steemit cryptoacademy season 2| Blockchain and Platforms homework for @alphafx

Blockchain is simply a decentralized system that takes into account digital assets and transactions. While a blockchain platform is one where these transactions are made. Blockchain platforms are likened to banks where we go to make transactions (either withdrawals or deposits). For the purpose of this homework, I will be making comparisons between Ethereum and Ripple

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What is Ethereum?

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Ethereum as a lot of people confuses it isn’t just a cryptocurrency but is a blockchain platform that allows people to make smart contracts.
Now let me simply explain what a smart contract is…take for instance Mr. Able and Mr. Beta stake money for the price of Steem being 500NGN by 12noon. They both stake 100NGN…Mr. Able is against the motion while Mr. Beta is for the motion. What Ethereum blockchain does is to search for the amount of Steem at 12noon and pays the money they staked to whoever won.

Ethereum blockchain can be said to be an intermediary between two parties although it doesn’t require a third party to confirm transactions. It is a decentralized system and its cryptocurrency is called Ether or shortened as ETH…we cannot say the name Ethereum without acknowledging Vitalik Buterin who founded it in 2015.

###What is Ripple?
Ripple is a blockchain that was created by a group of people in privacy to tackle the issue of cross-border payments. This issue is one that many banks face when trying to transfer money from one country to another.

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A lot of times, we are confused with the difference between Ripple and XRP, but I will like to simplify that. Ripple is the blockchain platform where the transactions are made while XRP is the cryptocurrency. The blockchain was launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs.

Comparisons between Ethereum and Ripple

Performance

Ethereum blockchain takes an approximate time of 16seconds to make transactions while Ripple takes about 4seconds to carry out a transaction. Ripple can process up to 1,500 transactions per second with a relatively low transaction fee while Ethereum process only 15 transactions per second and the transaction fee is high as compared to Ripple. Hence, we can say that ripple is a better blockchain for processing transactions.

Consensus mechanism

Ethereum uses a consensus mechanism called proof-of-work which is more like complicated puzzle which allows the miners to unravel while Ripple uses a consensus mechanism called federated byzantine agreement which makes use of transaction validators. They are both decentralized systems.

Circulation supply

Ethereum has a market cap of 100million while Ripples is far larger and caps at 40billion.

Targets

We must understand that both Ethereum and ripples are not in any competition and have different well-defined targets. Ripple targets the banking industry especially transferring money overseas while Ethereum targets small contracts.

In conclusion, we cannot exactly say which blockchain is better because they have different market targets that are working continuously to be better but if we are to consider the scale and transaction fee, we can rightly say that Ripple is a better platform as compared to Ethereum.

cc: @alphafx