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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have their tuxes on and are ready to begin handing out their crystal martini glass trophies as their six-part series on year-end political awards begins today. In this installment, Jim and Greg reveal their selections for most underrated political figure, with Jim reluctantly coming to what he sees as an obvious choice. They also name the most overrated figures and the people they see as the most honest in the arena of politics.
Hosted by Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty
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A blockchain is a ledger that is kept by multiple computer nodes across the internet. A block is the fundamental unit of the chain. A block can only be appended to the chain if it is deemed suitable based on a computation involving that block and all the previous blocks in the chain. It is deemed suitable if the "Proof of Work" that is submitted along with the new block is verified according to a verification algorithm. The computation to add a block, together with the computation to verify the block, comprise the "blockchain protocol".
Anybody can set up a node that creates new blocks and verifies the blockchain. The nodes act as a peer-to-peer network. There is no central arbiter that maintains the chain. Every full node maintains the same entire chain. No block can ever be deleted. No bogus block can ever be inserted. Every block has a unique place in the chain and is timestamped. Thus, the blockchain acts as a ledger that is distributed all across the planet that is permanent and transparent.
The insight that birthed cryptocurrencies was that such a blockchain solved a fundamental problem of exchanging things electronically: When I receive something electronically, how do I know an identical copy was not transferred to someone else? And because the protocol uses a peer-to-peer network of computer nodes, a trusted middleman (e.g. a bank) is not required. This makes transactions cheaper and pretty much anonymous.
The content of the block and what that content means varies depending on the purpose of the blockchain. For example, with BitCoin (BTC), the content specifies a trade transaction (e.g. Owner A transfers x BitCoins to Owner B). There are other blockchain protocols, however. Ethereum (ETH), for instance, is a protocol that allows computer code to be added to the content of the block. This allows an arbitrarily complex transaction (or "contract") to be defined and executed.
Other blockchain protocols have different features and are designed to solve different problems. For example, Ripple (XRP) is designed to make very quick, certain payments. International transfers of fiat currencies through banking systems can take days or weeks. The Ripple distributed ledger protocol can process 1,500 transactions a second (and can theoretically be scaled to 50k transactions a second - which is comparable to Visa transaction settlements).
It is said that the USD is the world's reserve currency. BTC is essentially the world's reserve cryptocurrency today, hence its high value. But given the advantages of other cryptocurrencies, it is not clear that it can maintain its status and relatively high value.