Contract For Intermediary Services In Domain Name: Fill & Download for Free

It breaks down to several things you’ll need to anonymize in one way or another :Your ownership of the domain nameYour ownership of the hosting contract, or a hosting service with a very strict pro-customer-privacy approachYour payments for bothYour access to the hosting serviceThe simplest way to handle that would be using a human intermediary.If that is not a preferable solution, there are services that provide anonymous domain registration and/or hosting, such as PRQ or Bahnhof (to give two more widely known examples).You can also set up at least one - if not more - proxy to conceal your actual hosting location. This makes it harder to find youOr, you could make your site only available through a darknet such as TOR.Which option you find preferable is entirely up to you, but be mindful there’s no such thing as perfect anonymity - the question is of how much time and effort it would take for someone to find out your identity.Worthwhile extra reading:How hard is to be the anonymous owner of a website?How do I register a domain name, but keep who I am secret?

A blockchain, or distributed ledger, is mostly known for the first technology it enabled, the Bitcoin, which Satoshi Nakamoto first described in a paper in 2008.I will try to provide a general overview of the technology and its potential, from both practical and technical perspectives, which you should be able to understand without any previous knowledge on the blockchain.Today, cryptocurrencies in circulation alone have a market capitalisation of well over ten billion dollars and new start-ups relying on the blockchain are funded every day, fulfilling the thirst of venture capitalists for the technology. What blockchain promises to solve is a long-standing computer science issue discussed since the early 1970’s and generalised in 1982 as the Byzantine Generals’ Problem which essentially asks how multiple cooperating parties can reach common knowledge about a factual element when there exists some malicious actors actively trying to spread incorrect information and who have a certain likelihood of intercepting and altering every direct communication between individuals. Until now, this problem would usually be addressed by relying on a trusted central authority, but for the first time, blockchain allows any such consensus to be reached without having to place trust in any single entity. Much has been written on the societal changes blockchain will bring, the challenges governments will need to address or even how a new body of law, Lex Cryptographia, will be needed to adjust to this new paradigm.Technical OverviewBlockchain’s solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem is to impose to every actor who wants to share some information to also solve a very complex mathematical puzzle (called block) that proves a large amount of work has been invested. Thanks to complex mathematical properties, it is possible to design problems that are hard to compute, but easy to verify; this is actually the reverse of the popular concept of asymmetric keys encryption in the field of cryptography, which powers most modern secured communication protocols and in which we want to generate puzzles that are easy to compute (creating the key) but hard to verify (cracking the key). Each block contains a hash (a string of characters), that has to refer cryptographically to the hash of the previous block (to guarantee the chronological order). Together, this serie of blocks, up to the genesis block (the only block hardcoded into the blockchain’s core script), form the blockchain. The computational difficulty of generating a valid block mostly stems from the randomness of the process of finding a new hash that will correctly connect to the hash of the previous block.A copy of the blockchain database (of about 80 gigabytes today for the Bitcoin blockchain, but continuously growing as more blocks are appended) as well as the core script that contains the rules of what should be considered a valid blockchain are stored on every computer (called full node) that is willing to be part of the network. In addition to the hash, each block stores a large amount of information (called transactions). Anyone who wants to get information stored in the database can do so by querying from any node of the network; if some nodes disagree on what should be the correct state of the blockchain, one will always trust the longest valid blockchain (i.e. the full node that can prove his version of the blockchain required more computational effort than all the other existing versions), which honest nodes will actively be searching for to replace their own version of the chain. It is also possible that multiple blockchain temporarily have the same length, in which case one has to wait until further blocks are added to be able to distinguish which version of the blockchain one should trust. As a general rule, the older a block is in the chain, the more trustworthy it is, because an attacker would have to start and re-create a much larger fraction of the blockchain to replace it.Most individuals who want to add some transactions into the blockchain do not have the computing power or the time necessary to find a valid block. In that case, they will add their transaction into a pool of unconfirmed transactions that are waiting for a professional block generator (called a miner) to find a block for them. When a miner finds a valid block, which is a really rare event, he will include in it as many transactions as the block allows for (currently one megabyte for the bitcoin blockchain) and broadcast it to all the full nodes of the blockchain, that will append the block to the chain after having checked its validity. In most blockchains, when a miner successfully adds a block to the chain, he receives a reward from the system as well a fee perceived from the individuals whose transaction has been included (optional, normally only included when there is a congestion of unconfirmed transactions, to help miners prioritise which transaction to include first).The underlying assumption of the process is that the total effort invested by honest miners is greater than the total effort invested by those with malicious intents. By effort, one should understand money, since computational difficulty directly relates to electricity and hardware costs. Each individual involved in the process owns a public and a private key. Your public key identifies you and can be used by anyone to see what contributions you have made to the blockchain (e.g. how much money you possess in the case of a cryptocurrency blockchain). Using your private key, you can generate transactions that are cryptographically guaranteed to originate from you. By this process, even if a malicious actor were to control a majority of the blockchain’s computing power, its power, through what is called