Crypto Academy Season 3 Beginners' course - Task 3: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Public chains // posted by @captain36

According the the lecture by professor @stream4u, public chain is similar to the decentralized system discussed earlier. A public chain is an open network. Anyone at all can download the protocol, have access to the public chain. They can read, write and participate in the network anytime they’re interested in it.

Public chains are distributed and decentralized. Any transactions ready to join must be identified and validated in different blocks before they’re joined together to form a chain. The network that are already connected to the system are known as nodes. Before any new block can be added to the chain, it must be validated by these nodes before the block can join the chain.

All transactions in this chain are public and transparent. All the nodes involved too are equal. This means the public chain is immutable. Once the transaction is verified, it cannot be altered or changed by anybody within or outside the chain.

Because the public blockchain is transparent, information is processed and stored on multiple devices. This makes it close to impossible to be hacked and therefore makes it more safer. This means risk of been hacked is very low in the public blockchain. The chain is also free from third party interference and anybody is free to do what will help them.

The public blockchain is also an open source system. It makes information available to anybody at anytime and hence once in a while audits and recommendations will boost the confidence of the users.

• Immutability: This is the greatest advantage of the public blockchain. Information entered into the system cannot be altered or edited therefore making sure all records remain authentic.

• Improved accuracy: By removing human involvement in the verification process, the system does it by itself and make sure everything is accurate. This eliminates the possibilities of the system getting crushed due to somebody’s mistake or negligence.

• Secured transactions: All transactions in this public blockchain system are secure and efficient. Each transaction is stored and encrypted in a special storage so it’s free from intruders. There is a lot of hacking cases in transactions these days. So it is safe to use the public blockchain to avoid been exposed by hackers.

• No intermediaries: Third party systems are not involved in public blockchain. These intermediaries slow the process sometimes and can discourage people from engaging their transactions. This makes the public chain more appealing to use.

Disadvantages of public chain

• Scalability problem: The scalability problem is as a result of the inability of the public blockchain to handle large transactions in a short span of time. This is because the blocks in the public blockchain are limited in size and frequency.

• Large energy consumption: Anytime a new block is added to the blockchain, a new problem is solved. This consumes a lot of energy. The constant demand to add new blocks means much of this energy will be consumed.

• Blockchain cannot go back: since all data and transactions are immutable, they cannot be reversed even if there’s a mistake once they’ve been entered. This gives no room for correction and that’s a very big drawback of the public blockchain.

Conclusion:

The public blockchain is seen as a decentralized system and it is the best way of transactions going forward as the advantages are far more than the disadvantages as stated above clearly.

Thanks to respected professor @stream4u for bringing us this educative lecture.