Hello professor @pelon53, I am grateful to be part of your lecture about Blockchain EOS and I present to you my homework task that you provided to the steemians after the lecture.

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Explain the Delegated Proof of Stake, DPoS algorithm.

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The delegated proof of stake is a cryptocurrency concord algorithm that was invented in 2014 by American cryptocurrency entrepreneur and software developer Daniel Larimer. The DPoS system is maintained from an election process where current holders vote for delegates who are then responsible for validating new blocks. It’s considered by many to be a more efficient and democratic version of the proceeding proof of stake algorithm and they are both used as an alternative to the energy-intensive proof of work algorithm such as the one used by Bitcoin.

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How it works.

The delegated proof of stake is depicted as an application of online self-government. Depending on the DPos network consensus rules, a fixed number of delegates from 21 to 101 voted by the stakeholders of the network. These delegates who are also well known as witnesses then authenticate transactions and get rewarded for casting up blocks to the blockchain. Each stakeholder gets a number of votes proportional to the number of coins they own. On the other hand, they can select to delegate their stake to another stakeholder on the network who will then vote on their benefit. Under normal conditions, delegates take turns producing blocks usually every few seconds. Each delegate is scheduled for a specific time frame. Delegates who misbehave or constantly fail to produce a block will lose their reputation and will also be expelled and replaced by another delegate. Depending on the DPoS implementation, some systems may require delegates to deposit a certain amount of funds as a stake to show their commitment. These funds are kept in reserve and will be confiscated if the delegates act maliciously. In case of malicious or malfunctioning activity, the general rule is that the longer chain always wins, and anytime the delegates notice a valid strictly longer chain, they will switch from their current fork to the longer one.

Delegated proof of stake can be implemented in numerous different ways. Compared to the proof of work algorithm, DPoS offers higher performance and a more energy-efficient solution by removing the intense mining competition which also promotes decentralization since anyone can become a delegate and no large mining pools are needed to validate the blocks.

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Explain what are Ricardian contracts on the EOS Blockchain?

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In 1996, Ian Grigg pioneered the Ricardian contract, a general term used to describe a method of documenting a contract at law and connecting it securely to other systems. This functionality was proposed in the late 1990s in a paper that Ian Grigg published and it was titled “Financial Cryptography in 7 Layers”. The semantics of a Ricardian contract can be divided into two types, for instance, operational semantics that refers to the actual execution, correctness, and safety of the contract, and denotational semantics which is concerned with the real-world meaning of the full contract.

Ricardian contract majorly has three characteristics which include;

Identificatification:

This contract is identified by using a cryptographic hash function to let you know that the contract has not been modified and also uses a private key to identify the person executing the contract and connect the contract to a certain object or value.

Transparency:

Transparency is achieved through the fact that there is a readable text for legal prose as the actual contract, that is to say, it is part Ricardian Contract since a smart contract is a code that is implementing some contractual agreement. Here, there is the availability of the actual contract and the whole contractual agreement is in there.

Efficiency:

There is also a markup language functionality that gives the ability to quickly move around to locate and extract essential information within the body of this human-readable code.

Properties and capabilities.

Human parsable; there is a textual version of the contract that clearly indicates the contract’s intentions and actions.

Program parsable; the computer code that will carry out the intention and actions of the contract.

Printable; a Ricardian contract is downloadable and anyone can just easily print out the document.

Signed by the issuer; Ricardian contracts employ cryptographic functions to insure identity and trustworthiness.

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Explore the official EOSREX interface (eosauthority.com). Show screenshots.

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First and foremost to explore the official EOSREX interface I visited the platform on eosauthority.com and the first page appeared with different tools then I clicked on Menu.

On clicking the Menu, another window with different features will pop up including price chart, portfolio total, account security, among others. So the first thing is adding an account.

A different window will pop up where you will have different options to add your personal account either by account name, connect with scatter, connect with a hardware wallet or connect with your mobile telephone number.

Let me connect by selecting the account name option and paste my username of the EOS account that I have used for a while then click on add account. The system will then scan your EOS account showing you your account balance.

