Crypto Academy Season 3 Week 6 : Homework Post for professor @pelon53

Greetings steemians,
In this post i would be writing on DPoS, the EOREX wallet and the SQRL wallet. My regards to professor @pelon53 for this educative assignment. lets get started.

Question1
What is DPoS?

Developed by steemit founder Daniel Larimer in 2014, DPoS is a type of consensus algorithm aimed at solving scalability and speed related problems on the blockchain. It achieves this by making users elect representatives who are then chosen to validate the transaction blocks. there is no delay in validating the blocks as blocks are passed on to the next witness in line if the preceding user fails or delays in validating. This accounts for the fast nature of transactions and validations of DPoS as compared to Proof-of-work.

DPoS algorithm was also employed to cut down energy consumption and costs of using both Proof- of-work and proof-of-stake. The DPoS algorithm works on the following principles below.

How delegated proof of stake works

Election of Witness

In this regard, the users, who are holders of a certain coin/token vote to select witnesses or delegates. This witness are trusted people on the blockchain who have the ability to validate or verify the blocks.

The witness or delegates, just like any procedure that requires voting, " declare their interest/intent" on the blockchain and therefore start lobbying for votes. In the voting Users just simply have to allocate some part of their tokens to their preferred witness/delegate.

However, users who hold a larger amount of coins/tokens have a greater influence in votes than their counterparts who hold lesser amounts. At the end of the voting process, the participated witnesses are ranked in descending order by the number of votes received (i.e highest to lowest). The platform then selects the number of witnesses it needs to verify the blocks.

Below is a screenshot from steemit with a list of witnesses’ ranked by number of votes received

Generation of Blocks

One these witnesses are chosen, they have to start generating and verifying new blocks. Witness take turns to validate the blocks, and each witness has to wait for his turn to validate a block. The validating of this blocks comes with rewards. These rewards earned by witnesses are shared with their voters/electors per their voting power respectively.

Below is a screenshot of the block explorer on steemit.

Review of Witnesses

As of any electoral process, delegates are re-voted for after a certain period of time. this means delegates can lose their position if another delegate obtains more votes than them. A delegate can also be impeached just like in any election system, if he is suspected of any foul play or breaking some rules. Below are some users who have been impeached by thee steemit blockchain.

Some blockchain networks that use the Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm include; OracleChain, Steemit, BitShares, Cardano and EOS.

Below are some Advantages and disadvantages of DPoS

Advantages

• Transactions per second on delegated proof of stake are faster than Proof of Work.

• DPoS operations are transparent and democratic

• Less energy is consumed in the operations of delegated proof of stake as compared to that of proof of work

• In DPoS, the behaviour of witnesses are controlled. Being a democratic system, witnesses elected on DPoS try to perform to the best of their capabilities, so as to get re-elected and not lose their place. Witnesses also know they can be impeached if they resort to some bad habits.

• There is high security on DPoS operations as compared to Proof of Work

• Fair sharing of rewards. Rewards obtained by validating block on DPoS are shared evenly among voters, using their votes/number of tokens allocated.

Disadvantages

• Only a limited number of witnesses are selected validate the blocks. This can sometimes lead to the overburdening of the witnesses in validating the blocks.

• Users with higher voting influence can influence the selection of witnesses. This is bias as they could select an incompetent witness

• DPoS operations require massive and participation from users before it can be successful

• Since not all votes carry the same influence, votes of users with less Vote influence are almost "useless" in selection of witnesses.

• The Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm is partially centralized.

• The operations of DPoS is less popular among most users of the blockchain. It therefore has to gain more popularity in order to be a success in the near future.

Question2
What are ricardian contracts?

Ricardian contracts
A contract us a legal agreement between two parties. With this, a ricardian contract is a digital legal contract between two parties that can be viewed or read by both humans and machines. This contract entail all the necessary information or details about the contract like its terms and conditions. A ricardian contract is digitally signed, store keys and server information and also has a unique identifier i.e no two ricardian contracts are the same. Ricardian contracts are very useful as they can be provided in court as evidence, unlike smart contracts which are only digital and cannot be held in physical form. It is also easily readable by both humans and machines unlike smart contracts which are only readable by machines . It was developed by Ian Grigg in 1996 who named it after British David Ricardo.