a 51% attack, would be limited to cancelling recent transactions and blocking new transactions from occurring; stealing money from other accounts is impossible without knowing the private key of the targeted individuals. That way, by limiting the incentives for malicious actors to harm the system and creating strong rewards for people to reinforce the system, we make the blockchain an extremely reliable decentralised ledger. So far, no such attack has ever been successful.Modern uses & potentialThe blockchain can be used in a large variety of applications. As of today however, the most widespread use of blockchains remains limited to cryptocurrencies, or more famously the bitcoin. It is only recently, with the introduction of the Ethereum network in July 2015, two years after being described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin in 2013, that serious alternatives were made possible. The main innovation of the Ethereum was to introduce a Turing-complete programming language that supports all basic operations necessary to implement any algorithm, allowing to manipulate the Ethereum blockchain easily. These new kind of applications, powered by the Ethereum or similar blockchains, are what I will call the modern uses of the blockchain, as opposed to the traditional usage generally limited to digital currencies. In general, most of the value of the blockchain can be summarised in getting rid of the intermediaries, whether they are banks, lawyers or any entity, thus dramatically reducing agency and coordination costs.Digital currencies and payment systems. While traditionally done through the Bitcoin network, payment systems will probably remain the main use of the blockchain for a few more years. With the introduction of better blockchains such as the Ethereum (which also supports payment systems), distributed digital payments are increasingly made easier, faster and cheaper. Through the blockchain, businesses could get rid of transaction fees, which often consume a large fraction of the margins in the retail industry, and automate payments without depending on banks. Such payment systems would be especially valuable in developing markets or countries with unstable currenciesOnline Privacy. Today, a factor that slows down technology adoption for many individuals, corporations or governments is privacy concerns and the fear of handing out too much control to other entities. But the blockchain would allow everybody to take advantage of new technologies, such as cloud storage of personal biometric information, while maintaining complete control over their data, even from governments, due to cryptographic encryption. This would be of great value for example for corporations who focus on selling hardware or services, such as Walmart or even Apple, but of lesser value to corporations whose value creation reside in owning data, such as Google and Facebook.Smart contracts. They can be considered as the building block of modern blockchain applications. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements written in code instead of words and enforced by the blockchain instead of courts. Blockchains that support external scripting, such as Ethereum, generally make the implementation of such contracts very easy with only a few lines of code.Most traditional contracts could potentially be partially or fully implemented in a smart contract. The more objective the evaluation of the outcome is, the easier it is to draft such a contract. A classic example would be an online advertising agency selling search engine optimisation services, with the promise that the client’s website will appear on the first page of a specified search engine for a given keyword within 30 days. Such services generally appear very suspicious because they are often provided on the web by unknown companies based in a foreign country, but an example implementation of such a contract only requires a few rules:- Start contract when both parties have sent agreed bitcoin amount to account managed by the smart contract (stored in the blockchain). If no amount is received within 7 days, cancel contract and send back all money received.- After 30 days, check the search engine’s URL that corresponds to the selected keyword. If given website is in the URL’s source code, send all the money of the contract’s account to the agency; otherwise, send it all back to the customer (including the penalty for failed execution).More advanced and larger scale contracts can easily take place, especially in the financial sector where trust plays a central role and allows intermediaries to justify hefty commissions in all trades. A multisignature escrow account, futures contract, any financial derivative or commodity trading with completely eliminated counterparty risk can be implemented just as easily using a similar stratagem; here the trust would be reduced to one agent only: the stock exchange that publicly displays the stock prices on its website, used as the source of truth when the contract triggers the settlement.Smart contracts not only eliminate enforcement costs, they also get rid of ambiguity and make all business dealings instantaneous: if a specified condition is met, the blockchain immediately releases the fund and all other digital assets as specified by the contract.Smart property, also known as colored coins. Pushing the limits even further, the blockchain allows for cryptographically activated assets. Those could be either physical or digital and would take the form of a token; whoever possesses the token, which can be easily exchanged and transferred like any other digital currency, owns the asset. Those assets could be real estate (e.g. a house whose door only opens to people in possession of the token), objects (e.g. diamonds whose transactions are only recognized by governments if sold with a valid token, reducing trafficking and making it easier to verify their authenticity) or intellectual property (e.g. patent ownership that can be traced back to the entity owning the patent’s token, or music royalties that are sent automatically to the owner of the token associated with the rights to the songs).Some of these systems would require full support from the government as it currently manages most of the existing ledgers, e.g. land registries that often require a lengthy and costly administrative procedure to access or to change, often necessitating the services of a notary in case of a sale. But the private sector will play a key role in defining how those evolutions take place and, potentially, whether it can take over some of these functions that used to require the government—a trusted central authority—but can now be handed over to the blockchain.Decentralised name registration. A natural extension to smart property is decentralized name registration: the first individual to add a certain name to the blockchain, if it did not exist already, receives “ownership” of that name. This could be used to manage internet domain names, traditionally a responsibility of registry operators who owned a monopoly on a specific top level domain (e.g. Verisign for the .com). In the case of domain names, the blockchain could require from individuals to pay a yearly fee to maintain ownership, which would be used to cover mining costs or would be sent automatically to the government as a tax.We could further generalise the registration of names to more abstract concepts such as texts, images, videos or even ideas: the first to submit automatically gains ownership of intellectual property.Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). When smart contracts are bundled together, they can sometimes form what is called a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). While there is not yet a formally agreed upon definition of the concept, DAOs can be understood as regular organisations except that, instead of following the lead of human managers, they have an automated governance encoded in smart contracts. The most famous implementation of a DAO was the venture capital fund sobrely called The DAO that (despite later issues that led to its shut down) raised over a hundred million USD over a crowdfunding campaign in May 2016. Contrary to traditional funds, shareholders of The DAO do not elect a board to represent them but are directly involved in the operational activities and investment decisions.Wikipedia is a perfect example of organisation that could have benefited from the blockchain. Its organisational structure is really close to that of a DAO, with most of its content being generated by its community and all decisions being made through a democratic process. Yet, without the blockchain, the Wikimedia Foundation had to rely on a few individuals to manage the organisation, such as the executive director, vested with special powers. This creates conflicts of interest, even within a non-profit. A Wikipedia DAO could easily be implemented, thus removing the need for human representatives and making Wikipedia truly neutral and independent.Similarly to smart contracts, not even its creators can control a DAO once deployed in the blockchain (unless special provisions have been written in the initial code). Large networks of DAOs could grow to become artificially intelligent clusters of computer programmes with control over physical assets, similarly to how machine learning neural networks work, bringing us a bit closer to the technological singularity.Costs and risksReduced control. The blockchain is attractive for its unmatched level of security. You can trust it to protect the integrity of your data more than you would trust any bank or government. But it will do so indiscriminately and will not protect you from your own mistakes. Once a smart contract is released into the blockchain, no one can stop it, not even you. If by mistake you forgot to add a clause that indicates where to send the funds back when the contract is cancelled, the money will stay forever lost in the blockchain. Worse, if you design a harmful contract that incentivises illegal behavior (e.g. by automatically remunerating individuals who publish terrorist content) and equip it with large financial resources, neither remorse nor an injunction will be of any effect to stop it.Latency. The blockchain is not as reactive as traditional databases. This is the cost to pay for security: for each block and each transaction we add, the nodes need to run many time-consuming checks that insure they comply with the rules defined by the core script. In addition, many blockchains artificially adjust the level of “difficulty” of the mining to make sure the blockchain doesn’t grow too fast. In the bitcoin for example, a new block is only added about every ten minutes, which is why transactions take a few minutes on average to be confirmed. Recent blockchains such as Ethereum have been able to decrease that delay to about fifteen seconds between each block, but that remains far too slow for real-time applications.Storage costs. One of the fundamental properties of the blockchain is that it has to conserve the full history of the transactions and thus will forever grow over time. In addition, its distributed nature requires thousands of nodes to make copies of the entire blockchain, and to store it on a well connected computer with a high bandwidth. As a result, storage costs are thousands of times higher than any other solution, making it largely impractical at the moment to store more than a few bytes of text, let alone images or videos.Mining costs and risks. Mining represents the majority of the costs in traditional blockchains that rely on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm, such as the Bitcoin. As explained earlier, the blockchain makes it artificially difficult to create a new block (thus very costly in electricity and hardware) to protect the network from 51% attacks. The drawback is that to provide a decent level of security, indecent amounts of electricity need to be wasted, which is not only expensive but also leaves a terrible environmental footprint. At the current value of the bitcoin, a few million dollars worth of electricity are consumed every day by bitcoin miners alone.The theoretical foundations of PoW incentives stem from game theory: if the rewards for a successful attack are lower than the costs, no rational individual should attempt an attack. As we saw, the rewards for a successful attack are limited as it is impossible to steal money without also knowing the private key of individuals. As for the costs, with PoW they come from two components: the initial investment (to acquire the necessary hardware) and the electricity. The cost of controlling the network will be proportional to the duration of the attack, as the attacker has to keep finding valid blocks faster than the honest nodes to maintain its blockchain longer than the honest blockchain. But with the recent advances in cloud computing, it has become cheap to rent a large CPU capacity for a very short period of time with little upfront investment. In addition, economies of scale and geographic differences in electricity and hardware prices have created strong incentives for miners to pool their resources, making the system more vulnerable.Blockchains can remunerate miners for their effort either by generating new currency or by perceiving a fee on each transaction. The former will create inflation and is thus equivalent to a “wealth tax” (since each coin loses a fraction of its value), whereas the latter is equivalent to a “value added tax” (or “financial transaction tax”); both kinds of taxation have been active topics of research in public policy for a long time and have well-understood advantages and inconvenients. There is also a trade-off between the desired level of security and the cost of running the blockchain, thus incentive