Introduction

Source: google.com

The last financial meltdown occurred btw 2007 - 2009 and the impact of this in the financial world and the universe at large was destructive.
Because of this a certain man name Satoshi Nakamura brought about Bitcoin and thus blockchain technology to prevent such occurrence in the future. Since then countless numbers of companies have created products which employ the use of blockchain technology. Because of this there has been a series of improvements on the first blockchain to ever exist. Also other types of blockchain have been created.

What is block chain

Block chain is referred to as a means or system by which information is recorded so that this information is prevented from attacks, hacks or from cheats.

Because blockchain operates digitally, the transactions are done on a ledger digitally which to are duplicated and then distributed throughout a whole network of computer systems found in that blockchain. One block in the chain is made up of a series of transactions, and participants in the ledger of such blocks are informed whenever a new transaction takes place in the blockchain.

Types of block chain

There are predominantly four types of blockchains which is being employed. They include:

1. Public
2. Private
3. Consortium
4. Hybrid

Blockchain is a revolutionary idea which was built to disrupt the financial industry. Blockchain has provided a more secured way by which finances can be transacted digitally as well as privately.
Interestingly more blockchain platforms are popping up which makes it easier for more applications which are based on blockchain to be developed.

I would be discussing about two of the blockchain platforms which are currently being used.

Ethereum
Stellar

Ethereum

Ethereum

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Brief History

Ethereum was the idea of Vitalik Buterin in 2015. He ventured into the crypto world when he was introduced to Bitcoin technology by his father. He became very fascinated with the technology and went on to write articles about the subject matter. He suggested improvements on the technology and found out that nothing happened.

He decided to create his own blockchain technology and this birthed the idea of Ethereum. At the time of writing, Ethereum has reached a price of $2,009.95 and market capitalization of $247B.
So what makes Ethereum this valuable?

What is Ethereum

Apps and corporations like Facebook, Twitter etc needs to store our information and data on their servers, which makes you to trust them with your information. They collect and store the information of million of users. Then their data is
stored at central locations, called centralisation. And this centralised server method of storage is prone to hacks and failures.
Ever since we Knew about the intervention of blockchain decentralized technology, such as Bitcoin, more and more blockchain technologies have gone mainstream.

This is where Ethereum comes in, their blockchain offers a way of utilizing the power of the internet without trusting your important personal information to third-party companies like Facebook, your bank account etc.
Ethereum was created to remove that need to trust lots of apps and corporations with sensitive information. And it achieves this using the decentralized blockchain technology.

Ethereum Blockchain

Ethereum model of the internet is where a network of systems known as 'node' replaces servers and clouds. These nodes stores and maintains a shared database, which is the blockchain. There are thousands of nodes which make up the entire network, that stores in the Ethereum blockchain. The more the nodes, the safer and secure the network and the data on it becomes. Any information you put in this network can only be accessed by you. Remember that the data isn't stored in you computer or a central server, but it is stored on the entire network of nodes.

The way the information is verified is through a consensus. This means that most of the nodes must agree to the new information is correct before it would be accepted into the blockchain.
It would be very difficult to hack such a network, because you would need to gain control of more than half of the nodes to force a consensus. And even if you succeeded in gaining a consensus, you would need so much money to complete the attack that it becomes pointless at the end.

The Ethereum blockchain technology is almost like Bitcoin, but more advanced.
It is sometimes referred to as blockchain 2dot0. It does more than Bitcoin blockchain. Two ways it does that:

• Smart contracts - certain conditions has to be met in the Ethereum blockchain before a transaction can take place. The rules regarding these conditions are known as smart contracts.

• Decentralized applications (dApps) - simply put, these are applications that run on a blockchain network—using it to decentralise the server, instead of the traditional centralised server.

Ethereum also has it own coding language called solidity. This programming language is used to build dApps. Solidity is just like java, this makes it easier for developers to create new and exciting dApps.
Some of this dApps would someday take over industries such as social media, e-commerce, email and online banking.

How Ethereum work

Ether is the currency of Ethereum. For simplicity Ether is the currency, Ethereum is the system. Ether fuels the system and it is often referred to as gas because of this. So to make anything happen on the system you would need some Ether. Each transaction on the Ethereum network needs a certain amount of gas to make it happen. The bigger the transaction, the more gas needed.

