Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S10W1 -: Resource Credits Vs Bandwidth

Hi Steemians, I am glad to be participating in the Steemit engagement contests of Season 10. I hope this season will be a source of fun for us. I am very thankful to the Crypto Academy professors for organising this beautiful contest. Today's topic is about Resource credits vs Bandwidth and I will try my best to answer all the questions properly so lets start.

What is bandwidth in blockchain? Explain in your own words.

Bandwidth is very important in any type of network. Actually, bandwidth means the data capacity of a network for transaction purposes. I learned in one of my past semester that bandwidth refers to the number of Mbs, GBs, or TBs that is processing on a network per second and how much data we are receiving per second.

In blockchain, bandwidth means the capacity of a blockchain network to validate transactions. The blockchains with higher bandwidth have more capacity to validate transactions if we compare them to the blockchains with lower bandwidth. An issue can be faced in the form of delays in transactions on the blockchain with lower bandwidth.

Bandwidth has a limited number of transactions to be validated in a given time frame, which can disturb the scalability of a blockchain network. Steem blockchain adopted this method too in the first two years, but it was less scalable, so that is why Steem blockchain changed this method and implemented a new method, which was resource credits.

There are many top blockchains that are using bandwidth, like bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, cardano, solana, and many others. As blockchains are decentralized, their bandwidth is limited, but now there are some methods that can improve blockchain network bandwidth. These methods are sharding, layer 2 solutions, and last one is off-chain transactions.

Steem Blockchain uses Resource Credits, explain how it works.

As Pelon sir explained in his post, Steem blockchain used a bandwidth system in the first 2 years, but it was less scalable, and then Steem blockchain replaced this method with a new one, which was resource credits. There is no doubt that resource credits is more scalable than bandwidth systems for Steem.

With the help of resource credits, we can make comments, posts, transactions, and votes on the Steem blockchain. It is similar to the bandwidth system: if a user does not have RCs, he or she cannot perform transactions on the Steem blockchain. More SP users have more RCs, which means more power to vote, comment, and post, etc.

When a Steemit account performs an action such as posting, commenting, upvoting, etc., some amount of RCs is deducted from the available balance of that account. When the available RCs balance ends in the user's account, the user has to wait to refill its resource credits balance.

The regeneration process of resource credits depends on the utilisation of the network. Mean, when the network is underutilised, the regeneration process of RCs becomes faster, whereas when the network is heavily utilised, the regeneration process of RCs becomes slower.

What is the difference between bandwidth and resource credit on the Steem blockchain?

On the Steem blockchain, bandwidth and RC mean the network resources required for a Steemit user to perform actions such as making a post, commenting on someone's post, upvoting posts, etc. Now I will explain them one by one for better understanding.

Bandwidth on the Steem blockchain means the rate at which a Steemit user can perform actions such as posting, commenting, upvoting, etc. Like other blockchains, Steem's blockchain also consumes a specific amount of bandwidth during every activity by the Steemit users, like making a post, comment, and vote. If a user's account bandwidth runs out, he or she has to wait for it to be replenished.

Resource credits were a system implemented by the Steem blockchain to enhance scalability and prevent abuse. As I mentioned above, when someone performs an activity such as posting, commenting, upvoting, etc. on the Steem blockchain, a specific amount of RCs is deducted from its available balance. Similarly, if a user's account RCs end, he or she has to wait to refill their account RCs balance. If we don't have enough RCs, we can't perform transactions.

What is your available resource credit? Show the step by step and screenshots are required.

Now I will check my present RC status and for this question I am using Steemworld.org

In the first step, I opened the Steemworld.org website and clicked on the dashboard option on the top left corner, as shown in the screenshot below.

In the second step, there are 3 dots on the right corner. I clicked on the 3 dots so that I can put my username there for my account information. Below is the screeshot of this process.

As I entered my name in the search bar, all my account information opened before my eyes. In the below screenshot, we can see my present RC status, which is 15,377,284,248,714 RC.