levels might have to be adjusted depending on the criticality of the infrastructure.A promising alternative to PoW is Proof-of-Stake (PoS). With PoS, the network is protected as long as honest participants own at least 51% of all the assets at stake. Here, the incentive system has to be built in a way that makes anyone who successfully carries an attack lose as much wealth as possible. Many variations of PoS have been suggested, such as the Casper algorithm —expected to replace PoW in Ethereum soon—, in which individuals can “bet” coins on which block they believe will be added to the blockchain next. In such cases, the only circumstances in which participants will make non-hedgeable losses at betting is if the network is successfully attacked: this very low probability event is similar to a “systematic risk” in finance, and the gains made on successful bets can be compared to the “risk-free” return offered by government bonds. Just as for government bonds, all participants in such a blockchain should invest all their “assets” into the “betting” to gain the “risk-free” return unless they are too risk-averse to agree to increase their exposure to the “systematic risk” (to which they are exposed anyway whether they bet or not).We can actually show that consensus-by-bet PoS can be modelled as a subset of PoW displaying similar mining incentives except that the cost of carrying a successful attack against the network is not proportional to the duration of the attack but roughly constant (since your stake is likely to lose most of its value if you attack the network). This is a desirable property as the social cost of an attack is generally better represented by a fixed value than by a linear function of time. Assuming that most cryptocurrencies owners participate in the betting process, it also makes it easy to raise the cost of an attack to billions of dollars instead of millions. PoW also practically eliminates electricity consumption and, incidentally, makes possible several improvements to raise the speed of the network.Note that if financial instruments allowing speculators to take highly leveraged short positions on the blockchain exist (for example by shorting the stock of companies that have invested heavily in the technology), attackers will start having financial incentives to take the network down.Sybil attacks. Another less discussed vulnerability of the blockchain is its full nodes. If copies of the entire blockchain are not stored on enough computers, attackers can potentially fill the network with clients controlled by them and partially take down the system through what is called a Sybil attack. Malicious nodes are only problematic if they are so prominent that finding honest nodes becomes too time consuming, thus it is required to control much more than half of the network to inflict a generalised failure.Increasing the mining incentives will not necessarily improve the protection against sybil attacks, but a certain number of measures are generally put in place to make these attacks difficult, such as limiting the number of outbound connections per ip address. So far, blockchains have never really lacked of full nodes so research efforts have been concentrated in other areas. If sybil vulnerabilities become critical (for example because hosting full becomes too costly), it might be necessary to provide financial incentives to people running full nodes.Mitigation and recovery. While vulnerability to attacks and to human mistakes are a major weakness of the blockchain, recent events have shown that possibilities of mitigation play a huge role in the credibility of the system, in particular with regards to forking, which can sometimes allow an almost full recovery of lost or stolen funds.In June 2016, a vulnerability in the smart contracts behind The DAO allowed a hacker to steal over fifty million dollars from the fund. While this was not due to a failure of the Ethereum blockchain but only to the bad implementation of The DAO, the losses were of such large scale that they would strongly affect the Ethereum and put its survival at risk if nothing was done. The DAO had become a too big to fail financial institution that Ethereum (the “State” of this microeconomy) had to bail it out. Ethereum’s core developers thus released a patch that would essentially invalidate all the stolen funds, correct the vulnerability and bring back the Ethereum to its state just before the attack.When a communication failure between nodes occurs or when only part of the nodes update their core script, the blockchain may split into two distinct versions. This is what we call a fork. Most of the time, forks are only temporary and disappear once all the nodes are synchronised. But sometimes, they come from a conscious decision from one part of the community to disregard certain changes made in the core blockchain script by the rest of the community. If both parties can rally enough support from stakeholders, both blockchains may subsist, having only in common the blocks history up to the breakup point. This is what happened when the DAO’s bailout patch was released: a significant portion of the community, against the bailout, decided to ignore it and to keep mining the old blockchain, which still exists today as Ethereum Classic, with a market capitalisation of about 10% of that of the patched Ethereum as of September 2016.They now live as competitors. Despite both blockchains’ code being roughly identical, the split allowed both communities to make a strong statement to the world: Ethereum Classic is truly immutable and will not easily tolerate forks in the future, whereas Ethereum is likely to allow them again and even advertises them as a feature, an additional protection against potential attacks. The split could certainly have been avoided if Ethereum had taken a clear stand in favor of forks when it was first created, and businesses relying on a blockchain will have to decide whether they want to favor systems whose community supports voluntary forks or not. While a forking culture improves the mitigation potential, it can also backfire and overly empower core developers or a few individuals that can more easily impose their personal agenda to all the users of the blockchain.Implementation and MonetisationBeyond the hype, businesses realize that integrating such technologies might be just as hard as the transition to Big Data, both to implement and to extract value. Massive injection of funds will not suffice and some business models might prove more compatible than others, at least initially.As decentralisation and getting rid of intermediaries are the main purpose, the blockchain is generally associated with open-source technologies and can appear as an enemy to modern capitalism. However, many successful bitcoin and blockchain startups have shown that the technology can be synergised effectively with paid services; this contrasts