DEV Community: Cristian Garner

Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger

Cristian Garner — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 21:17:24 +0000

TL;DR

This is a summary of the Ethereum Yellow Paper with my personal thoughts included. You can read the full paper here: https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf

First of all, the Ethereum Yellow paper is deeply technical and it's useful only in case you want to build an Ethereum client from scratch if you only want to learn more about Ethereum in a more conceptual or usability way I recommend reading the white paper instead: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

Bitcoin was created with one goal in mind, transactions of values between peers in a trusted and decentralized way. Ethereum instead was created with the key goal to facilitate ANY kind of transactions between individuals who would otherwise have no means to trust one another in some cases due to inefficient legal systems, geographical ubication or corruption.

Ethereum's Blockchain is heavily inspired on the Bitcoin's, it uses the proof-of-work as a medium to reduce spam. The main difference it's that it has a global state where information is saved, often Ethereum is referenced as "The World Computer", blocks are composed by a series of transactions which has information about the sender, receiver, nonce (to prevent double transactions), the amount sent and gas.

There are two types of accounts, users and smart contracts (in reality programs), the main difference is that smart contracts don't have a private and public key and when they are created have the data related to their execution. Smart contracts can be executed by users or other smart contracts, in order to execute them is needed to pay an execution fee named Gas, the gas is a mechanism of protection for reducing infinite resources consumption by mistake or malicious actors, actors that want to use a smart contract need to pay a gas with a limit per block, not allowing infinite loops and the stalling of the network. Because of the implementation of Gas, it's said that Ethereum implements a Quasi Complete Turing Machine.

Ethereum was designed to be a Proof of Stake blockchain from the start, but the technology wasn't ready, to promote the migration to Proof of Stake it was implemented an internal mechanism named difficulty bomb which will increase the difficulty of mining.

Just as Bitcoin, Ethereum was designed to be as accessible as
possible to as many people as possible with the idea that mining would be a simple swap from electricity to Ether. Bitcoin has a plague known as ASICs, which use specialized hardware to mine, to prevent ASICs Ethereum implements a different proof-of-stake algorithm named Ethash contrast.

In conclusion, I can say that Bitcoin has a better structure for storing value, but for the implementation of decentralized applications and finances, Ethereum is the best solution.

Libra: A New Global Currency

Cristian Garner — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 22:37:21 +0000

TL;DR

This is a summary of the Libra White paper by Facebook with my personal thoughts included. You can read the full paper here: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/

Libra is a blockchain platform being created by Facebook with the mission to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure to empower billions of people. The technology is under development and everything mentioned in the white paper is speculative until is tested by real users.

As for the premise, the Libra blockchain is created to reach mainstream adoption through regulation and collaboration of the financial sector. This makes Libra centralized as it's can be censored by regulators and governments also is an indirect competitor of Blockchain systems that bypass regulations and look for mainstream adoption.

The unit currency is named "Libra" and is backed by a basket of currencies that work as collateral making the Libra token stable, it won't be "peg" to a specific currency making it a direct threat to the U.S dollar and multiple currencies since the governments won't have direct control over the money anymore. This basket is called "The Libra Reserve" and allows the users to feel secure that are able to return to their local fiat currency at any time.

The network governance and reserve is managed by the Libra Association, an independent, not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. in order for organizations to join, it's needed an investment of $10M with a cost to run nodes approximately at $280,000. Interests generated by the platform will go to the Libra Association which might use it as revenue for investors, keep the transaction fees low or to pay for costs in the network. For the release in 2020 is expected to have 100 "Founding Members". This model makes libra a permissioned blockchain as not everyone can run a node, it's mentioned in the white paper that they have the vision of going permissionless but it's not possible with current technology to have a scalable permissionless blockchain.

Facebook created a new programming language named Move that allows the implementation of transaction logic and smart contracts on the Libra Blockchain. This would allow tech companies to act like banks and create their own implementations of financial services. For sure governments and financial entities will oppose and will do everything they can to stop them. Public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum won't have much trouble since there is no direct "owner" while Libra has an entity (Facebook) which can be and is being currently pressured; The U.S and France governments had started making statements that are no encouraging for Libra. At some point, governments will start banning the currency and that will make impossible for Libra to be a truly global currency.

