Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners' course - Task 5: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Public chains
The Question:
(3) What Is Public Chain and What will be the Advantages and Disadvantages of Public Chain?
A public blockchain eco system is a decentralized system. They do not have any restrictions. If someone has an internet connection he can get access to the network and also can start validating blocks and sending the transactions. Proof of Work or Proof of Stake consensus algorithms are used by these networks for validating the transactions.
It’s completely decentralized and no single organization controls the ecosystem.
A public blockchain is surpassed with the necessity of a third party. The system has a flow of its own way. No one controls its path, Everyone uses it. It appears as a self-governed, purely decentralized public ledger.
There are some notable characteristics of the public blockchain technology.
- Every node has access to read, write on the ledger
- The technology is fully decentralized.
- It’s bit slow compared to the private blockchains.
01.Bitcoin
The creation of Bitcoin is the beginning of the entire cryptocurrency industry. The Bitcoin blockchain is extremely secure platform due to its distributed nature; there is no single point of entry and the cryptographic functions in its blockchain mechanics ensure that transactions are recorded and stored in a secure manner.
Bitcoin’s supply is at 21 million and it is considered as a deflationary currency as there can be no more Bitcoin minted after it reaches the 21 million cap.
02.Ethereum
Ethereum was launched in 2015, it is a decentralized blockchain that enables the creation of Smart Contracts and DApps to be created without any interference from any third party.
Smart contracts are a good feature of blockchain that facilitates the creation of programmed contracts that are automated and self-executed.
Ethereum represents the first decentralized blockchain that enabled smart contracts, which has many applications and use cases in the real world.
Advantages of Public chains
- Transparency
Public blockchains have a common consensus among the users of the network. The reason the blockchains are considered transparent is it has no control over anything.
- Decentralized Nature
The network is fully decentralized. All the nodes in the system will have their own copy of the ledger also by using the consensus algorithms they can update the ledger efficiently.
- Immutability
The public blockchain network is completely immutable. This means, no one can tamper the system or steal the money.
Disadvantages of Public chains
- Lack of Privacy
One of the biggest disadvantages of public blockchains is the lack of privacy. Even the publicly viewable data is good for accountability and transparency, many businesses need to protect their privacy of transactions.
- Slow Speed of Transaction
In public blockchains the transaction speed is slow. Transaction verification on most public blockchains are done by a number of mining nodes, and the speed of the verification on many Proof of Work platforms can be slow.
Public blockchains are open to anyone to join and participate. Any person can create any address on these blockchains and access all the network transactions. Anyone with the requisite hardware and software setup can also join in transaction verification on the networks.