Blockchain: The Distributed Network -part3
Blockchain History
This article is for people who want to know more about Blockchain and learn, discuss and understand the basics of the blockchain. It is certain that if you are reading this article, you have the aspiration to learn and understand new technologies and exploring Blockchain.
Blockchain has gained an immense popularity in recent time and has already created a history in a short interval of time. It is really important and recommended to have the knowledge and understanding of Blockchain. In this article, I have tried to gather as much information related to history possible till date on popular blockchain technologies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric.
Blockchain History
The first recognized work on the decentralized digital currency on using similar technology was done by Nick Szabo in 1998. But it took almost 10 years until the blockchain concept was getting mature and published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Satoshi Nakamoto is considered to be the founder of Bitcoin. However, no one really knows who Satoshi Nakamoto really is. As its not clear that the concept of Bitcoin was introduced by an individual or by a group of people. Race forward to 2014 and the blockchain is hitting a mainstream term used by financial and technical media. Most companies out there in 2014 are still struggling with understanding the usage and impact on their solutions.
Bitcoin History
In the year 2008, on the month of August 18th, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year on 31 October, a link to a white paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”. On 3rd January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin. Genesis block is also known as block number 0, which had a reward of 50 bitcoins.
It took almost 2 years, i.e till May 2010 to the first usage of bitcoin to buy or sell. So, for the first time in the history, 10,000 bitcoins were used for buying 25 dollar pizza. At this time bitcoin was worth 0.01 dollar.
After 3months i.e on 6 August 2010, the value of bitcoin was 0.5 cents, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren’t properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or blockchain, which let users bypass bitcoin’s economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins. On 15th August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the bitcoin protocol. This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin’s history.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF), a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011, then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems. The EFF’s decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin. The value of bitcoin was two dollars in the year 2011.
In the year 2012, Bitpay declared in public that already it has associated with more than 1000 merchants accepting bitcoin. Value of bitcoin was 10 dollars.
August 2013, the value jumps to 100 dollars after the federal judge declared that bitcoin is a form of currency.
2014 was an eventful year for bitcoin, as in the year 2014, LHV bank have used blockchain for the cyber wallet. At the same time, another project was funded by Crowd. We know this today as Ethereum. Ethereum project is a blockchain platform with the ability to build decentralized applications. Same year Mt. Gox one of the largest bitcoin exchanges files the bankruptcy. By end of this year, dell and Microsoft has started accepting bitcoin in their website.
In the year 2015, Major financial companies formed R3. A consortium of 40 institutions connected to exploring and implementing blockchain.
In the same year, In parallel Visa, Citi, and Nasdaq invested 30million dollar in the blockchain startup known as chain.com. Bitcoin has gained a momentum in price value and it has already touched 250 dollars.
By the year 2016, more than 40 financial startups have invested in Blockchain or Bitcoin. Bitcoin was first accepted by uber(Argentina). Bitcoin value has surged to 650 dollars.
In the year 2017, Bitcoin value was reached all-time high to 17,900 dollars but in early 2018, many countries have shown their concern and dilemma in accepting bitcoin with the fear that it may introduce parallel economy in a country.
According to world economic forum report, 80% of all banks will initiate projects concerning distributed ledger technology. The underlying technology supporting blockchain.
Ethereum History:
Let us look at the history of Ethereum, Feb 2014 for the first time, Ethereum protocol started development. Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by VitalikButerin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development.
In the year January 2014, the core Ethereum team with VitalikButerin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson done the public announcement of Ethereum. Formal development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse). Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowd sale during July–August 2014, have raised 25 million dollar funding.
It took almost a year to release(i.e in the year 2015), the first version of Ethereum and team have named this version as Olympics.
But in a month’s time, i.e in August 2015 another product version was released with the name as frontier and the value of the Ethereum was one dollar.
In the early year of 2016, another version of Ethereum was released with the improvement in gas pricing and security. This version is also known as “Homestead”. At this point in time, the value of Ethereum was ten dollars.
There was a gradual rise in the price during the year 2017 but it reached the all-time high price of 1250 dollar.
Hyperledger History
In December 2015, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of the Hyperledger Project. The founding members of the project were announced in February 2016 and ten further members and the makeup of the governing board were announced March 29.
In early 2016, the project began accepting proposals for incubation of codebases and other technologies as core elements. One of the first proposals was for a codebase combining previous work by Digital Asset, Blockstream’s lib-consensus, and IBM’s OpenBlockchain.[7] This was later named Fabric.[8] In May 2016, Intel’s distributed ledger, named Sawtooth,[9] was incubated.
In October 2016, Walmart, IBM and Tsinghua University jointly initiated a pilot project to track pork exported from China. The project had the goal to track each and every possible steps/procedure to track/trace from the origin of production to consumption. Walmart has already observed in the past history where Chinese agriculture, in particular, has been notorious for running afoul of food safety mandates. For example in 2008 milk and infant formula laced with melamine, a toxic chemical, killed six children, hospitalized tens of thousands, and rendered ill hundreds of thousands of others. The Chinese government revised its food safety regulations in the hopes of avoiding similar calamities last year. The law calls for better record-keeping, more supervision, and stricter health guidelines.
On 12 July 2017, the project announced its production-ready Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 and it started to gain popularity. Many more things would be added in the future to the history of hyper-ledger.
A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night. — Marilyn vos Savant — BrainyQuote
