This post is the home work post for professor @awesononso for the Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners' course - task 3 with the question;
3a) What is a Cryptocurrency?
b) What is Cryptography and how does it make cryptocurrencies secure?
c) Explore the Steem Genesis Block and Sign in as proof of completion
INTRODUCTION
Trade by barter was the old way of trading and relating with as a means of exchange, later gold and silver came into the process before the use of a particular piece of paper or coin value at a standard rate called money. Later on the physical money can be transferred on digitally but the next level of improvement to all of these comes with the decentralisation of digital currency which is the Cryptocurrency as it don't need the interference of the third party called the banks.
Cryptocurrency
Crypto currency is a currency available as a form of payment only digitally, built by encryption algorithm that function with secrecy. They can not be seen or spent physically like money but gives the same usefulness. Cryptocurrency works with an advantage of been both an asset with value and a ledger that give account for itself. This is been achieved by the algorithm known to be a chain of block which stores data upon which the Cryptocurrency is been created. This is known as the blockchain is chain of data which continues to grow, this data are known as block.
Cryptocurrency are stored digital on wallet which serve as a holder for your asset and it give security to your asset. This wallet are been secured with the use of phrase word or private key. If access to the wallet are lost, without the phrase or private key which serve as a means of your identification, all asset in the digital wallet is been lost forever.
source
Cryptography
Crypto-graphy is coined for two Greek word which means hidden and graphia. Cryptography is the study of securing informations data by method of secrecy which do not allow a third party to understand the details of the information or data. Cryptograph has been the bone on which Cryptocurrency is been built upon, as it's gives encryption to the details by it peer to peer encryption. The encryption given to transaction avoid the involvement of a third party In it. Crypto-graphy can be in two forms, one involving the use of encryption keys and the other the use of hash function, but this is another wide topic. The encryption key is the key used to encrypt and to decrypt the data which means this key belong only to those who should know the secret of the data or information. Cryptography works by change plaintext to ciphertext using the encryption and this ciphertext cannot be understood except by decrypt it to plaintext.
How does Cryptography make Cryptocurrency secure ??
As stated earlier cryptocurrency is been built on algorithm that function with secrecy, here is where cryptography first comes in. The whole concept of Cryptocurrency lays basically on cryptography and here are some of the way it's make it secure.
- Transaction made with Cryptocurrency are are been made secure by encryption algorithm which is been decrypted only by those who has key to the encryption.
- Private keys are proof of ownership of a Cryptocurrency given the user access to there account and operations with it.
- Cryptography is use to verify the transfer of assets as it help to identify from which private key the transaction is been made.
- Cryptograhy as help to control the creation of additional units of block
Exploring the Steem Genesis Block
The steem genesis block is the first block created on the steem blockchain and to explore it we have to visit steemworld. Here is the link to the steem world site.
| Options | Details |
|---|---|
| Timestamp | 2016-03-24, 17:05:00 |
| Block Id | 0000000109833ce528d5bbfb3f6225b39ee10086 |
| Previous Id | 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 |
| Signing Key | STM8GC13uCZbP44HzMLV6zPZGwVQ8Nt4Kji8PapsPiNq1BK153XTX |
| Witness | initminer25 |
| Witness Signature | 204f8ad56a8f5cf722a02b035a61b500aa59b9519b2c33c77a80c0a714680a5a5a7a340d909d19996613c5e4ae92146b9add8a7a663eef37d837ef881477313043 |
- Then I when on to sign in with my steemit username and posting key
sourceConclusion
Cryptocurrency is growing so fast as the adoption of satoshi nakamoto's ideas has been in used to create many other cryptocurrency apart from bitcoin for other purposes giving Cryptocurrency it's uses in different aspects of our daily living. With the innovative of decentralisation unique to Cryptocurrency adoption of it is imminent even by many companies just to boast the general economy of the world at large.
Note: All my screenshot are been taken from https://steemworld.org/