strongly with the traditional open-source community—in which users expect an integrally free service—in part because people are already expecting to pay fees due to mining costs necessary to guarantee the reliability of the blockchain. Consulting advice on blockchain can also be offered for governments or organisations that want to leverage the potential of blockchain, and IT consulting firms will quickly need to develop an expertise in that area to respond to the demand. Similarly, companies offering cloud computing services can include Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) into their offering. Universities will also observe a growing interest for both introductory and advanced blockchain courses in their computer science, economics and business degrees.Firms can also use blockchains to externalise data sensitive components of their applications to decrease their compliance costs and risks of legal liability. If the company does not control the blockchain and only has ownership of the front-end built on top of it, it can only be sued for building the system, not for what becomes of it. This would add a layer of protection for companies operating in an uncertain legal environment. Most of all however, the value of the blockchain for organisations resides in its ability to streamline processes and improve vertical integration of the value-chain by getting rid of costly intermediaries and by simplifying coordination. This will be especially valuable for very fragmented industries that rely heavily on external partners or for companies that trade in a market with a generally low level of trust or high level of uncertainty, such as in many developing countries.As for many modern technologies, the early business adopters will probably be start-ups, which can absorb a larger amount of risk and whose dynamism allows for better capacities to adapt to the fast-changing environment of blockchain. Businesses that will be the most at risk are those whose purpose is already to decrease coordination costs, such as banks and law firms, but are also the ones that have the most to gain by adapting. Lawyers for example could expand their services to include smart contracts drafting and bankers could design complex financial instruments living in the blockchain, offering a lot of transparency but requiring the competence of qualified financial advisors to be used appropriately.While the blockchain presents significant opportunities for economic growth, it might often represent more of a threat for individual companies than an opportunity. It will decrease the overall need for both the private and public sectors, in favor of what we call the “autonomous sector”, a complex (somewhat chaotic) network of intertwined DAOs and smart contracts living in the blockchain, over which no one has control. In such cases, the financial incentive for businesses to understand the technology will be more about how to dodge the threat and adjust the offering to remain competitive than about how to extract value out of it. In particular, key differentiation arguments over which the blockchain might win market share are privacy, security, reliability and independence: if companies can improve their products on these characteristics, they might avoid losing the customers who are the most at risk of switching to the blockchain.Most business uses of blockchain technologies will not require a dedicated blockchain. Use-cases can generally be satisfied easily through smart contracts encoded on networks supporting scripting, such as Ethereum, or by developing applications that rely on existing blockchains, such as a payment systems powered by the Bitcoin.Recently, private blockchains have been suggested as alternatives to public blockchains. Contrary to regular blockchains, private blockchains can only be modified or mined by a pre-approved network of computers, with a reading access potentially also restricted. Adding and approving transactions could for example be limited to a consortium of banks who trust each other to a certain extent, with the requirement that each transaction has to be confirmed by at least a certain percentage of the participants. With private blockchains, as the number of participants is limited and known in advance, PoW or PoS can be replaced by proof-of-membership (to a set of hard-coded authorised public keys). Obviously, such systems lose most of the desirable properties that made the blockchain so innovative in the first place (including proof-of-work itself), but they offer an original approach to partially decentralised consensus with cryptographic auditability.ConclusionMost current implementations of blockchain are unadapted for large-scale solutions. In particular, the Bitcoin community has shown great difficulties to scale and adapt its technologies. The blockchain revolution will not happen overnight, however trends are already emerging—often set by key actors quickly gaining influence—and the Ethereum system is imposing itself as the default option for modern blockchain applications. Further developments should make it highly usable and cost efficient for most business applications.Where business will play the most important role in the initial phase of this technology is in providing expertise for both private and public sectors through consultancy services and executive education, in complementing the current cloud computing offering with Blockchain-as-a-Service, in commercialising front-end applications on top of existing blockchains (e.g. e-wallet on top of the Bitcoin or smart contract drafting on top of Ethereum) for business and consumers and in leveraging private blockchains for internal uses. Blockchain should also be considered as a valid threat and direct competitor by many industries for long-term strategic planning.The blockchain by itself is of limited value, just as internet and most popular programming languages—all open-source technologies—did not benefit most to their inventors but to those who managed to create value on top of them. The key will be to identify the segments of the value chain of each industry for which the market values decentralisation from the segments for which the market values most the quality of the service and to focus on the latter. Today, practical limitations will orient which technologies we should put on a blockchain, but hopefully future developments such as proof-of-stake will make the blockchain just another database system that companies can choose from.Disclaimer: all the opinions stated here are my own and not those of my employer.

