Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners' course - Task 3: The Genesis Block

hmohammed14 (59)Beginner[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]in SteemitCryptoAcademy • 3 years ago (edited)

Introduction

Greetings to everyone here. Thanks to all the steemit cryptoacademy and the wonderful lecturers for their profitable lessons and and support they are showering us throughout the season. I found this lesson to be more crucial and I hope to make the best out of it.

1a) What is the Genesis block?

Briefly, Genesis can be described as the origin of something in existence, whereas, files which permanently record data is called Blocks. Therefore, Genesis block is simply the first block of a Cryptocurrency being mined. In most cases, depending on the blockchain being used, the Genesis block can also be called block 0 or block 1 as it's serve to be the first block.

A series of blocks found on a blockchain stores information pertaining to transactions that had occurred on the network. Blocks are being identified individually by their unique block header hash. Other blocks can be traced back to the Genesis block since it serve as an ancestry block, where all blocks in the blockchain are linked, one on top of the other by their hash to the first block. The first proof of work blockchain system is said to be the Bitcoin Genesis block which serve as the a common building for other blocks within the blockchain network.

b) What are the significances of the Genesis Block?

Genesis block gives a systematic way of storing data on a blockchain in a sequencial order. All other blocks would carefully follow the criteria of their initial block which is the Genesis block. This makes it easy in finding a particular block using it hash since it follows one after the other.
Genesis block also give the idea on how new blocks should be mined on a blockchain. This criteria was created by Satoshi who was the first to bring idea on Bitcoin Genesis block in the year 2009. This brought an opened idea and now over 10,000 cryptocurrencies are being created.
Introduction of the Genesis block had become a great significant to miners and such event brought about possible application on how the technology would be used to meet several problems within the crypto world.

c) Explore the Bitcoin Genesis block and indicate how many transactions so far and the number of bitcoins.

In the year 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto who's probably the founder of Bitcoin initiated a Bitcoin transactions which brought about the Bitcoin Genesis block into existence. All Cryptocurrencies came into existence through Genesis block. Therefore, it can also be known as the beginning of the beginning. Bitcoin being the first currency to be created was started with it block which is known to be the Genesis block. A such, many Cryptocurrencies were created with the initial idea from the Bitcoin Genesis block since 12 years way back and many had acknowledge and added value to such great objective.

The block is represented as block 0 with a hash 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f.

The block has a reward of 50BTC. The link below gives the entry to the block Block Explorer

The Wallet

At the time if writing this post, there is actually more than 50BTC that was received. There are 68.52177051 BTC with 3,030 transactions being made.

The image below shows how long it took to mine block 1 after the mine of Genesis block which was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto. It takes an approximate time of 10 minutes to mine a block, i.e. Bitcoin has a mining block time of 10 minutes. This brought about differences in timestamp of the two blocks as shown below.

_{Block 0 Block Explorer}

_{Block1 Block explorer}

Many suggested that, the reason block 1 was mined 6 days after the Genesis block was trying to copy the creation story, where God created the world in 6 days.

Conclusion

Every existing thing has it beginning just like the blockchain which started with Genesis block as initiated by Satoshi Nakamoto. It is now 12 years and more Cryptocurrencies are being initiated and still have a future reliance. A great thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto for this great initiative.

By: @hmohammed14
Cc; @awesononso

#academys4-intro03 #cryptoacademy #genesisblock #steemitexclusive