How do you break into the complicated world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology? It’s utterly confusing at first. Comedian John Oliver recently described cryptocurrency as “everything you don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t understand about computers.” If you don’t have the means to buy Bitcoin or invest in ICO’s, what do you do?
I’ve participated in bounties where new crypto projects will award free coins for tweets or posts on Facebook. If you’re really good at finding creative ways of saying better, stronger, faster over and over this can be lucrative. I am still doing them.
I created an account here on Steemit where “likes” earn you Steem. My most popular post earned $1.77. Sadly, I haven’t had more time to dedicate to Steemit. But I used that tiny bit of Steem and a small amount of Ethereum from Gitcoin Faucet to move some bounty rewards to a cryptocurrency exchange to trade. Gitcoin Faucet offers small amounts of ETH for those interested in using the Ethereum blockchain for the first time.
Bitcoin is the most recognized cryptocurrency but Ethereum (ETH) is the most widely used. Bitcoin is gold. Ethereum is oil.
Which brings us to mining. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can mine cryptocurrency. Mining is the process by which transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, or blockchain. I mined Ethereum on my MacBook Pro for about a week which produced minuscule results and required keeping the laptop running 24/7.
I wasn’t expecting to strike gold running a mining app on my MacBook. To effectively mine cryptocurrency you need a dedicated computer, expensive hardware and a decent amount of computer knowledge. And it’s going to use a lot of energy so your electricity bill will go up. Solo mining is difficult because your income is completely erratic. You can join a mining pool for a steadier, smaller income but pools encourage centralization and are subject to attacks from hackers. Decentralization is what provides a blockchain with security so it’s not something that should be sacrificed; it’s sort of the whole point.
Quarkchain is a new blockchain that employs collaborative mining to guarantee speed and security. The QuarkChain network is made up of several blockchains which were designed to be more decentralized. For faster transactions, they employ a process called sharding which separates large databases into smaller, faster parts called shards. Each blockchain offers different rewards and difficulties and miners can choose tasks based on their computing power. You could potentially mine on the QuarkChain network with a mobile phone.
Smaller miners are encouraged to mine directly and form clusters to perform collaborative tasks. There will be incentives for miners to work together. Thousands of small miners working together in clusters will give QuarkChain the ability to perform millions of transactions per second. The Bitcoin blockchain can only perform about 4 transactions per second.
The need for speed is one of the issues that has slowed mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. QuarkChain has solved the speed problem without forfeiting security. If you are considering mining cryptocurrency then QuarkChain is your best bet.