Mining Ethereum

Mining is the process by which blockchain network runs. Nodes on the Ethereum blockchain must verify transactions via mining, these nodes are then rewarded with a new currency—Ether.
The way the minig is done is called Proof-of-work (PoW), this is because the node has to show that it has verified the transaction (done the work) in order to receive new Ether currency.

Storing Ethereum

You would need an Ethereum address or software wallet to be able to store your Ether. This is because Ether isn't physically stored anywhere as it cannot leave the blockchain.
These wallet won't contain Ether but would continue contain codes to access it. These codes are your private keys, if you misplace them, you lose your Ether.
There are also hardware wallet storage devices in the form of a USB drive which can be plugged in and out of your devices. It is an offline method of storage, usually for large amounts of coins.

Stellar Lumens

Stellar

Source: google.com

What is Stellar Lumens

Stellar Lumens was formed in 2014 to bridge the gap between the crypto industry and the financial industry.
After that time Stellar has had a lot of partnerships with some of the biggest companies in tech and finance. Some of those partnerships includes IBM, Deloitte and Stripe, and some payment processors and financial institutions.
The purpose of stellar is to the world's digital payment structure which connects people, banks and payment systems. This allows you to transfer money to anybody, in any place in a safe and secure manner. The transaction fee is less than a penny.
It was created by Jed McCleb.
Stellar target users iare everyday people like the Islanders in the South Pacific who uses XLM crypto currency to run retail payments.
The stellar foundation is a nonprofit organization. Which means that there is no tax to be paid, no shareholders and therefore no dividends
to be paid, just salaries and expenses.

Usefulness of Stellar

Stellar can be transferred anywhere in the world within 3 to 5 seconds. This can be beneficial especially if you are located in an area where banks are difficult to access.
The transaction fees of stellar are so low when compared to traditional payment processors. Infact you pay about 0.0001 lumens, which is currently less than $0.01

Stellar has an in-built exchange which enables you to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum or stellar's own Repocoin.
ICOs on the stellar lumens platform is customizable and make it includes some features like the infamous Lightning Network. This customization for ICOs is made to reach a number of behaviours which includes inflation, bonds, escrows, collateralized debt and issuing dividends.

Stellar Lumens Transactions

The rate at which stellar process transaction is incredible. It can do up to 1000 transactions in a second, at a fraction of a penny each. The fees is there to prevent attacks on the network. Stellar does not use the proof-of-work consensus, instead uses what is known as the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)
The SCP makes it very quickly and securely for payments to be made with anyone in the world. Also SCP allows the network to be run without any mining required. This makes it remarkably different from Ethereum as well as Bitcoin.
This may mean that stellar lumens is not decentralized, however with nodes spread across the borders, it can be said that stellar lumens is semi-centralised. Because of the no mining feature, stellar lumens coins can be aquired from a crypto currency exchange.

Stellar Lumens is very useful In the South Pacific, where it would be responsible for up to 60% of cross-border payments in the retail exchange industry.

Renewable energy is another Industry stellar would be may grow in the future.

As the blockchain world prepares for more trading between Fiat and crypto currency, stellar could be the leader. An example would be to use Naira to purchase the XLM equivalent.

Security of Stellar

The stellar network as well as the inbuilt exchange has never experienced any hacks. But there was a time that stellar was taken from an online wallet website, but it was an abnormal situation, because it had nothing to do with the stellar network, and everything to do with the wallet website.

Conclusion

Having looked at the Ethereum and Stellar blockchain, we can see that their properties are quite different. Here are somethings to note.

Ethereum
Transaction time: 15/sec
Max coin supply: -
Consensus model: PoW
Current coin market cap: $247.68B
Current coin market price: $2170.75
Current coin market position: 2
Launch date: 2015
Creator: Vitalik Buterin

Stellar
Transaction Time: 1000/sec
Max coin supply: -
Consensus model: SCP
Current coin market cap: $2.23B
Current coin market price: $0.5376
Current coin market position: 14
Launch date: 2014
Creator: Jed McCleb

Thank you @alphafx