An Ancient Treasure - The Genesis Block

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Hello Crypto friends,

I am happy to come before this great community again to interact with my fellow crypto friends.

Going through some posts made in this great community, I came to notice the zeal of this community and it's members to acquire knowledge about the crypto space.

Definitely, the crypto space is full of opportunities and mysteries that we cannot completely explore, but have any of us wondered how this piece of digital space turned out to be of great value?

Wonder no more my friends, we shall dig deep to the ancestry of the blockchain industry to unveil an ancient treasure - "THE GENESIS BLOCK".

WHAT IS THE GENESIS BLOCK

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The word "Genesis" usually refers to the birth/origin of something.
In religion, Genesis is usually referred to as the beginning of creation by God.
In fact, the old testament encyclopedia Britannica refers to Genesis as the first book of the Bible. All of this centers to the beginning of something.

In the crypto space, the word "genesis" also have significant meaning.

The genesis block can be referred to as the first block of a cryptocurrency, ever to be mined.
A blockchain is usually made up of series of blocks used to store transactions that occurs on the blockchain network.

The genesis block happens to be the Adam of all blocks, having no previous hash, and it is usually referred to as block 0 on the blockchain, but some blockchain represents it as block 1.

The blocks in the blockchain usually get laid, one on top of the other, with it's foundation being the genesis block, until it's sequence is completed.

BITCOIN GENESIS BLOCK

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Bitcoin Genesis block happens to be the first instance of pow system, and it function as a template for blocks created in it's blockchain.

In the beginning, the government were in control of the entire financial system which made our money under the control of a central authority.

A financial crisis then occurred in the year 2008 which led to the creation of Bitcoin.

On the 3rd of January, 2009, the anonymous founder of bitcoin (Satoshi Nakamoto) made a Bitcoin transaction which led to the creation of block 0 - Bitcoin genesis block

Back then in 2008, it was much easier for bitcoin to be mined than the way it currently is, and then it's block reward was higher than what it currently is.

The block reward for the genesis block was 50btc while the current bitcoin block reward is 6.25btc.
For more information about Bitcoin block reward and how it reduced from 50 to 6.25 bitcoin per block mined, visit my post

THE FIRST BITCOIN TRANSACTION

The first bitcoin transaction happens to be the transaction that led to the formation of bitcoin genesis block.

The first 50 Btc transaction could not be found on the system database and thus it's spending transaction was not accepted.

We can therefore conclude that the genesis block transaction cannot be considered as a real transaction, since it cannot be spent.

Written below is the hash for bitcoin genesis block:

000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

Data of genesis block

These 50 Bitcoin were sent to an address where it cannot be spent.

Below is the wallet address in which the 50 Bitcoin were sent to :

1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

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Checking the wallet address on the block explorer as shown above, you will notice that more than 50 BTC were sent into the wallet

As at when this post was made, there is a total of 68.54169736 BTC, gotten from a total of 3,351 transactions.
You will also notice that none of the coins sent to that address has been spent, it remains untouchable.

The reason why the total Bitcoin in that address exceed 50 is because some Bitcoin enthusiasts randomly send some Bitcoin to that address as a sort of appreciation to Satoshi Nakamoto.
A way of thanking him for the great work he did by creating Bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto has indeed affected the lives of millions in a positive way, in a way no other person have.

Something strange happened after block 0 was mined, it took a period of 6days before block 1 could be mined, instead of it normal 10minutes.

Time for block 0

Time for block 1

Many believe that this was intentionally done by Nakamoto to mimic the story of the world's creation in 6days, while others believed that the delay was to test if there was any flaw in the new technology.

THE SECRET MESSAGE FROM SATOSHI

The genesis block of bitcoin is indeed filled with great mysteries to unveil, the fact that the genesis block was mined from the blues by an anonymous identity, and that it's rewards are unspendable is already a lot to absorb.

In addition to this, a secret message was left by Nakamoto on the coinbase transaction of it's genesis block.

A coinbase transaction happens to be the genesis transaction of a block that is ignited to reward it's miner.

Block 0 coinbase transaction

Going a little lower to the input section of this transaction, we would see it's Hex sigscript

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As seen above, the hex sigscript is given as :
5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73.

When this Hex is converted to our normal text using an online tool, we have
"The Times 03/Jan/2009 chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

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You can also carryout your conversion using this tool

Although this message gave no clear meaning but many bitcoin enthusiast made a conclusion that the message was to emphasize on bitcoin ultimate goal, which is to be better than the failed banking system.

Infact, the message was the same as the headline of an article published on the day the genesis block was mined.

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IMPORTANCE OF BITCOIN GENESIS BLOCK

Bitcoin genesis block has many Importance, both to individuals and to the crypto space, amongst it's importance are:

• THE BIRTH OF CRYPTOCURRENCY:

Bitcoin is known as the first cryptocurrency ever to be created, it is most times regarded to as the father of all cryptocurrency.

The success of bitcoin was what inspired the creation of other cryptocurrencies

• BIRTH OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY:

The creation of Bitcoin happens to be the first application of blockchain technology, which have not been in use for years.

The creation of Bitcoin help to create more possibilities for the application of blockchain technology.

For example, the blockchain technology has been introduced to the music industry through audius platform and it has also been introduced to sports through socios platform.

ETHEREUM GENESIS BLOCK

The Ethereum genesis block was actually expected unlike that of bitcoin.

In the year 2013, a 19 year old programmer known as vitalik Buterlin propose the blockchain project of Ethereum.

Before ethereum was officially launched, there was a presale of ether and also a release of a couple of prototype.

In May 2014, there was a release of the last prototype, Olympic, with a bounty of 25000 ethers, released for users to stress test the blockchain.

Then in the year 2015, 30th of July to be precise, frontier was announced as the official version of the blockchain [Ethereum 1.0].

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Since the launch of Ethereum blockchain, there have been several upgrades, but we won't dive into that today.

All cryptocurrencies posseses it's genesis block which stands as a foundation to other blocks on the blockchain.

Let's quickly locate the genesis block of steem.

STEEM GENESIS BLOCK

Our very own, steem, also have it's genesis block.

The genesis block of steem is known as Block 1 and it was developed on the 24th of March 2016.

We shall discuss in detail about steem genesis block later, but for now, let's locate steem Genesis Block on steemworld.

• To locate steem genesis block, visit steemworld and the below will appear

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• Then you click on block explorer and the below will appear, in which you will input the block number "1", since we are in search of the genesis block.

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• And here we have it, the transaction details for steem genesis block

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CONCLUSION

Everything on earth has a beginning, and for a blockchain, its beginning is the genesis block.
The genesis block happens to be the foundation of the blockchain.

The most significant block there is, is the bitcoin genesis block, it not only define the shape of bitcoin blockchain, it also form the foundation of the blockchain technology in general.

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As at when this post was made, bitcoin has a block height of 737833blocks

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And ethereum has a block height of 14842085 blocks.

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And steem has a total block number of 61000000 and a total of 31transactions.

Thanks for reading!!!