Hello,

This is a homework post for professor @imagen

Question : 1

Answer :

As the name suggests, it is an event in which the reward for mining a bitcoin is reduced to half every time it happens. Halving generally occurs due to the fixed supply of a certain cryptocurrency which is mentioned in their whitepaper. In the case of bitcoin, It reduces the Inflation rate of the bitcoin to half as the new bitcoins had to enter into the market circulation. This event marks a reduction in bitcoin's diminishing fixed supply.

• This event takes place after every 210,000 blocks mined. In simple words, we can say that the reward of mining one bitcoin reduces to half of the previous mining reward every four years. This event will continue to happen until the year 2140, and after that, no block rewards will be given to miners, but the question arises: if they don't get rewards, why would they mine anymore?

The answer to that question is after the year 2140. The miners will get rewards from transaction fees paid by the users on the network. It is very crucial to give rewards to the miners as they're the ones who're keeping the network running.

• When the bitcoin was launched, the initial reward for mining one bitcoin was 50BTC. As the height of the block reached 210000, the Bitcoin Halving event occurred in November 2012, and this 50BTC reward was reduced to half, i.e. 25BTC after that second event occurred in July 2016 when the block height reached 420000, which again halved the reward value to 12.5 BTC per block.

• The third event occurred in May 2020 when the block height reached 630000, which halved the reward value to 6.25 BTC per block.

• In a rough estimate, 900 new bitcoins are mined daily and become a part of the circulation. The next expected Halving is going to happen in early 2024 when the block height reaches 840000 blocks, and the current reward for mining one bitcoin will become half (i.e. from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC).

Many currencies carry out halving events like:-

• Litecoin

• Ravencoin

• Zcash

• Zcoin

• Bitcoin cash

• ELcash and many more.

• Litecoin Halving event occurs After every 840,000 blocks are mined, and the block reward for mining 1 LTC is halved. Considering the average block is mined every 2.5 minutes, Litecoin Halving occurs approximately once every four years.

When Litecoin was launched, the block reward was 50 LTC. Now, after two halvings, the Litecoin block reward is 12.5 LTC. The Next Litecoin Halving Will occur in August 2023, which will reduce the block reward from 12.5 to 6.25 LTC per Block mined. The first Litecoin halving took place on 25 August 2015, The second in 2019 and the third will be in 2023.

• As it is a new cryptocurrency, it still hasn't undergone any halving, but it has the same halving principle. The first Ravencoin halving will occur in January 2022, when the block height will reach 2,100,000. The current reward for mining 1 Ravencoin block is 5000 Ravens.

• The reward per block will drop from 5,000 to 2,500 Raven after the first Halving, and this will continue with each subsequent 2,100,000 block until the reward amount can no longer be halved.

Question : 2

Answer :

The word Consensus means "A general agreement".In terms of Blockchains, the consensus mechanisms are the agreements on single states of the network present among distributed nodes. These mechanisms are the protocols that help a blockchain process the transactions that are registered to it. We can also say that they provide assurity in regards to the validity and authenticity of every transaction.

Some common consensus mechanisms are :

• Proof of work(PoW)

• Proof of stake(PoS)

• Delegated Proof of stake(DPoS)

• Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)

• Proof of Capacity(PoA)

• Proof of Activity(PoC) and many more.

• It is a decentralized protocol that requires members of a network to make efforts on solving a mathematical puzzle. It's a way to validate the transactions and new mining tokens.

• The digital ledger contains a record of the transactions that happened on the blockchain network. All these transactions are arranged in sequential blocks so that a user is only allowed once to register a block. As the blockchain mechanism is transparent, hackers may have some chances to create malicious or altered versions of blocks, so to avoid this, the transaction system works on hashes, which are long strings of numbers serving as proof of work. Any altered version of that block will be rejected as soon as it registers.

• It is a type of consensus mechanism that requires a moderate amount of effort and computational power for the hackers to create a malicious block. The mechanism promotes the transactions between peer to peer networks, and it requires a great amount of energy and computational power.

