STEEMIT CRYPTO ACADEMY CONTEST | S1W1 - FAVORITE BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK BY @feyol55
Hello steemians, I want to welcome everyone to the week 1 of this exciting Steemit engagement challenge. I'm super excited to participate in this and I also want to thank the Steemit community for organizing this challenging. In this post, I will be discussing in details my favorite Blockchain network which is the ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
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Without mincing words, my favorite blockchain as I did mention in my introduction is the ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN. The Ethereum blockchain is actually a decentralized blockchain platform that support a wide range of decentralized applications (dAPPS), including cryptocurrencies, not only that this blockchain also establishes and adopts a peer to peer (P2P) network which executes and verifies application code in a secure mode known as smart contracts.
What this smart contracts does is that, it permits or allow participants within the blockchain network to transact with each other without using any form of intermediary or a central entity.
Transactions that are being carried out within this network are always well verified and secured, they are distributed across the network, this gives the participants more trust and a sense of full ownership because everything going on within the network is visible and transparent. The native cryptocurrency of this blockchain network is Ether (ETH).
However, it is to be noted that the Ethereum blockchain operates using the proof of work consensus protocol which requires vast amount of computing power/energy to validate transactions or mint new currency.
It is paramount I take you down the memory lane to let you understand how this blockchain all started. Two prominent persons namely vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin were the brain behind blockchain, they both launched it in 2015 and ever since then, Ether which is the native currency of this blockchain network has risen to become the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and value.
As seen in the image below, one Ether is currently worth $2,888 with a huge market cap of $348,174,778,421
Furthermore, one notable event happened in 2016, there was a hardfork (split) of Ethereum and Ethereum classic. During this process some sect of the network participants gained control of the majority of the Ethereum blockchain and they stole over $50 million worth of Ether. After this happened, there was a consensus amongst the Ethereum community that the theft be reversed by invalidating the existing Ethereum blockchain while another sect of users within the same Ethereum community actually chose to still stick with the original version of the Ethereum blockchain so It is the unaltered version of the Ethereum that splitted permanently to become the cryptocurrency Ethereum classic (ETC).
I will be highlighting some reasons below why this blockchain still remains my favorite.
The Ethereum blockchain is nearly impossible to hack because it is immutable, the transactions carried out on the network cannot be changed or altered once uploaded.
The network makes use of smart contracts which are self-executed, this enables decentralization, because there will be no need for any third-party to perform any action again.
Another interesting thing about this blockchain network is that the transactions are usually processed fast, there is an automation of transactions within the blockchain which speeds up the transactions.
When we talk of security, we can give it to the Ethereum blockchain network where all transactions are cryptographically secured, it's even reported that Ethereum has three times more nodes than Bitcoin for verifying its transactions, this is mind blowing !
Above all, this blockchain is reliable, Ethereum blockchain has proven itself overtime to be reliable, even the applications built on the platform are running smoothly without any external interference in the program, no downtime or fraud whatsoever have been heard of.
Like I did mention earlier on, in 2016 there was a major hack known as the DAO hack which destabilized the Ethereum community. The DAO was actually a high-profile project built on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2016, precisely on April 30, the DAO was launched with a token sale that distributed the DAO token in exchange for ETH. After three weeks into the token sale, DAO had raised over $150 million. The DAO contracts contained about 14% of all ether (ETH) in circulation at that time due to the massive investment that was put into it but unfortunately there was some loopholes in the DAO'S wallet smart contract and an attacker took advantage of this vulnerability and made away with over $50m.
This attack almost brought down the Ethereum blockchain but later on, a hard-fork was proposed and after a consensus was reached, it was executed and it resulted into two separate Ethereum blockchain, the thing pre-forked version is now known as the Ethereum Class (ETC) while the hard fork that was implented is the present Ethereum (ETH).
Ethereum has some notable challenges which I feel could be worked on or improved upon. For example, the gas fee in the blockchain is extremely high and expensive, this has discouraged a lot of users within the network, also it seems the network is now congested because of the high popularity of the blockchain so a lot of work needs to be done on this and as we all know the network currently uses the proof of work protocol which involves a lot of computational power.
Howbeit, I think the proposed transition to Ethereum 2.0 which is still a work in progress will help solve most of these problems. The network will be able to move from proof of work system of validation which is energy draining to proof of stake protocol. This transition would also solve the high gas fee issue within the blockchain and even more sophisticated smart contracts will be developed through this.
I can say that Ethereum 2.0 will correct all this and it's only a matter of time before this change happens.
AAVE PROJECT
Aave is an Ethereum based money market that is built on the Ethereum protocol. It is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrency through a liquidity pool system. The Aave network is decentralized, it uses smart contracts to execute all transactions within the network hence it is a trustless network and it does not allow the involvement of a third party or central authority. On this network, there are over 30 cryptocurrencies (including ether) that can be either lend or borrowed by participants.
However, this Aave project was launched in 2011, September precisely and the brain behind this project is a man called Stani Kulechov. He was not happy with the fact that there were few loan applications built on Ethereum hence he strategized and came up with Aave to serve that purpose. Interestingly the word 'aave' actuality means 'ghost' in Finnish, that's quite funny right ?
Aave also has a native token called AAVE. It is currently worth $175 and ranked no. 46 on the coin market with a market cap of $2,398,627,336.
In conclusion, the Ethereum blockchain is one of the most widely used blockchain in the crypto ecosystem and it has been of immense benefit to many crypto enthusiasts, every user of this blockchain will quite agree with me that as far as Ethereum is concerned, the future is bright !
Greetings friend, talking about Ethereum, is synonymous with reliability which generates a lot of confidence in the crypto world, knowing that the risks of capital loss are very low, giving us a lot of stability when investing.
Thanks for reading through, indeed the Ethereum blockchain has established itself as a reliable platform over the years and has earned the trust of many.
The Ethereum blockchain is more secured and reliable, this makes it my favorite blockchain as well.
You are absolutely spot on, thanks for reading through.
WOao my friend, very good post, it really impresses me a lot.
At the same time I thank you for writing about AAVE, as it is a project that is not talked about much but it really has interesting things.
I guess because it belongs to Ethereum it is often overlooked in the midst of so many projects.
Good you found it quite interesting, actually AAVE is a solid project built on the Ethereum blockchain, i hope very soon one of our professors probably will share more light on this project one day.
Thank you for publishing an article in the Crypto Academy community today. We have accessed your article and we present the result of the assessment below
Comments/Recommendation
Ethereum network is no doubt one of the best blockchain in the crypto space for developers to build their projects. However, you have highlighted the important problems the network is facing and also solution to these problems. I believe the new upgrade will be able to deal with these problems.
Thank you for participating in this contest.
Thanks for the wonderful review my professor.
Ethereum is a reliable cryptocurrency that instills a lot of confidence in investors in the cryptocurrency world. It's known that the difficulties involved in capital return are low, giving us a lot of stability when investing.
That's very true friend, thanks for reading through.