More Than Blockchains: How Hashgraph & DAGs are Different
I do an awful lot of videos that speak about blockchain technology and how it’s pretty much amazing. It’s often described as the best thing since the invention of the internet, I mean there’s a reason why I decided to create a youtube channel dedicated to educating others on how it can change our lives.
But just wait a second,
there’s a new kid on the block that’s making some noise with some bold claims.
It’s name is Swirlds and it’s a software platform that is bringing us HashGraph technology.
Swirlds is labeling its Hashgraph technology as a “radically different approach to distributed consensus.”
They're also claiming that this new approach will be able to solve scaling and security issues.
Their Hashgraph technology uses a protocol called “Gossip about Gossip”. Despite what you may think, “Gossip” is actually a well-known computer technology phrase that refers to how computers communicate with each other.
The Hashgraph team describes it as,
“...calling any random node and telling that node everything you know, that it does not know. In distributed ledger technology the “baseline” or minimum bandwidth required is that the transactions go to every node. Gossip about Gossip refers to attaching a small additional amount of information to this Gossip, which contains the last person we talked to, hence, we are gossiping about the information we gossiped. Using this information, we can build the Hashgraph.”
This is the key for how Hashgraph would be able to know exactly when consensus would be reached.
Another aspect of the blockchain that Hashgraph is aiming to improve is the relative wastefulness of “stale” blocks and also to radically reduce the computing power needed compared to things like proof of work and proof of stake.
There is no doubt that Blockchain technology is a great step forward.
But it’s very much worth it to note that it has room to improve. And despite the fact that I am finally beginning to feel confident in my own knowledge of how blockchain technology works, I’m finding myself eager to learn more about other ideas on how it can be improved upon.
Swirlds’ Hashgraph isn’t the only platform that’s focusing on changing how a blockchain can be tweaked.
Byteball and other cryptos using DAGs are more or less on the same page in regards to their ideas for providing alternative options.
These are also called blockchain-free cryptocurrencies. The list of these types of cryptocurrencies includes Byteball, as I mentioned before, IOTA, and DagCoin.
Basically, a blockchain-free cryptocurrency is any distributed database that uses different tools to achieve essentially the same objectives as a blockchain.
These different tools used include what are called DAGs. This stands for Directed Acyclic Graphs. A quick Google search of this will show you an image of a DAG. If you’re like me and imagery tends to help you understand certain concepts, then take into account the context and imagery of a blockchain, and compare it to the imagery of a DAG. It might be a bit easier to wrap your head around how DAGs can be faster and more effecient in certain ways.
Now I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m still working towards understanding this concept better so I welcome anyone who can supplement with additional information on ways to break this down to please leave a comment down below so we can all learn more about it.
Additional Reading/Sources:
Swirlds Website
Swirlds Whitepaper
Squawker Article on Hashgraph
Dags Defined
Blockchain-free cryptocurrencies
Medium Article on Scalable Cryptocurrencies
Byteball
IOTA
DagCoin
Very good video @heiditravels!
We need to explore more of similar technologies. All of them(Blockchain, DAG, Hashgraph and many more that are going to be discovered in the future) are implementations of a higher abstraction known as DLT(Distributed Ledger Technology). We still need to figure out if Hashgraph is either a sister or a child of DAG technology though.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the key word - Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). I didn't realize how many new discoveries where happening!
ATM hashgraph is patented and not opensource ^^ they still need to learn a lot :)
I'm trying to understand the key diffs between how consensus is determined between DPoS and this virtual voting across all node timelines and the witness nodes therein. Since both have the theoretical constraint on not having anymore than a third of the consensus network being bad players, than, with regards to the consensus problem , both models probably only are marginally different in performance, convergence, especially now that EOS is asynchronous and deterministic. I havent studied the gossip protocol to know what benefits we can infer beyond those of EOS multi-threaded messaging, but hashgraph criticisms that i find interesting are those that point out its weakness on a non-permissionend consensus network is no different than other voting models, indeed, if those other models ran private its consensus wouldno doubt perform better too. I bet on a horse that has run in bigger and higher stakes races than one that is private and controlled. We will see how the crypto community takes to it
It is a very good post ♫
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Hi @heiditravels, thank you vm for sharing this platform...this is really interesting. Do you know if it offers all the same features as Tangle, like allowing off-line consensus? Enjoy Portugal!
I love the concept of DAGs and am so happy to be able to follow these exciting technologies at such an early stage.
IOTA is very exciting, however I feel they might be about 5 years too early, not sure if you can justify their current marketcap.
Byteball on the other side has a much fairer model of distribution and actual real-live use cases right now.
There are so many new things in crypto, just today Bitcore BTX broke a new blockchain record: https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@xwerk/making-blockchain-history-bitcore-btx-is-currently-writing-blocks-with-over-3000-kb-of-data
@heiditravels You bring so much great info for us on STEEMIT and I appreciate it. I hope you are having a wonderful time in Lisbon. @jerrybanfield was even mentioning you today.......................
Thank you @stokjockey :) Yes, sitting next to @jerrybanfield made for a fun dinner with lots of laughs and matcha tea ;)
Hashgraph seems cool. Using gossip about gossip is part of the breakthrough from data-centric ledgers to agent-centric thinking. But it doesn't go far enough with that. Holochain is the whole deal. It enables true distribution while maintaining data integrity.
Great video Heidi! Just making this comment by Holochain more visible (it's in the comments of your YouTube video @heiditravels). Wonderful comment and comparison of #Holochain and Hashgraph @woitke.
Thanks for the great work you're doing, sharing what you're learning with the world. It's so cool you're in Portugal at the moment. We have a team in Porto, Portugal right now working on a related project, Holo - our distributed hosting ecosystem! If you have any questions about Holochain or Holo, join our public chat http://bit.ly/WelcomeToHolochain to speak with our devs and community members. Or, email [email protected]
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