Question3
Exploration of the Official EOSREX Interface

Eos is an online wallet of the Eos platform where Eos tokens can be staked or exchanged.

• I visited the eosauthority.com site.

• On the homepage, we can find options like menu, wallet, events, eos credit and market rank.
  Let us delve deep and explore some of the Eos options

1. The Search bar/menu

Located in the middle of the homepage, this box can ve used to search for key information such as block addresses, account names and ETH addresses.

• When we click on the drop down arrow of the EOS displays other options below.....

1. EOS Price statistics.

This feature gives us information on the current price of EOS, it's cap and market rank, 24-hr high/low, 24 hr percentage change and 24hr volume.

As the time of performing this task, the price of EOS was $4.540 and was ranked #33

scrolling down, a graph that gives number of transactions at specific dates and time will be seen/sighted

scrolling down further, information on the total number of EOS wallets, staked/unstaked EOS, voters, RAM and CPU usage can also be seen

Block producers

Lets scroll down the homepage, we will sight a long list of accounts that have been ranked based on percentage, total votes, number of voters, their daily rewards in EOS tokens and location.

These ranked accounts are the block explorers. It is seen in the screenshot that Newdex is #1 with 324777198 votes, 32745 voters and a daily reward of 1038 EOS.

Partners

Scrolling further to the bottom of the homepage, we see the partners feature that displays the partners of EOSREX . Some of the partners include; EOS Amsterdam, Hyperion, EOSBIXIN and dfuse.

Let's scroll back to the top left of the homepage and click on the menu button

The menu bar has features like dashboard, REX Power up, manage CPU or RAM, manage keys, create account, bid names and alerts.

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Dashboard

Clicking on the dashboard option, the total sum of all tokens appears. Also the price chart of EOS and all the other tokens appeared. Scrolling downwards, Information on account security details also appears.

• Wallet

Wallet allows us to have an overview of assets in our wallets. You can search for accounts here and also send and receive tokens using the wallet option

• REX

REX feature enables us to lend to REX, borrow CPU/Net (DApps), use REX calculator and view REX statistics. It also has a search box where you can enter account name to analyse the account.

• Power up

This is were users obtain their power from by powering up their EOS account. This option contains the power up calculator and the power up statistics of users.

• Manage CPU/RAM.

This option allows users to view their self-staked and net staked tokens. Users can also stake and unstake tokens here. Users can also buy/sell RAM here.

• Manage keys

Manage keys allows users to change key permissions. You can regenerate keys, and change authorization.

• Vote

This menu feature allows users to participate in polls to vote for producers, proxies, referendums/polls and multisigs.

• Create account

This options allows users who are not on the platform to create accounts, users who are already on this platform can also use this option to recover their accounts.

• Bid name

The bid name feature allows users to bid and buy premium names. It provides information on the ranks of the names, their last bid and their bidders. Information like highest bid and the bidding time left can also be found here.

• Alerts

The alerts feature allows users to receive and view notifications relating to airdrops, incoming and outgoing transfers, staking and unstaking actions, bids on names, changes to account keys, Rex Notifications and any other actions authorised by the account.

• Trade Your Tokens.

This feature allows you users to trade their EOS tokens. Users can also trade with different tokens on the platform like NEWDEX, YOLO and DEFIS.

• Events

The Events feature allows you to view upcoming events, add your event, view and check events.

• Tools

Tools feature displays all the available tools that users need to manage their accounts. Account management tools like BP information, participate voting and voting analysis are all available.

These tools used to participate in EOS events and engage in referendum and polls.

Question 4
Downloading and exploring the SQRL wallet

• I first visited sqrlwallet.io.