On the same page, you will see the price chart of price time frames of the particular chain you hold at that moment ranging from a day, week, month, and year. On the same page still, you will have account security where the system will do an account audit as soon as you add an account and gives you recommendations whether your active and owner keys are separate, if your tokens are staked, if you have voted for block producer, if you have an active telegram bot alert and if you have an active email account notification and if you have done and of these, it will show fixed. With the account security, you are in complete control of your account in EOS and if you lose your account keys or are compromised for some reason, you will not be able to get it restored any other way since you are completely responsible for the account security. You will have to combine all these tools together by making them all active to achieve proper and full security.

If you scroll down on your dashboard you will get a consolidated view of all your airdrops that you participated in and the account balance of all your chains displaying the value in EOS and the value in the US dollar. The wallet also supports all the features of REX whether a Dapp or a person who would want to lend out tokens. Finally, on the recent activity which shows what exactly is done on the account over time across all the chains and across all the accounts that have been connected. .

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Download the SQRL wallet, explore and explain how to obtain CPU, RAM, and Network. Show screenshot.

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First and foremost, I visited https://sqrlwallet.io then click on the operating system that I was using to download the wallet and in this I was using a windows machine.

After the download was complete, I proceeded to set up the wallet whereby I selected only me to make the wallet available for then clicked install.

After the installation was completed, I then clicked on connect to server to proceed with the process.

A new window then popped up where I was required to either import an existing wallet or create a new wallet. In this case, since I currently have no wallet as yet, I clicked on create a new wallet.

When the create an account window popped up, I was required to create a 12 character account name, generate the owner and public key for the account.

Unfortunately, because the referral box was empty, the next button couldn’t be activated for me to go to the next step, and even when I put a code it constantly brings error messages as shown above.

To solve this problem so that the task is complete, I then opted to go to Telos wallet and create an account which later brought me back to my SQRL wallet configuration. I first visited and when the menu popped up a then clicked on start now icon on the top right corner of the page.

I was then required to either connect wallet or create a new wallet. Since I don’t have a wallet yet, I clicked on create a new wallet.

I created an account name, saved my wallet keys, checked the boxes to agree then clicked continue to successfully create my account.

After my account creation was successful, I went back to my sqrl wallet and clicked on import existing wallet.

I then input the public key then clicked on the lookup account button.

I selected my account name and clicked on the select account button.

I was then required to input my private keys then click on the compare keys button.

I entered my local wallet password then clicked on the save account button.

I was required to re-enter the password to proceed then click on the save local wallet button.

Finally, my account has been created.

How to obtain CPU.

Click on the wallet button, then click on the Send/Receive button. Another option will pop up then click on manage staked option.

Enter the amount of CPU that you want to stake then click on the update staked balances button.

How to obtain RAM.

Click on the wallet button, then click on send/receive option, and finally select buy RAM.

Another window will pop up where you will be required to enter the amount of RAM in bytes that you would want to buy then click on the buy RAM button.

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

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The current price of REX is 0.0001010860260878 which I noticed through exploring eosauthority.com. I selected REX then proceeded to REX statistics. I then scrolled down from where I saw the REX value.

REX is a resource exchange on EOS, that is to say, it is a marketplace to allow risk-free leasing of network resources, CPU, and NET which aid to successfully make transactions on the EOS network. REX is accessible by staking or allocating a portion of EOS tokens to CPU and NET and the more you transact on the network, the more EOS you need to have staked for resources. If you don’t have enough EOS to stake for the required network usage, you can borrow the necessary resources on REX for a fraction of the cost of owning them.

For those who have more EOS in their usage demands, REX is an opportunity to earn additional EOS and when you lend your EOS into REX, you receive REX tokens. As fees accumulate into the REX pool from CPU and NET loans, premium name bids, and RAM purchases, the value of your REX token increases to net you more EOS at the end of the loan. REX grants decentralized applications and participants to lease network bandwidth and CPU for a fragment of the capital cost of possessing and will stir up the adoption of the EOS. Token holders can lend EOS to REX by purchasing REX tokens and to lend EOS to REX, you must have also staked and voted for 21 block producers. You can lend as much EOS as you want to REX but you must wait at least 4 days for your loan to be processed before you can withdraw your EOS and the longer you hold the loan, the more you can earn.