An introduction to Hashgraph Technology

Hello Fellows, Welcome to another week in the Steemit crypto academy. I attended the lecture by the crypto professor @pelon53 as the professor based his teachings on Hashgraph Technology.. This blog is my homework task after the completion of the lesson. I will go straight to work on the assignment given by the professor.

Hashgraph is also known as the new generation blockchain. If Hashgraph can win the trust and provide authenticity, it might overtake the blockchain technology entirely one day because Hashgraph provides solution to many of the problems that a blockchain has. On comparing Hashgraph with blockchain, Hashgraph is found to be much faster, safer and fairer.

Hashgraph Technology can be considered as a directed acyclic graph. Putting it into simple words, Hashgraph is a digital ledger technology that adopts the concept of voting virtually that is supported by Gossip Protocol. Let us move ahead and talk briefly about the Gossip Protocol used in Hashgraph.

1- Explain in detail the Gossip protocol, used in Hashgraph.

You must be aware of the fact about how quickly a gossip about something spreads. Gossip can spread faster than any other communication mediums. Hashgraph uses Gossip Protocol which works in the same way. For example, I have new information about something and I pass that
information to my friend David and after passing the information to David, I will move ahead and pass that information to the next member and David will do the same. This process will keep on happening until every member is aware of the new Information.

Likewise, in Hashgraph network, nodes receive detailed data from other nodes in Gossip Packets. The nodes when sending or forwarding data, highlight everything about other nodes that are involved including the time at which the data arrived. Because of this, you can see continuous chain of gossips following each other and a detailed highlighted data about every information. Blocks in blockchain comprises of 2 identifiers- the hash number of the current block and of the previous block. But Hashgraph nodes have 4 identifiers- the hash number of the current node, the previous nodes, hash number of the last event which the node made and the hash number of the last received event.

Because of all the additional hash numbers and identifiers, the data is dispersed and spread out into the system just like the structure of gossips. This advanced and growing feature of Hashgraph lets it handle over 250,000 transactions per second which is quicker than many fast blockchains which can only perform a maximum of around 10,000 transactions.


•       Hashgraph is a digital ledger technology that uses Gossip Protocol.Under this, the data is passed on to every other node with a detailed updated information in the form of Gossi
Packets.

•       Because of its advanced features, it acts as a great replacement for blockchains and solves many of the problems that a blockchain has. It is considered to be safer, fairer and faster than a blockchain.

•       Hashgraph has 4 identifiers because of which it spreads the information into the system very fast and is way ahead of blockchains in handling transactions.

2-Explain Tolerance to Byzantine Faults in Hashgraph.

What are Byzantine Faults? Byzantine faults can be explained as when a component of the system such as node may face a problem and fail and other nodes have imperfect or no information about the failure. Hashgraph Technology comes with Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) which is a characteristic property of Byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithms, which permits the nodes that are working honestly in a network of information to guarantee and agree on the timing and order of various transactions with a much more secure and faster network. Some Important features of Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance are:

•       The Primary feature is that it is Byzantine Fault Tolerant, which means that it has the quality to retain 100% honest consensus in the network avoiding all the nodes which are failing and passing false information.

•       It is applied to various platforms of distributed networks that performs the distribution of data in very big networks of information such as Cryptocurrency.

•       If a system is considered to be Byzantine Fault tolerant, it is considered to reach a consensus even if malicious nodes control the network and alter the messages and information.
Some nodes are always trying to stop the consensus from happening and even if 1/3 of nodes are trying to negatively affect consensus by delaying transactions or otherwise corrupting things the network would still come to a consensus. This is the number of malicious nodes the
network can tolerate and still come to an honest consensus.

 

4. Explore Hedera Hashgraph. Show screenshots.

Hedera Hashgraph is the only authorized Hashgraph technology as of this date. Let me now explore the site of Hedera Hashgraph and tell you my experience throughout. The site that we are going to explore is called hedera.com. Hedera has its own cryptocurrency and it is denoted by HBAR and its current rank is 50 by market capitalization and its value as of now is approximately 0.224 USD.





The first step, I enter the site to explore it and see a Welcome page. It is very eye catching and it is now displaying its various features to me. At the corner of the welcome page, I can find a menu option

I select the menu button at the top-right of the page and it shows me all the options available at the site and it shows me about the properties of the site (Network, Dev, Use Cases, HBAR, Governance and About). See the screenshot below for visual reference.





NETWORK: The network bar has options like Token Service that allows different sorts of users to create own fungible and non-fungible tokens. Consensus Service for developers that offers Hedera Consensus Service API for ordering of any event. And it also shows all the other various services available on the Network Bar.

DEVS: Down below I can find DEVS, it offers various options such as Tooling which has DOC, Hedera SDK- which offers the Hedera API in a lot of different languages. Resource's option offers Integration, FEES that shows the fee schedules as decided by the courts and board and various other options as well.





USE CASES: This section down below offers options that are related to payment related queries and other monetary aspects such as Payment, Tokenized assets, Fraud mitigation, Identity, Data Compliance, Permissioned blockchain along with other available methods that one might need.





HBAR: This is the section which is only made for Hedera Hashgraph native token (HBAR); It offers various other options like OVERVIEW- providing details about the crypto, ACCOUNT CREATION- this section allows users to create new Hedera account, WALLETS & EXCHANGES-
this section tells users the available wallets and other exchanges.




GOVERNING COUNCIL : This is the section that gives information about the governing council of Hedera Hashgraph, as I can see here, the job of Hedera Hashgraph governing council is to continually make decisions to enhance the stability and approach of the technology for a
better future.

ABOUT :Under this section we have smaller sections like such as Team, Journey, Roadmap, User Group, Careers, Media, Press, News, Blog and Paper. This Section basically talks about the theoretical approach of the members, history of the technology and strategy of Hedera. This is the last section of the site and my exploration here has come to an end.

CONCLUSION :In the end, I just want to conclude this assignment by saying that Hashgraph is one of the most emerging and enhancing technologies. It targets all the failures and shortcomings of Blockchain and provides a very reasonable solution through its amazing gossip protocol because of which it is able to spread the data very fast. The data in the Gossip Packets is updated and added on with more information when passed through each node. Because of this feature it is building a very strong reputation in the market. Watching it replace
blockchain won't be surprising in the coming future because it outshines Blockchain in every manner. Reading about Hashgraph and then exploring the Hedera site made me develop an interest in the asset and I will be looking forward to learn about Hashgraph as much as I can, I thank my professor for delivering this fantastic lecture to me.

Regard

@attiyaasghar