Tag: Plasma

Categories
Crypto Guides

Is EOS A Better Investment Than Ethereum Right Now?

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

EOS and Ethereum both are popular blockchain smart contract platforms. To know whether EOS is a better investment or Ethereum, we will need to compare the two technologies by exploring basic concepts and comparing their mechanisms to draw out the necessary conclusions. After Ethereum was introduced in the crypto industry, two years later, EOS was launched and claimed to fix the flaws in Ethereum. EOS is a strong, scalable contender and might outperform Ethereum. The battle of EOS vs. Ethereum is the most interesting and happening space in the crypto industry. 

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a blockchain platform launched in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin. It allows users to send and receive funds independently without the assistance of any third party. It was the first blockchain project to install the smart technology contract. In this technology, some predefined conditions are applied, and users are needed to justify the conditions to proceed with transactions without the need for an intermediate body. This decentralized blockchain has its own cryptocurrency called Ether (ETH), which is tradable in most of the crypto exchanges. 

What is EOS?

EOS is a new blockchain platform that can also manage smart contracts. The Block.one company launched this project in 2017. It has created history by raising the highest Initial Coin Offering(ICO), worth more than $2.5 billion. It has its own EOS coin, which can be transferred from wallet to wallet. EOS aims to become the most scalable, cheapest, and fastest blockchain platform. 

Scalability

Presently Ethereum can support 15 transactions per second, whereas EOS can serve up to at least 10,000 transactions/second. EOS using IoT provides for inter-blockchain communication, which creates blockchains to allow more transactions. Ethereum is working on two protocols called “Plasma” and “Sharding” to increase transaction numbers per second. 

Transaction Cost

On Ethereum, users need to pay gas for each transaction, but EOS works completely in a different way. EOS blockchain users deposit their token to cover the bandwidth required for the transaction. 

Consensus Mechanism

Ethereum is based upon the proof-of-work model, and EOS follows the proof-of-stake model. The transactions are verified without the support of any intermediate system. Ethereum generates random puzzles at every node before confirming the transactions. These puzzles are so difficult to solve that you need to take the help of experts called “Miners.” While EOS offers to stake your coins to verify transactions, the stakers have a chance to earn the rewards. 

EOS Vs. Ethereum: Who holds the future?

Ethereum, just after Bitcoin, is the most popular cryptocurrency across the world. EOS, right from its initial days, is performing exceptionally well. EOS is yet to achieve growth that Ethereum has already achieved, but EOS is significantly better than Ethereum. EOS is a more user-friendly cryptocurrency than ETH. It’s still too early to think about how far EOS will go because the blockchain ecosystem is highly unpredictable. 

Conclusion 

EOS is younger than Ethereum and has improved scalability and transaction fees as compared to Ethereum, but still, it’s under so much controversy because of its more centralized layout. If Ethereum successfully implements the proof-of-stake mechanism, then EOS might not be able to outperform it. On the other hand, if Ethereum doesn’t reduce it’s transaction costs, then EOS will easily overtake Ethereum soon is what crypto experts believe. Cheers! 

Categories
Crypto Guides

Plasma – The Perfect Solution to Ethereum Congestion?

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Plasma is an ongoing development of the Ethereum second-layer scaling solutions. After state channels, Plasma will be the second completely deployed scaling solution on the Ethereum mainnet.

What is Plasma?

Plasma is a structure that facilitates the development of child blockchains using the main Ethereum as an arbitration and trust layer. Plasma is primarily being created to meet the demand for specific uses cases that are unavailable on the current Ethereum network.

Understanding Child Chains

The underlying goal of both plasma and state channels is the same, where they try to divert as much transaction bloat off away from the main Ethereum chain as possible.

In case of disagreements, the child chain state update can be reverted to the Ethereum network. The same applied to cases if a user wants to pause transacting on the child blockchains.

On the features front, child blockchains can digest on varying complexity. They are given the ability to have their consensus algorithms, their block sizes, and confirmation times. Their design is relatively flexible for each application. Moreover, some developers are researching the possibilities of child chains within a child chain, and so on.

