Steemit Crypto Academy Season 5 Beginners' course - Task 3: The Genesis Block by @kingmyke

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Homework

What is the Genesis block?

What are the significances of the Genesis Block?

Explore the Bitcoin Genesis block and indicate how many transactions so far and the number of bitcoins.

INTRODUCTION

Cryptocurrency is becoming a household name as more and more people are involved in the cryptocurrency space. It has gone from being termed as something bad to becoming a good form of investment as well as being adopted, though slowly, by international governments. From the development of blockchain to sustain cryptocurrency, now blockchain is used to power a large variety of utilities such ass NFTs, gaming and so much more.

Looking at all this, it is therefore important to discuss the beginning of all this, the genesis block.

WHAT IS THE GENESIS BLOCK?

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Let us start by breaking the phrase into two, "Genesis" and "Block". That way we will be able to really understand the subject topic from basic fundamentals.

All things have their beginnings in something. The word "Genesis" simply means "Beginning".
A "block" is a file, ledger or page of a ledger on which data pertaining to a cryptocurrency's network is recorded permanently.

If you combine the two words together, it simply means that a genesis block is the very first ledger page containing the data of the cryptocurrency first mined. It is the first block on a cryptocurrency's blockchain. The genesis block, being the very first block, serves as the basis of the generation of other future blocks in the blockchain.

Since Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, the genesis block belongs to the Bitcoin network and was mined by the person(s) Satoshi Nakomoto in January 03, 2009. Th first miner(s) earned 50.00 BTC for generating the genesis block. Since the genesis block is the first block, it goes by the name, Block 0.

Since the genesis block was the first block created on the network, every other block created subsequently is linked to each other, leading to the creation of a "chain" of blocks, hence the word, "blockchain".

WAHT ARE THE SIGNIFICANCES OF THE GENESIS BLOCK?

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Th genesis block, as explained earlier, was the first block to be created and therefore has a lot of significance in the creation of future blocks of data in the blockchain.

1. Since the genesis block is the first block, it serves to explain how future blocks are to be made in the blockchain.

2. The genesis block serves as a guide and layout for other blocks in the blockchain. Every other block on the blockchain arranges data in the same manner as the genesis block. This means that all subsequent blocks created are to meet the requirements set by the genesis block.

3. The genesis block was not created with any form of layout or blueprint because it was the first block created.

4. The rewards gotten from the mining of the genesis block cannot be spent.

5. Due to the creation of Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, via genesis block 0, this has led to the birth of other cryptocurrencies over the years.

EXPLORE THE BITCOIN GENESIS BLOCK AND INDICATE HOW MANY TRANSACTIONS SO FAR AND THE NUMBER OF BITCOINS

Prior to the creation of Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, all financial transactions were controlled by the financial institutions such as banks. At the beginning of the economic recession of 2008, the idea of Bitcoin was born when its Whitepaper was released and the Bitcoin then brought into effect on 3 January 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block, the genesis block, Block 0.

The reward for the mining of this genesis block was 50.000 BTC as mentioned earlier and has been reducing by half every four years (in a process known as "halving", where the rewards earned by miners for mining blocks on a blockchain is reduced by half).

In order to view and explore the genesis block, you can follow the following simple steps:

1. Go to https://www.blockchain.com/

1. Click on the "Explorer" part/ section

1. In the search section, search/type "block 0"

1. A BTC option will then appear which you will click on.

1. Next thing is to go to wallet to access the current amount of Bitcoin available.

INFORMATION GOTTEN FROM THE GENESIS BLOCK

From this you can get the above information of the genesis block

Hash number:
000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
Height: 0
Difficulty: 1.0
Bits: 486,604,799
Size: 285 bytes
Reward: 50.00000000000BTC
Number of transactions: 1

And so much more information concerning the genesis block

To see the total number of bitcoin transactions over the past 24 hours

1. click on "Explorer"
2. Then you will see the 24hours transaction.

To view the all time number of transactions

1. Click on "transactions".

1. Click on "currency statistics"

1. Click on, "total number of transactions"

1. Then you will see a graph showing the trajectory of transactions over 1 year, 5 years, all time etc. The screenshot below is an all time transactions trajectory and shows a total of 692.15 million transactions over the Bitcoin network.

CONCLUSION

Note:

All photos were gotten from google and https://www.blockchain.com/

In this assignment, I have gotten to know about the genesis block, its origin and its features.

During the course of my research for this topic, I have also gotten to know about bitcoin transactions and a lot of things that occurred in the early days of Bitcoin.

I hope you find this lesson informative and insightful.

Thank you all for reading.