own debit cards. As a result, there are even more options for using Dash currency in the real economy. In this regard, the growth of Dash in the near future is even more likely.
Can Ethereum Scale?
The Ethereum platform was launched in 2015 in order to simplify the creation of decentralized online services, as well as to facilitate the process of implementing the blockchain technology. Unlike the Bitcoin network, Ethereum provides for the use of smart contracts – self-executing algorithms designed to enter into and maintain commercial contracts in the blockchain technology. In this connection, the Ethereum network in the shortest possible time has become the second most popular platform on the cryptographic market not only among startups wishing to conduct an ICO, but also the largest software developers such as Microsoft, IBM, and Acronis.
But, as in the case of the Bitcoin network, with the growing popularity of Ethereum, problems of its scalability became obvious. Recall that at the end of 2017, because of the launch of the CryptoKitties game, the Ethereum blockchain encountered significant difficulties due to network congestion and the inability to process transactions. Therefore, Ethereum developers proposed several solutions.
Raiden Network
In December 2017, Ethereum developers launched the Raiden Network project in their network — an off-line technology that, like the Lightning Network solution for the Bitcoin network, allows instant transactions on the Ethereum network with minimal fees. Thus, the main idea of the technology is to scale the blockchain through the use of payment channels that allow you to safely conduct transactions outside the network. With the help of the Raiden Network, according to the developers, the throughput of Ethereum and the derivatives of it tokens can grow from 25 to 1 million operations per second.
Sharding
Sharding is another of the proposed solutions to the Ethereum scalability problem, the development of which has become one of the top priorities in the funding program launched in January of this year. The idea is based on the traditional scaling technique – “database sharding”, in which the database is divided into parts, and each of them is stored on a separate server.
The purpose of sharding on the blockchain is to eliminate full nodes due to load sharing between nodes. Instead of saving each transaction and the current state of the entire network, the node stores a subset – only a part – of this data and confirms only those transactions for which it is responsible. If the node wants to get information about transactions or blocks that it does not store, it can refer to other nodes. Although the sharding technology is still under development, members of the Ethereum community are already proposing changes at the protocol level that will be possible due to sharding.
Payment channels State Channels
On April 10, a team of researchers at the University of Warsaw published a white paper titled “Fundamentals of the State Channel Networks”, describing Perun, a protocol that operates on the “state channels” principle, that essentially transfers the Lightning idea implemented in the second-level protocol for the Bitcoin network to smart Ethereum contracts, but providing enhanced safety features.
What is Ethereum Classic?
It all started with the largest ICO in history, which was conducted by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). This is a venture fund based on Ethereum, which raised $ 150 million. After that, an anonymous attacker took advantage of a previously unknown vulnerability in a smart contract and withdrew $ 55 million from the fund.
To correct the problem, representatives of Ethereum held a hard fork, which divided the currency into two versions, each of which had its own blockchain. In the new version of Ethereum, the funds stolen by the attacker were returned to the owners. As a result, a group of stubborn enthusiasts decided to save and use the old version of Ethereum, which they renamed and made their own currency. This is how Ethereum Classic appeared.
What is more important decentralization or scalability?
Ethereum platform has become a real breakthrough in the cryptocurrency industry. If before this, the blockchain and cryptocurrency were perceived only as a decentralized and anonymous method of making transactions, then thanks to the development of Vitalik Buterin the possibilities of the blockchain were significantly expanded. It was thanks to Ethereum that many projects were developed and financed, which are now successfully developing.
In the future, the platform will be transferred to the algorithm of PoS, which will improve the protection mechanism and will eliminate the possibility of a powerful hacker attack, in which 51% of the computing power of the network is retained by one communication node.
Differences between soft and hard forks
Hardfork is a radical protocol change that helps to make any older transactions do work or the opposite way and requires all users to update their software to the level after hardfork is done. Sometimes you can hear such a thing as softfork.
It means Ethereum Classic is…
The controversial proposal caused a split, which led to the emergence of two different types of the ethereum – two variations of the same old ETH network. Ethereum, which is more popular today, includes the majority of users and leaders of the sphere (including Buterin): they accepted a modified transaction history. A minority that did not accepted the canges created the Ethereum Classic.
Ethereum Classic did not even came close to the success of The Ethtereum, but still exists and feels good. Hardfork showed to the market that ethereum is generally quite stable. Having finished the review of history, let us round the article up with short summary.
What is more important decentralization or scalability?
Ethereum platform has become a real breakthrough in the cryptocurrency industry. If before this, the blockchain and cryptocurrency were perceived only as a decentralized and anonymous method of making transactions, then thanks to the development of Vitalik Buterin the possibilities of the blockchain were significantly expanded. It was thanks to Ethereum that many projects were developed and financed, which are now successfully developing.
In the future, the platform will be transferred to the algorithm of PoS, which will improve the protection mechanism and will eliminate the possibility of a powerful hacker attack, in which 51% of the computing power of the network is retained by one communication node.
Differences between soft and hard forks
Hardfork is a radical protocol change that helps to make any older transactions do work or the opposite way and requires all users to update their software to the level after hardfork is done. Sometimes you can hear such a thing as softfork.
It means Ethereum Classic is…
The controversial proposal caused a split, which led to the emergence of two different types of the ethereum – two variations of the same old ETH network. Ethereum, which is more popular today, includes the majority of users and leaders of the sphere (including Buterin): they accepted a modified transaction history. A minority that did not accepted the canges created the Ethereum Classic.
Ethereum Classic did not even came close to the success of The Ethtereum, but still exists and feels good. Hardfork showed to the market that ethereum is generally quite stable. Having finished the review of history, let us round the article up with short summary.