Steemit Crypto Academy Contest Season 1 Week 3 - Blockchain through the concepts by @phlexygee

Hi great minds, it is another week for the steemit cryptoacademy engagement contest challenge. Here comes my presentation, and without further ado let's get to business.

---

Tell us about your favorite concept or term related to blockchain, try to be explanatory and make sure to give your opinion. (For example: Decentralized, Genesis Block, Hard Fork, Proof of Stake.)

---

There exist many blockchain related concepts such as Blockchain trilemma, Genesis block, block validation and Proof-of-Work, but above all my favorite blockchain related term is Pure Proof-of-Stake which is a consensus mechanism that is employed by the Algorand blockchain network.
Consensus mechanisms are used to agree on transactions on blockchains. Thus, blocks are added to a blockchain through the utilization of consensus mechanisms or protocols.

source

Pure Proof of Stake is a consensus mechanism that is a predecessor of the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, and it is the brainchild of the Algorand founder Silvio Micali.
The PPoS mechanism was built on Byzantine consensus, and it was first used by the Algorand blockchain.

PPoS was built as a cure to the slightly centralized nature of the PoS protocol due to how the PoS blockchains were dominated by users with high staked amount of tokens, which negatively affected the decentralized goal or nature of the blockchain technology.

Although each token holder’s influence in the system depends on their staked token amount just as in the PoS, but the unique thing is that, the PPoS mechanism select block validators randomly irrespective of their staked amount, unlike with the PoS whereby users with higher stakes dominate the system.

---

Why do you think it is important in the blockchain?

---

Without a doubt, PPoS is very essential in the Algorand blockchain due to the following reasons.

• It is highly scalable; the PPoS has the capacity to handle a minimum of two thousand transactions per second. Thus, it possesses high transaction speed.

• It is purely decentralized; the system is being run or managed randomly, without depending much on specific users. All users have the opportunity of being selected as block processors and validators.

• It is highly secured; It ensures high security due to the pure decentralized nature of the mechanism. The high security is assured with the random block validators feature. Only the proposed block validators know when they are selected, and this anonymity helps to eliminate attacks on the selected users. Malicious attackers only become aware of block validators after they are done with the block creation process.

• It provides equal opportunities; there is equality in the sense that, all interested users have the chance of being chosen as block validators irrespective of their staked amount. Thus, both minor and major stakers have equal chance of succeeding in the system.

• It uses less transaction energy or resources; There is less energy consumption since the validation of blocks and transactions are done by staking instead of miners who use huge amount of computing power like that of the PoW. With PPoS there is no need to purchase sophisticated hardware products, an interested user just have to stake some native tokens to be able to participate in the block creation process.

• Low transaction fees; PPoS has low transactional fees as compared to its predecessors.

---

Do you think that the existence of the blockchain would be possible without this concept? Is there an alternative or similar term?

---

Literally, yes. Blockchain technology will survive without the existence of the Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
There are other related terms to PPoS such as Proof-of-Work, Proof-of-Stake, Delegated Proof-of-Stake and Leased Proof-of-Stake which are being used by other blockchain networks, and even Algorand can operate on some of them.

All the above mentioned are consensus protocols that uses different processes and procedures to validate new blocks.

---

Do you think it is possible to improve this term in some way? Explain us how

---

Yes of course, the Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism has some flaws and if worked upon, it will gain more reputation in the crypto arena.

Below are some highlighted challenges that are associated with the PPoS consensus mechanism which can equally be tackled to improve the protocol.

Challenges

---

Fewer rewards the staking rewards for PPoS are noted to be not that encouraging, except those with higher staked tokens gain some passive income.

The entertainment of malicious attackers; PPoS fails to take effective measures against its attackers, but rather skips the proposed problematic block as long as two third of the users follow the protocol's instructions and hold more of the total stake. Thus, PPoS fails to deal with malicious attackers.

The rich are somehow discouraged; the random selection of block validators discourages users with huge sum of tokens to participate in the staking process. Thus the rich are discouraged in terms of staking since they may not be sure whether they will be selected as validators or not, and this lack of interest on the part of some rich can has the potential to negatively affect the system.

My Suggested Solutions for PPoS improvement.

---

The increment of the staking rewards will bring more investors on board. Because every in investor's goal is to make and maximize profits.

Proper and effective handling of fraudulent activities, will increase the safety of the system, as well as the trust level of its users.

A special staking slot can be created to accommodate the whales so that they they lose interest as a result of the random selection of block validators. For instance, 20 slots can be made available for people with huge funo to stake, whiles the remaining goes through random selection.

Conclusion

---

The Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanisms is one of the best consensus mechanisms ever existed.
As pondered on earlier, it has some pros as well as cons, but I think the system will be much better if the developers work towards improving it.

To my knowledge, without the existence of a consensus mechanism, there will be no chain of blocks because the blocks are created or validated on the agreement of different nodes which then forms to blockchain.

This is my view on the PPoS consensus mechanism, and I hope you enjoy whiles reading.

Thank you.