It’s impossible to spend much time in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world without hearing about Ethereum, or ETH for short. In this article, you’ll learn what Ethereum is, what makes it different and why it’s better than Bitcoin, at least for certain purposes.Guess the price directionBitcoin/TetherBTCUSDT33,743.81−2.71337493372733743.81UpDownWhat is the Ethereum cryptocurrency?Strictly speaking, Ethereum refers to an open-source software platform that is based on blockchain technology, enabling developers to create decentralised applications, or dApps. However, Ethereum is also used to refer to the Ether coin (ETH), a cryptocurrency built on the Ethereum platform. When someone talks about buying, trading or paying with Ethereum, they mean the Ether currency.Ethereum’s historyEthereum’s story starts with Vitalik Buterin, who became involved with Bitcoin as a 17-year-old programmer in 2011. Buterin became aware of Bitcoin’s shortcomings and created Ethereum as superior blockchain technology.I thought [people in the Bitcoin community] weren’t approaching the problem in the right way. I thought they were going after individual applications; they were trying to kind of explicitly support each [use case] in a sort of Swiss Army knife protocol.— Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder.A timeline of Ethereum’s early history:2013: Buterin released a white paper describing the basis for Ethereum.2014: Buterin and the other co-founders crowdfunded Ethereum through an ICO that raised more than $18 million.2015: The first live release of Ethereum, known as Frontier, was launched.What is Ethereum’s purpose?Ethereum is a blockchain technology platform designed to enable a large variety of functions. A popular comparison is if Bitcoin is e-mail, then Ethereum is the whole Internet.Ethereum is used for computer services that are based on dApps and smart contracts, which saves time and money by eliminating intermediaries, third-party brokers and inefficient monopolies like big companies or even government authorities.In essence, it follows the decentralised philosophy of Bitcoin but is applied to much more than just money.What is Ethereum written in?Given that the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) functions as a ‘world computer’ with many nodes, it uses multiple programming languages, including C++, Python, Ruby, Go and Java. A specialised language called Solidity is used to write smart contracts in the Ethereum Virtual Machine.ETH’s hard forkIn 2016, $50 million worth of Ether was stolen by a hacker, an act that raised concerns about the platform’s security. The resulting controversy split the community, and Ethereum forked into two blockchains: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).ETH tokensEthereum has both the Ether (ETH) crypto coin and Ether tokens. The latter can function as a currency within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). ETH tokens are transferred within the EVM to execute smart contracts.What is a smart contract in Ethereum?A smart contract is a computer program that functions as a contract, i.e., it binds individuals and/or businesses to meet obligations.The smart contract’s code automatically executes the terms when tokens are deposited. The benefits include:Digital format: There’s no need to print or post paper, and it’s easily shareable.Autonomous operation: It cuts out intermediaries, there’s no back-and-forth.Trust: Information on a smart contract is encrypted and backed up on a shared ledger.Security: Encryption makes contract information incredibly difficult to steal.Speed: Automatic execution makes smart contracts faster.Cost: It saves on paper costs, lawyer fees, etc.Smart contracts act as multi-signature accounts, only executing if the specified percentage of parties agree.Smart contracts can be encoded on any blockchain, but developers working on Ethereum can programme smart contracts with a much broader range of instructions than what’s possible on Bitcoin. It allows Ethereum smart contracts to be more complex and versatile. They can serve as the base for a decentralised application or other autonomous functions on the blockchain.Why is Ethereum better than Bitcoin?ETH has several advantages over Bitcoin. It isn’t limited in the same way that BTC is. Ethereum uses the Ethash method for its mining algorithm. As a result, the block processing speed is faster.What is the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum?BTCETHCoin Limit21 MillionNoneAlgorithmSHA-256EthashAvg block time10 minutes12 secondsHowever, Ethereum’s main advantage over Bitcoin is its functionality. Bitcoin can only record transactions. Ethereum powers apps that can be used for almost anything a programmer desires.What is an ETH wallet?An Ethereum wallet is where the private keys to access the cryptocurrency are stored. The StormGain crypto trading platform comes with a built-in ETH wallet, in which you can earn up to 10% annual interest on your currency.Cryptocurrency tradingEthereum is the crypto coin with the second-largest market share after Bitcoin. Ethereum also has the second-highest trading volume among cryptocurrencies. By using StormGain, traders can earn significant bonuses and rewards for trading Ethereum.The price history of ETH, in USD and BitcoinEthereum miningEthereum is currently mined via a proof-of-work algorithm. Much like Bitcoin, Ethereum miners dedicate their computing hardware to solving tasks that support the blockchain and receive ETH in return.What is a good hashrate for Ethereum mining?The frequency with which the ETH mining hardware can process hashes determines how likely it is to earn a reward.A hashrate of around 45.0 MH/s is considered suitable for a consumer GPU. However, the whole mining system may soon become irrelevant for Ethereum.What is Ethereum’s future?Ethereum will upgrade soon to version 2.0, a move planned for 2020. The main feature is a change from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake validation.Ethereum 1.0 is a couple of people’s scrappy attempt to build the world computer; Ethereum 2.0 [with PoS] will actually be the world computer — Vitalik ButerinThe current system is notoriously wasteful of energy. A proof-of-stake protocol will mean that users stake their ETH as collateral to verify a transaction (and claim the reward).On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.[11] Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System[12] was posted to a cryptography mailing list.[13] This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as "a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust".[14][15][16] On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins.[14][17] Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.[18]The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009.[19] This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.[20]:18The first open source bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009, hosted at SourceForge.[21][22]One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (bloc 170).[23][24] Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.[14]In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins.[25] Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.