In conclusion, Libra is an upgrade to the current financial system and digital money, it might be reasonable that the mainstream audience will get onboard to cryptocurrencies thanks to Facebook's network muscle. Soon we will see Facebook services using Libra as a medium of payment, Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger will definitely integrate cash in a global manner. But in the end, is expected that users that need a more secure and decentralized blockchain will migrate.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Cristian Garner — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 02:23:31 +0000

TL;DR

This is a summary of the Bitcoin White paper, You can read the full paper here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The Bitcoin White paper was published the 31 October of 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin was created to disrupt online transactions and internet commerce which used to require a trust-based model and relies on financial institutions to prevent double-spending. Relying on centralized organizations has severe problems such as censorship, chargebacks, and complexity that increase transaction costs.

Paying with cash solves the double-spending problem in the physical world, for the digital world it's needed a Blockchain. Bitcoin's blockchain uses hashes to create a connected data structure which saves the owner of a coin using the private key as proof of ownership. To be secure uses a peer to peer timestamp server that requires a generated computational proof, malicious actors would need to collectively control more CPU power than the rest of the actors. To change previous transactions is needed to use the same amount of CPU power to rewrite all previous transactions until the end of the chain making it almost impossible to hack the network.

Depending on the size of the network the proof of work difficulty increases or reduces.

There are a set of rules to run the network, the goal is to validate transactions in a block and add it to the chain by nodes, the longest chain will be always considered by the nodes and if two different chains are equally long a temporal branch will be created until one is longer. As incentive users earn new coins generated on each block and a transaction fee. Once a certain amount of coins are created no new coins will be created and the incentive will be the transaction fee.

In conclusion, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency created by a set of technologies, it creates and stores value in an anonymous and trustless way. The technology behind it, the Blockchain can be used for different purposes including the creation of decentralized Apps, perfect for systems that need trust.

Cómo Registrarse en el Muñón

Cristian Garner — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 17:12:45 +0000

El hackathon Muñón es un evento descentralizado donde los participantes pueden programar en el proyecto en cualquier tecnología que más les interese, ya sea un proyecto nuevo o no. Puedes ver el siguiente video de como registrarse al hackathon.

Registro

Pasos

1. Instala Metamask

Puedes descargar metamask en metamask.io, lee el tutorial de metamask acá: tutorial de Metamask

2. Consigue Ether:

Puedes comprar usando tu tarjeta de credito en Abra, Uphold o Binance. Si solo tienes efectivo, puedes mandar un correo a ceegarner@hotmail.com o ahmed.hn.43@gmail.com para ayudarte a cambiarlo.

3. Entra al sitio de registro https://dapp.munonhack.com/

4. Presiona el botón de menu y selecciona Join

5. Selecciona la ciudad donde deseas participar

Ten en cuenta que solo hay cupo para 15 participantes en cada ciudad.

6. Confirma la transacción en Metamask

El precio de inscripción es 0.03 ETH independientemente del precio del mercado así que te recomendamos inscribirte rápido. Todo el dinero de la inscripción va para el Pot del premio.

Felicidades! Oficialmente estas registrado en el Hackathon Muñón!

Como obtener ETH de Rinkeby Testnet

Cristian Garner — Sat, 04 May 2019 22:22:50 +0000

Este es un tutorial corto de como obtener Rinkeby ETH, útil para probar aplicaciones decentralizadas.

Pasos

1. Instalar Metamask en metamask.io (tutorial de Metamask)

2. Copiar tu Address

3. Crear un post en Twitter ingresando la información de tu address. Por ejemplo:

Requesting faucet funds into 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 on the #Rinkeby #Ethereum test network.

4. Ingresar a https://faucet.rinkeby.io/

5. Ingresa en el campo el url del tweet y presiona "Give Me Ether"

Eso es todo! ya estas listo para usar tu ETH de pruebas en la red Rinkeby.