How secure is Plasma?

As mentioned, Plasma maximizes the use of the Ethereum network as an arbitration layer. In suspect of a malicious part, users can always regress to the main Ethereum chain as a trusted source.

Another feature is that the main Ethereum blockchain and the child chains are connected via ‘root contracts.’ Root contacts are simply smart contracts on the Ethereum network containing the rules guiding each child chain.

Root Contracts and its Necessity

The most important component in the plasma network is the existence of root contracts. Root contracts as a bridge allow users to seamlessly move between the main Ethereum chain and the child chains. As a matter of fact, all assets must be created through the main Ethereum.

Thus, no malicious activity on the child chain can ever be reverted to the main Ethereum chain. For instance, if a user moves some crypto-collectible tokens onto a child chain, they can anytime withdraw from the child chain and the asset on the main chain, only if the user proves they didn’t spend them.

Drawbacks of Plasma

The only considerable drawback of Plasma is the duration taken for the withdrawal of funds. Plasma users must wait for a predetermined arbitration window that typically lasts 7-14 days, while state channel users can instantly withdraw their assets.

The Prospects

The growing congestion in the Ethereum network leads to the creation of frameworks such as state channels and Plasma, which drastically eased the overcrowding in the network. Plasma will allow users to transact with lower fees and higher throughput and help developers scale their dApps. This, hence, can be an excellent opportunity for Ethereum to reach the masses.

Furthermore, the combination of plasma and state channels can help produce a leveraged product. In fact, the developers are already working on building state channels within the child chains. With this implementation, users will incur significantly less or no fee while transacting in the network. Cheers!

Categories
Crypto Exchanges

What Is OmiseGO (OMG)?

From being centralized to being expensive, today’s crypto exchanges come with their own share of issues. Besides, they often have a limit on how many transactions they can handle, a factor that has led to downtimes in times of high traffic.

From being centralized to being expensive, today’s crypto exchanges come with their own share of issues. Besides, they often have a limit on how many transactions they can handle, a factor that has led to downtimes in times of high traffic.

From being centralized to being expensive, today’s crypto exchanges come with their own share of issues. Besides, they often have a limit on how many transactions they can handle, a factor that has led to downtimes in times of high traffic.

A solution is thus needed for instant, peer-to-peer transactions on a scalable platform. With its game-changing Plasma technology, OmiseGO promises to be the frontier for such a solution. What is this Plasma technology, and what exactly is OmiseGO? We answer this question together with detailing how you can acquire some OMG coins and more.

What is OmiseGO?

Founded in 2017, OmiseGO (OMG) is a decentralized crypto exchange and a bank that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.  The project describes itself as “the answer to a fundamental coordination problem among payment processors, gateways, and financial institutions.” 

OmiseGO is the brainchild of Omise, a payments company based in Thailand. The team comprises CEO Jun Hasegawa, Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Poon, Dr. Gavin Wood, Vlad Zamfir, and Roger Ver.

The project’s mission is to enable people to have secure access to financial services, including the ability to invest, exchange, and spend digital assets anywhere.

OmiseGO has two products: the white label eWallet and the decentralized OmiseGO network. The OmiseGO network uses Plasma architecture to achieve scalability. (A white label product is one that can be used by many different brands. That means developers can create their own wallets based on OmiseGO’s eWallet.)

OmiseGO’s Core Components

The OmiseGO platform has five core components: a decentralized exchange, a developer kit, eWallet Suite, OmiseGO coin (OMG), and Plasma technology. Let’s look at these technologies in more detail below:

Decentralized Exchange

OmiseGO’s decentralized exchange allows cross-chains transactions to take place, meaning users can trade cryptos directly across blockchain networks. These transactions are verified through a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in a process where OmiseGO users stake their tokens to vote on the validity of transactions.

