We’ve all heard it - Blockchain is revolutionary BUT just like all guinea pigs, it comes with its own limitations.
Hashgraph is a new 'distributed ledger' and 'consensus protocol' that has gained major attention in the cryptocurrency circles because of a couple of characteristics:
- Its faster than blockchain - 250,000 transactions/second
- Its fairer than blockchain - Consensus Time Stamping
- Its more secure than blockchain - Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant
Currently the main deficiency with Blockchain is its scalability - If Hashgraph can really deliver on 250k transactions/second than it will most definitely be a strong rival for Blockchain. Scalability problem illustrated in the pic below:
In this post, I’ll share easy to understand information so that you can decide for yourself if this is something you’d like to get involved with:
Note - All references in this article are from:
- Hashgraph White Paper on www.hashgraph.com
- Demystifying Hashgraph: Benefits and Challenges on www.hackernoon.com
- The future of distributed ledger technology is not Blockchain but Hashgraph on www.hiddenforcespod.com
- Blockchain just became obsolete. The future is Hashgraph on www.squawker.org
What is Hashgraph:
- A Data Structure, and
- A Consensus Algorithm
How does it work?
- Gossip about Gossip
- Virtual voting
What is Gossip for Gossip?
Your computer tells all other computers, which are in the network, about your ledger activity.
What is Virtual Voting:
Its when you vote online
Pros & Cons:
- Its fast because the Hashgraph ledger is private! This means new members would be verified and chances of duplicate profiles are lower. But this makes Hashgraph less decentralized and more in the hands of the managers.
- Its fair because the Hashgraph ledger uses Timestamps and Gossip to Gossip features. But this creates limitations of only being able to work with other ‘fair’ protocols.
- It's safe because of its Asynchronous BFT and not deterministic qualities. But when faced with disruptive Byzantine nodes the efficiency of the coin toss can be questionable.
Conclusion:
Should you move away from Blockchain and towards Hashgraph?
Hashgraph proposes safer, fairer and faster transactions. But all of this is currently within a private and static setting. There are more protocols with other or similar advantages but there certainly isn’t one protocol that can solve scalability and security in all dimensions.
To do:
For now, you need to keep an eye out for Hashgraph and other similar projects such as Ziliqa, EOS, Casper, NEO and of course Ethereum so that when it hits the pan you can have it nice and hot!
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Peace