[26]The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John's.[14]On 6 August 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or blockchain, which let users bypass bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins.[27][28] On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction, and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the bitcoin protocol.[29] This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history.[27][28][30]Satoshi Nakamoto[edit]Main article: Satoshi Nakamoto"Satoshi Nakamoto" is presumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who designed the original bitcoin protocol in 2008 and launched the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for creating the majority of the official bitcoin software and was active in making modifications and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum.[14] There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney – and accompanying denials.[31][32] The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.[33]Investigations into the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto were attempted by The New Yorker and Fast Company. The New Yorker's investigation brought up at least two possible candidates: Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta. Fast Company's investigation brought up circumstantial evidence linking an encryption patent application filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on 15 August 2008, and the bitcoin.org domain name which was registered 72 hours later. The patent application (#20100042841) contained networking and encryption technologies similar to bitcoin's, and textual analysis revealed that the phrase "... computationally impractical to reverse" appeared in both the patent application and bitcoin's whitepaper.[12] All three inventors explicitly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.[34][35]In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki is Satoshi Nakamoto.[36] Later in 2013 the Israeli researchers Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir pointed to Silk Road-linked Ross William Ulbricht as the possible person behind the cover. The two researchers based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions.[37] These allegations were contested[38] and Ron and Shamir later retracted their claim.[39]Nakamoto's involvement with bitcoin does not appear to extend past mid-2010.[14] In April 2011, Nakamoto communicated with a bitcoin contributor, saying that he had "moved on to other things".[18]Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time, and the hours of 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. GMT are midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (North American Eastern Standard Time). Other clues suggested that Nakamoto was British: A newspaper headline he had encoded in the genesis block came from the UK-published newspaper The Times, and both his forum posts and his comments in the bitcoin source code used British English spellings, such as "optimise" and "colour".[14]An Internet search by an anonymous blogger of texts similar in writing to the bitcoin whitepaper suggests Nick Szabo's "bit gold" articles as having a similar author.[31] Nick denied being Satoshi, and stated his official opinion on Satoshi and bitcoin in a May 2011 article.[40]In a March 2014 article in Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman doxed Dorian S. Nakamoto of Temple City, California, saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is the man's birth name. Her methods and conclusion drew widespread criticism.[41][42]In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by Andrew O'Hagan about Nakamoto.[43] The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains a matter of dispute.Growth[edit]2011[edit]Based on bitcoin's open-source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.[44]The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011,[45] then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems.[46] The EFF's decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.[47]In June 2011, WikiLeaks[48] and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.2012[edit]In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode "Bitcoin for Dummies". The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn't consider bitcoin a true currency, saying, "There's no central bank to regulate it; it's digital and functions completely peer to peer".[49]In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to "accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol". The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.[50]In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service.[51] In November 2012, WordPress started accepting bitcoins.[52]2013[edit]In February 2013, the bitcoin-based payment processor Coinbase reported selling US$1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin.[53] The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency.[54]In March, the bitcoin transaction log, called the blockchain, temporarily split into two independent chains with differing rules on how transactions were accepted. For six hours two bitcoin networks operated at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The core developers called for a temporary halt to transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off.[55] Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software.[55] The Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the exchange rate briefly dipped by 23% to $37 as the event occurred[56][57] before recovering to previous level of approximately $48 in the following hours.[58] In the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual currencies" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations.[59][60][61]In April, payment processors BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity[62] resulting in the bitcoin exchange rate dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours.[63] Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment.[64]On 15 May 2013, the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.[65][66]On 17 May 2013, it was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions,[67]On 23 June 2013, it was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881.[68] This marked the first time a government agency claimed to have seized bitcoin.[69][70]In July 2013, a project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa.[71] During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country.[72][73]On 6 August 2013, Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are "a currency or a form of money" (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court's jurisdiction,[74][75] and Germany's Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term "unit of account" – a financial instrument – though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications.[76]In October 2013, the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht.[77][78][79] Two companies, Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world's first bitcoin ATM on 29 October 2013 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop.[80][81][82] Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins.[83]In November 2013, the University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees, with the university's chief financial officer calling it the "gold of tomorrow".[84] During November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume.[85]In December 2013, Overstock.com[86] announced plans to accept bitcoin in the second half of 2014. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins.[87] After the announcement, the value of bitcoins dropped,[88] and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services.[89] Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.[90]2014[edit]In January 2014, Zynga[91] announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants.[92] The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec. TigerDirect[93] and Overstock.com[94] started accepting bitcoin.In early February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox,[95] suspended withdrawals citing technical issues.[96] By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen.[97] Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds.[98]In June 2014 the network exceeded 100 petahash/sec.[citation needed] On 18 June 2014, it was announced that bitcoin payment service provider BitPay would become the new sponsor of St. Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin.[99]In July 2014 Newegg and Dell[100] started accepting bitcoin.In September 2014 TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S.Commodity Futures Trading Commission "CFTC" to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product.[101]In December 2014 Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.[102]In 2014, several light-hearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the "Ode to Satoshi"[103] have been released.[104]A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users, such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer.[105]2015[edit]In January 2015 Coinbase raised US$75 million as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company. Less than one year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet.[106] The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted.[107]In February 2015, the number of merchants accepting bitcoin exceeded 100,000.[108]In October 2015, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium to add a code point for the bitcoin symbol.[109]2016[edit]In January 2016, the network rate exceeded 1 exahash/sec.[citation needed]In March 2016, the Cabinet of Japan recognized virtual currencies like bitcoin as having a function similar to real money.[110] Bidorbuy, the largest South African online marketplace, launched bitcoin payments for both buyers and sellers.[111]In July 2016, researchers published a paper showing that by November 2013 bitcoin commerce was no longer driven by "sin" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises.[112]In August 2016, a major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen.[113]In November 2016, the Swiss Railway operator SBB (CFF) upgraded all their automated ticket machines so that bitcoin could be bought from them using the scanner on the ticket machine to scan the bitcoin address on a phone app.[114]Bitcoin generates more academic interest year after year; the number of Google Scholar articles published mentioning bitcoin grew from 83 in 2009, to 424 in 2012, and 3580 in 2016. Also, the academic journal Ledger published its first issue. It is edited by Peter Rizun.2017[edit]The number of businesses accepting bitcoin continued to increase. In January 2017, NHK reported the number of online stores accepting bitcoin in Japan had increased 4.6 times over the past year.[115] BitPay CEO Stephen Pair declared the company's transaction rate grew 3× from January 2016 to February 2017, and explained usage of bitcoin is growing in B2B supply chain payments.[116]Bitcoin gains more legitimacy among lawmakers and legacy financial companies. For example, Japan passed a law to accept bitcoin as a legal payment method,[117] and Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.[118]Exchange trading volumes continue to increase. For the 6-month period ending March 2017, Mexican exchange Bitso saw trading volume increase 1500%.[citation needed] Between January and May 2017 Poloniex saw an increase of more than 600% active traders online and regularly processed 640% more transactions.[119]In June 2017, the bitcoin symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF (₿) in the Currency Symbols block.[120]Up until July 2017, bitcoin users maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency.[121] On 1 August 2017 bitcoin split into two derivative digital currencies, the bitcoin (BTC) chain with 1 MB blocksize limit and the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain with 8 MB blocksize limit. The split has been called the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.[122]On 6 December 2017 the software marketplace Steam announced that it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its products, citing slow transactions speeds, price volatility, and high fees for transactions.[123]2018[edit]See also: Cryptocurrency bubble § 2018 crashOn 22 January 2018, South Korea brought in a regulation that requires all the bitcoin traders to reveal their identity, thus putting a ban on anonymous trading of bitcoins.[124]On 24 January 2018, the online payment firm Stripe announced that it would phase out its support for bitcoin payments by late April 2018, citing declining demand, rising fees and longer transaction times as the reasons.[125]2019[edit]As of September 2019, there were 5,457 bitcoin ATMs worldwide. In August of that year, the countries with highest number of bitcoin ATMs were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, and Spain.[citation needed]2020[edit]On 2 July 2020, the Indian company 21Shares started to quote a set of bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETP) on the Xetra trading system of the Deutsche Boerse.[126]On 1 September 2020, the Wiener Börse listed its first 21 titles denominated in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, including the services of real-time quotation and securities settlement.[127]On 3 September 2020, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange admitted in its Regulated Market the quotation of the first bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN), centrally cleared via Eurex Clearing.[128][129]In October 2020, PayPal announced that it would allow its users to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform, although not to deposit or withdraw bitcoins