A Software Developer Kit

OmiseGO’s platform provides a set of tools to developers with the hope that they will use these tools to create high-quality, user-friendly wallets for users on the platform. The kit is designed in such a way that developers do not have to have an in-depth understanding of blockchain to create wallets. With the kit, developers can also integrate debit and credit card account transfers through which users can deposit, withdraw, and convert fiat money into digital currency.

OMG Token

The OmiseGO Network relies on a Proof-of-Stake mechanism to validate transactions. Coin holders leverage their stake to have a say in the running and protocols of the network in a decentralized manner. 

Users also pay for transactions on the network via OMG coin.

eWallet Suite

OMG’s eWallet suite is a bridge that allows users to connect seamlessly to the OmiseGO network.

It allows users to interact seamlessly with the OmiseGO network. The wallet is customizable, meaning you can tweak and develop it to suit your own needs. You can also use it to store loyalty points, game tokens, both crypto and fiat money, and more.

Plasma

Plasma is a blockchain scaling solution created by Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin.  Plasma’s white paper states that “Plasma is a proposed framework for incentivized and enforced execution of smart contracts which is scalable to a significant amount of state updates per second (potentially billions) enabling the blockchain to be able to represent a significant amount of decentralized financial applications worldwide.”

In essence, Plasma is blockchains on top of a root chain. Think of plasma being the branches to the root, i.e., the main blockchain, e.g., the Ethereum blockchain.

Here are the design goals of the project

One main blockchain and child chains – The main blockchain is the root blockchain, and every other child chain is derived from it. Both types of blockchains run independently of each other.

Minimization of the need for trust – The system is as trustless as possible. None of the child chains is dependent on the actions of particular actors.

Ledger scalability – The blockchains need to hold a lot of data. The ‘branch’ chains should be able to accommodate the data that would be normally held by the main blockchain. 

Scalability – The child chain ought to be able to implement various scaling solutions, e.g., sharding and the lightning network.

Localized computations – Each child chain should be able to perform their own calculations and provide updates to the main blockchain at regular intervals.

Fraud proofs – In the event of a dispute, the concerned party should be able to send proof to the root chain. The root chain can then roll back the state of the child chain and penalize the signers of the block of the child chain.

Uniqueness for every chain – The child chains should have their own governance procedures, provided they are reporting back to the main chain at the required intervals

What’s So Special with OmiseGO?

OmiseGO differentiates itself from standard exchanges by two qualities: decentralization and being currency agnostic.

Decentralized. Today’s exchanges are centralized, meaning they are owned by an exchange that makes all the decisions and owns users’ data. On the contrary, OmiseGO is completely decentralized, so users retain ownership of their data. Data is also secure on the blockchain such that it’s impossible to tamper with.

Currency Agnostic. The majority of exchanges only allow users to obtain a particular crypto after converting fiat money to another crypto, mostly Bitcoin or Ether. This process is inconvenient and also expensive as users are charged fees at every stage.

OmiseGO circumvents this process by charging a small flat fee for all conversions, whether from fiat to crypto or from crypto to crypto.  

OMG Statistics

OmiseGO is currently trading at 0.652534 (December 23, 2019) while ranking at number 47 in terms of market capitalization. Its all-time high was $28.35 on January 08, 20, while its all-time low was $0.319695 on July 16, 2017. OMG’s total supply is 140, 245, 398.

How to Buy and Store OmiseGO

You can buy OMG coins from exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin, HitBTC, and more. Most exchanges will require you to purchase BTC, Ether, or Litecoin so as to exchange it for OMG. Some exchanges also accept Litecoin.

You can use any ERC 20 compatible wallet to store OMG. Hardware wallets such as Trezor, Ledger Nano, Cobo Vault, and Cool Wallet S are also recommended.

Conclusion

OmiseGO promises to change the crypto exchange landscape with cheaper fees, a decentralized function, and creative, user-friendly wallets. The company behind it is an established player in the Asian market, boasting a massive base of users. The project is also supported by leading players in the blockchain and crypto space, putting it in a competitive spot. Its Plasma technology has capabilities that could see OmiseGO disrupt the crypto exchange industry. It should be interesting to watch how the OMG evolves in the coming years.