Steemit Crypto Academy | Season 2: week 1 Blockchain and Platforms homework post by @verdad

I congratulate you @alphafx for your appointment as a professor in steemitCryptoAcademy. Thank you very much for your lecture and it has been a pleasure to take part in this week homework on blockchain
and platforms.

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN
Blockchain is a publicly known cryptocurrecy wallet and exchange that supports Ethereum, Ripple, and bitcoin and also provides its charts, market information, and statistics. The data in this system are stored in a very unique way making it impossible to modify the recorded data, hack the system. It was launched by Ben Reeves in August 2011 as a member of the cryptocurrecy coinbase exchange. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer network mutually adhering to a protocol for verifying the validity of new blocks. Blocks in the chain contain a certain number of transaction data, a cryptographic hash, and are chained to the formerly filled blocks when filled. We still don't know up to date the inventor/inventors of blockchain because the name Satoshi Nakamoto has been used as a public bitcoin cryptocurrecy transaction ledger since 2008. Its invention for bitcoin made it the initial currency to resolve the double-spending without the need of any trusted authorities.
Lets continue by talking about some of the differences between some of the blockchain systems.Thus Ripple and Ethereum

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIPPLE AND ETHEREUM

RIPPLE
Ripple is a blockchain cryptocurrency exchange system that aids foreign workers to transfer money non-commercially. It was created by a US company known as Ripple Labs Inc and was publicly released in 2012. Ripple token XRP is a coin that works uniquely as compared to other coins and is among the top-rated cryptocurrencies in the market. The XRP platform is used by business services and banks to transfer money to their clients.

ADVANTAGES OF RIPPLE(XRP)

1. It uses a unique distributed consensus mechanism through a network to validate transactions by conducting a poll, the nodes decide the authenticity of the transaction which enables instant confirmation without the approval of any central authority. This makes XRP more reliable than many of its competitors.

2. It’s very affordable and allows traders to lend and borrow any amount of money.

3. Transactions in this system are carried out with a brilliant speed (can process at 1000 settled transactions per second).

4. it can work with banks as compared to the currencies.

DRAWBACKS OF RIPPLE (XRP)

1. Founders of Ripple own too much of the coin (over one-third) because the coins are pre-mined.

2. Ripple is controlled/managed by a private company which is contrary to the decentralized theme.

3. It is designed only to be used by financial institutions.

ETHEREUM
Ethereum (Ether) is an open-source blockchain that was proposed by Vitalik Buterin (a programmer) in 2013 and was released 6 years ago thus on July 30, 2015. Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after bitcoin. It’s a decentralized, distributed ledger that verifies all transactions and records them in a block. The Ethereum token (ETH) can be used as an investment, to trade (buy and sell goods and services) just like all the other cryptocurrency tokens out there.

PROS OF ETHEREUM

1. Ethereum blockchain allows traders/programmers to code and run apps on its platform (decentralized app creation) without any downtime.

2. Trader's transaction data and funds are secured and protected from hackers.

3. Each block on the Ether is a smart contract that cannot be modified and allows contracts to be encrypted and stored without the need for any third-party verification.

DRAWBACKS OF ETHEREUM

1. It uses a very complicated programming language solidity which is similar to python and c++ and can be tricky sometimes and also not easy to find a tutorial for beginners. Solidity can also generate machine codes and acts as a compiler for the Ether virtual machine.

2. Investing in Ether is very risky especially for newbies because of its fluctuations and can lead to a greater loss.

3. The Ethereum blockchain platform can easily break down due to numerous applications that run on it and can take days to fix.

RIPPLE AND ETHEREUM IN THE MARKET
Ripple token XRP is known to be the third most popular in terms of market capitalization unlike Ethereum is the second and it’s a more stable currency than Ether because its value stays
within a US dollar whilst Ethereum can fluctuate more than 90 million overnight.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Ripple (XRP) works in a very complicated way and scores better than the Ethereum network because of its low processing and transaction time. On the other hand, Ethereum is publicly known by many than ripple (XRP), giving it a greater advantage in other ways. Although the Ripple network is decentralized, it is managed/controlled by a private company/organization whilst the Ethereum blockchain network isn’t owned or managed by any government/authority.

Thank you very much @alphafx, for reading my post

Cc: @alphafx
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