• I then selected an operation system compatible with my computer and. I use windows, so I selected windows to start to download. I then double clicked on the downloaded setup to run.

I selected only me option, then clicked next.

• I then clicked on install to finish the setup.

• The SQRL wallet is automatically launched, I clicked on connect server.

• I clicked on create new account to create a wallet.

• I entered my preferred account name, I then clicked on the load buttons to fill in owner public keys and active public keys. Click on Next.

• I clicked on copy/already have keys and then click on keys are in a safe place.

• I clicked on create my account. Unfortunately, there was an error when creating the account using the sqrl platform, so I referred to the instructions given by professor @pelon53 by creating an account using the telos wallet platform telos.net

• First of all, I visited the telos website telos.net. On the homepage, I clicked on Start now

• I then clicked on create new account

• I entered my details then copied and saved my public and private keys. I then confirmed Re captcha.I clicked on Continue to create an account after filling in all the fields.

• The account was created successfully,

• I then went back to my SQRL application and clicked on Import Existing Account

• I entered the Public key of my telos account, then I clicked on Lookup account.

• I entered my Private key into the required field and clicked on Compare Keys to proceed.

• I entered my local wallet password then clicked on Save Account

• I re-entered the password of the local wallet and clicked on a Save Local Wallet.

• I accepted the terms of the SQRL wallet. The wallet was created successfully created.

Exploring the SQRL wallet

• The Wallet

The wallet option displays the account balance summary , the current prices of EOS, EOS Value, Total EOS, and my account balance. It also displays the History, Data, and staked EOS. It also has the lock wallet option.

• Governance

The Governance feature contains information on block producers and their voting percentages, proxies, works, amend and docs. It is located alongside the wallet feature.
It also allows users to vote for their preferred witnesses.

• REX

This option displays the summary of the REX account , this include; EOS deposits, EOS Earnings, EOS lent, EOS 30-day Price, REX/EOS Value, and EOS/REX APR.

• Tools

This option displays wallet tools, advanced tools, utilities and local data states. This enables the user to manage the account properly.

How to get CPU and Network

• Select the send.recieve.stake option. Click on manage staked in the drop down menu.

• Enter amount of CPU you want to stake in the required field (box). Click on update staked balances.

• Beside the CPU to stake box, enter the amount of NET to stake and click on update staked balances.

How to get RAM
Select the send.recieve.stake option, on the drop down menu click on buy RAM.

• Enter your preferred amount of RAM and click on buy RAM. The minimum is 3 bytes per transaction.

• You can also use the By TLOS Amount option to buy RAM using the same steps above.

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Question 5
Show the price of the REX token. And explain what it is used for

Rex token

REX stands for Resource Exchange. These tokens were introduced by our very own Steemit Founder, Dan Larimer in 2018.Rex tokens are used to awarded users of the EOSREX platform.
However, rex is not transferable between users within the pool. Users can earn tokens by lending out their tokens to the platform. Users on the platform can also stake rex to earn EOS tokens.
Users also have to vote a proxy or a minimum of 21 witnesses in order to acquire Rex Tokens. These tokens can only be sold after a 4-day period of acquiring the rex tokens.

To get the latest price of REX token, visit EOSREX website, and select REX from the Menu options. Rex is the main token used on EOSREX, and its pair is the EOS. According to eosauthority the current price of REX/EOS is valued at 0.0001010817462772

On coinmarketcap.com the current price of EOS is valued at $4.59

Conclusion

In this post we digested fully everything on DPoS. This entailed everything from its definition to its mode of operation to its advantages and disadvantages. I must say it is a better concept that more cryptocurrency blockchains should adopt.
Ricardian contracts are also of great benefit and more cryptocurrencies should adopt it as it is has more advantages than smart contracts which are currently used.

I was also able to learn the different features of both the EOSREX website and also the SQRL wallet. I was also able to successfully create a wallet.

My warm regards to professor @pelon53 for this educative masterpiece. I look forward to participating in your next class. My regards to all the professors and members of this wonderful community.

Thank you.