Pos is a type of consensus mechanism by which miners can mine and validate transactions of the blocks based on the number of coins that a miner possesses. The networks use this mechanism to achieve distributed Consensus for the blockchain.

• It does not require power in great amounts and provides stronger resistance to centralization. It solely depends on the stake amounts. The validator, who have a larger stake, will have a great influence in the market.

• In PoW, the probability of mining a new block depends on the computational work done by a miner for the block while PoS depends on the stake amount that a validator holds in the market.

• In PoW, the rewards are given to the miners for solving cryptographic puzzles, while in PoS, the Validators receive transaction fees as rewards.

• In Pow, to add each block to the blockchain, the miners compete to solve difficult puzzles using their computer process power. In PoS, There is no competition as block creators are chosen by an algorithm based on user stake.

• PoW is less secure than PoS, as the Hacking Organisation will need 51% of all existing cryptocurrency to hack and generate malicious blocks in PoS, which is not possible.

• Bitcoin is well-known crypto with a Proof-of-Work consensus-building algorithm that usesSHA256 function. At the same time, Some of the cryptocurrencies that use different variants of proof-of-stake Consensus are Cardano (ADA), Cosmos (ATOM), EOS, Tezos (XTZ), etc.

Question : 3

Answer :

To perform this task, first, you need to Visit the Blockchain Explorer.

As you can see in the image above, it shows the blockchain explorer homepage. On the same page, scroll down a little, and you'll find the latest blocks generated and the latest Transactions.

The image Above shows the latest transactions, click on the first transaction, and it'll show all the details for the latest transaction, including the block hash and other details.

The details for the latest block are as follows:

• Hash - 3f1e125799ca74c22ec02acbc5884b9b4042ce8a4102e52630b84f768fcb5d88

• Received Time - 2021-10-09 17:48

• Size - 222 bytes

• Weight - 564

• Included in Block- Mempool

• Confirmations - 0

• Total Input - 0.04952171 BTC

• Total Output - 0.04951276 BTC

• Fees - 0.00000895 BTC

• Fee per byte - 4.032 sat/B

• Fee per vbyte - 6.348 sat/vByte

• Fee per weight unit - 1.587 sat/WU

• Value when transacted - $2,724.58

Question : 4

Answer :

Except for Bitcoin, all the other cryptocurrencies are altcoins. These generally compete in the market to show themselves as a better option than bitcoin as bitcoin was the first-ever cryptocurrency launched and currently the highest-paid cryptocurrency. These altcoins try to improve any drawbacks and limitations that bitcoin shows to get one step ahead of it.

Altcoin season is a period of 90 days in which 75% of the top 50 altcoins outperform bitcoin. The word Season here means the competitors which reach new high limits in their period, or we can say which are performing better than bitcoin and achieving their highest price values.

When the Investors start investing more in Altcoins than Bitcoin, it leads to the Altcoin season.

Well, in short, NO. We are not currently in the Altcoin season.as you can see from the website which shows the Altcoin seasons BlockchainCenter.

Let's go to the website and see if the Season is Altcoin Season or not.

• You can clearly see from the image above that this Season has 53% growth rate but in order for it to become a Altcoin Season it should be at least 75 or more than 75%.

The answer to the question that whether its an Altcoin Season or not, is :

• Its not an Altcoin Season.

• We can see from the graph from the same website that the last altcoin season was around June 2021.

As you can see from the image above the white Box region is the Increment in Performances of the 50 top altcoins as compared to BTC, which is more than 75% which converted it in an Altcoin Season. In the last Altcoin season, there was approximately 80% growth in the top 50 Altcoins.

We'll Take Ethereum and Cardano. I'm choosing these as I've worked with them in recent weeks and am currently active in their market. Also, I have a better understanding of these cryptocurrencies, like how they work, their price movements and patterns and Exchange Environments.

• It is a decentralized platform especially for smart contract operated transactions, users can operate decentralized apps running on ethereum blockchain and with the help of Decentralized finance or defi you can access all the financial services without any help of mediators or intermediaries.

• Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin who's a programmer by profession, he proposed this idea in 2013 and launched Ethereum in 2015. Ether(ETH) is the currency that is used in the Ethereum environment.

• A user can sell and buy NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain network with the ETH(Ether) currency, due to its coin ERC721, it has introduced a new coin called ERC1155 which is a semi fungible token supporting both centralised and decentralized finances.

• Ethereum gives a platform to many other cryptocurrencies, which makes those cryptocurrencies work as an ERC20 token and Ethereum thus utilise it for ICO, that is the reason why Ethereum is called the progenitor of ICOs we can also say that many other currencies are made on Ethereum Blockchain network.

• current price - $3612.70

• Market Cap - $425,782,544,141

• Fully Diluted Market Cap- $425,782,544,141

• Volume(24h) - $13,512,344,488

• Volume / Market Cap - 0.03174

• Circulating Supply - 117,857,266.94 ETH

• Total Supply - 117,857,267

• The price chart shows the price value of ethereum for the year 2021, you can see that from the month of April to June there's a strong peak in the ethereum price and we already know that the last Altcoin season happened during that period.

It is a blockchain platform with a Proof of Stake(PoS)consensus mechanism. It is an open-source project that also aims to “redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins to individuals” which helps in making society more fair and transparent.

Cardano was created in 2017 and named after the 16th-century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. It has ADA as its native token. The ADA token is designed to ensure that owners can participate in the operation of the network as a result of which those who have the cryptocurrency have the right to vote on any proposed changes to the software or the asset.

Image Showing current ADA details From coinmarketcap

• Current Price - $2.27

• Market Cap - $72,817,379,017

• Fully Diluted Market Cap- $102,277,663,163

• Volume(24h)- $1,956,643,718

• Volume / Market Cap - 0.02687

• Circulating Supply- 32.04B ADA

• Max Supply - 45,000,000,000

• Total Supply - 33,117,618,880

Image Showing ADA price chartFrom coinmarketcap

As you can see from the Graph Above there's a price increment in Cardano from April to June and also after that, it increased at a greater rate.

Question : 5

Answer :

• For this task, I'm using REN currency. As it's not in the top 25 cryptocurrencies. It ranked #91 at the time of making this post.

• REN is an open-source protocol that was created to provide Operability and liquidity between two different blockchain networks or platforms. It was founded by Taiyang Zhang in 2017.

Why did I choose REN

I've studied the price chart for the REN and found it's currently selling at lower prices but still maintained its liquidity. As a user and crypto trader, I think it has potential and more space to grow in future as it allows DeFi projects and solve some issues related to the investments in Defi Projects and since these DeFi are popular these days. And another reason is the token price is affordable and the trading fees within the platform is very low.

Where to buy REN

It is a freely tradable token having pairs with some major token exchanges such as Binance and Huobi.

• go to your finance wallet and click on markets,search for REN and then click on buy after filling in the amount and price.

• As you can see from the images I've purchased REN for a total of 22.3584 USDT.

• Current Price - $1.09

• Market Cap - $1083998065

• Fully Diluted Market Cap- $1086427261

• Volume(24h)- $70088288

• Volume / Market Cap - 0.06466

• Circulating Supply- 997764051.02 ADA

• Max Supply - 1000000000

• Total Supply - 999999633

• The image above shows the price chart for the REN. As you can see, the token is currently at a low price which is why I've purchased it in this current time frame and not long ago, it reached its all-time high.

• The image above shows the all-time high for REN.i.e $1.83.

This Lecture helped me a lot, I came to know a lot about Bitcoin and Its halving Event. I know how these rewards were distributed to the miners and what will be the next reward amount that the bitcoins miners will have after the 4th Halving.

• Learned about Altcoins, the basic concept of altcoins and their values.

• Learned how to check the latest transaction blocks from the blockchain Explorer.

• Learned what Pos and Pow and some other consensus mechanisms are and what are their perks.

Thats all from my side.

Thank you

@imagen