First of all , i want to thank @awesononso for this wonderful lecture on understanding genesis block and what it entails and for the assignment he gave which is aimed at explaining to us the history of genesis blocks and he gave some examples about genesis blocks of bitcoin, steem and etherum . Without wasting much time , lets go into details.

1)WHAT IS THE GENESIS BLOCK OF A BLOCKCHAIN

^{Image from canva}

Everything has a begining and an end except God almighty. Since everything has a begining and end , blockchain also has origin . It didn’t just pop out of the moon. The origin of blockchain can be traced to what is called the genesis block.

The name clears depicts what I am about to say. The genesis block is the first ever block made on a particular Blockchain.

It’s the block without any predecessor or ancestors but has lots of blocks after it . Normally each block contains previous information about its predecessor block but since it has no predecessor, it has no details about any other block except what is contained in it.

it is also the first product proof of work blockchain system

The history of the first genesis block can be traced to the first blockchain which is the bitcoin blockchain created by our annoymous legend , Satoshi Nakamoto .
The Genesis block of a blockchain is often depicted with a 0 or in some 1. It is from the first numbering that other blocks get their numbers .

There is something that was unique about the first genesis block , it took longer time than usual to mine the next block which was 6 days instead of normal 10mins . The reasons is not known , many say is to make sure the block is perfect while many say is Satoshi trying to mimick creation which happened under 6 days with the 7th day being a rest day .

2-Write on the Bitcoin Genesis Block and its significance.

Bitcoin block genesis
We all know that bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency produced on a blockchain. We all know that a blockchain is a network of connected blocks containing immutable information and transaction details . The first block created on a blockchain is the bitcoin genesis block

3rd January , 2009 will always be remembered in human history both in the future and now as a memorable day in human history development. On this day, the first genesis block that is bitcoin genesis block was formed and the first reward of 50 btc was mined .

The rewards for mining a block has reduced ,with the reward now 6.5btc per successful mined block .
The first reward was transferred to a normal wallet address -1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa
(Image)

The first transfer had a 0 reward fee with a 0 transaction volume cause there was no btc before the first mined btc . There is something unique about the first block mined , it had a low difficulty level of 1 .

^{screenshot from blockchain.com}

Recently mined blocks has a difficulty level of 21.4trillion and growing causing the need to use a super computer to mine the blocks . The fact the difficult level was 1 points towards that a simple computer cpu was used for the production.

It’s quite noting that the first 50 btc are not tradeable . The next block on the blockchain took a weird amount of 6 days instead of the normal 10 minutes.

SIGNIFICANCE OF BITCOIN GENESIS BLOCK

1. A new step was taken in human development and evolution: with the creation of the first block , a new step was taken to make humans free from an old system of centralized money system to a more decentralized money system. This would remove the control government and big banks had over money initially
2. It introduced a new world of transparency : we know blockchain apart from eliminating the presence of a third party in dealings , informations on it are not changeable making sure that details about any deal can’t be changed for selfish or any reasons
3. It introduced a high level of security in the bussines world: blockchain is regarded as one of the most secured systems in the world. This block chain invention which kicked off with the genesis block introduced the world to this secure system for the bussiness world to remove problems of losing money

UNIQUE FEATURES OF GENESIS BLOCK

1.it had a secret message inscribed into it : there was a message inserted by our secret Satoshi in form of a Hex :
5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73. This when transcribed using a Hex to Text converter gave this “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." This message coincided with a news released the same day that a news about the chancellor was released too.

^source

2.The first reward that was generated was non tradeable

3.it took a longer time to form the next block . It took 6 days rather than the normal 10 mins used in forming blocks

4.it contained eater eggs which pointed towards the reason for its creation

3.Go to https://steemworld.org and locate the Steem Genesis Block (You must provide screenshots and sign in as proof of completion).

The steem genesis block is the first block created in the steem blockchain. Unlike the bitcoin genesis block labelled 0, the steem genesis block is labeled 1 .
we would be going through some steps to identify it accordingly through the following steps
1.Go to https://steemworld.org

^{image gotten fromsteemworld.org}

2.One needs to login into the steemworld.org site so lets go through the login process .
•click the login sign at the top left corner

• Then put in your details which includes one's username and private posting key and you are logged in

3.Click on block explorer

^{image gotten fromsteemworld.org}

4.You would notice on clicking block explorer a page opens with first number seen as 1. This is the genesis block number 1

^{image gotten fromsteemworld.org}

5.Then you click okay and details about the genesis block appears

^{screenshot from steem world.org}

Lets talk about this details we see on this block 1
Previous ID: owing to the fact it is the gensis block and first created block, it doesn't have any block preceding it making this ID 0000000000

Time stamp: This refers to the date, the first transaction leading to formation of genesis block was initiated

Witness:steem blockchain works on a Dpos system so witness are needed to validate transaction and we have our first witness in form of @initminer who verified transaction leading to genesis block creation

Transaction Merkle Root: This is the hash for all the hashes in a blockchain so for steem we have it as 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
There are other details there which stands out for themselves.

CONCLUSION

In this assignment we were made to learn that yes, blockchain do have a beginning and everything about its origin. We also learnt about how to use the steemworld.org site to access the genesis block of steem. i really thank@ @awesononso for this great lecture