History

The concept of the blockchain was originally presented by programmer Hal Finney as "decentralized digital time-stamping", a form of timestamp server for use in peer-to-peer applications.[2][3][4] Finney later re-implemented this idea in a cryptocurrency called CounterParty, which was released in January 2011 and used Peercoin as proof-of-work. In January 2013, Finney then released the Bitcoin project, which used proof-of-work and has no centralized server or single point of failure.

In 2013, developers Charles Hoskinson and Gavin Andresen, along with mathematician Peter Szolovits, developed the Core Development Community (CDC), a development group focused on the Core Development Environment (CDE). The CDCs most notable achievement was to develop a blockchain proof-of-work algorithm, and the resulting software, called Ethereum, was launched in July 2015.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

Cryptocurrencies

Blockchain is the foundation for various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum. Several other cryptocurrencies have been proposed that claim to use blockchain technology, though none are built upon the Bitcoin core protocol.

Blockchains can be designed so that they are secure even if more than 50% of the miners collude. https://pinup-casino-turkiye.com/ Bitcoin, for example, prevents this by using a proof-of-work system that makes it impractical for individual miners to attempt to overrule the collective will of the network. In November 2016, researchers demonstrated that it was possible to use a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack to compromise a blockchain.[12]

Blockchains can be used to prevent spamming and money laundering. However, they are not perfect anti-money-laundering tools. Among other problems, a single person can set up multiple accounts on a blockchain.[13][14]

In the event of cyberattacks, private or public blockchain technology could be used to safeguard a distributed ledger.[13] In 2016, a blockchain called RChain was created as a replacement for Bitcoin, in response to the high energy and bandwidth usage of Bitcoin. RChain uses a linear hash, which is much faster than Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm. However, RChain has been criticized for the security problems of the hash function they use: the one-way hash function hash of x.

Applications

In a report titled "A status of decentralized