Almost any digital currency such as bitcoin is based in one of the most innovative technologies for finance over the past few years. Bitcoin was the first digital currency and was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and as the underline technology the blockchain. This tech in a few words is a ledger that exists in a peer-to-peer network of computers with immutable properties.
This could be described as an immutable recording system of information like an accounting ledger, but it is stored in multiple copies on a decentralized network of computers around the world, it's running independently.
The records are impossible to alter or modify by virtually anyone, at the same time there are system properties for the records of information to be accessible in public, but kept some details about hidden using public-key cryptography.
Digital Currency
The most popular applications of blockchain were digital currencies, now there are over 100 currencies that use this technology. So these types of currencies are apps that run on blockchain under certain conditions and rules that were defined initially.
Constantly we can see new categories of coins like Stablecoins such as the USD Coin which 1 USD coin has always the same value as one USD dollar.
Transactions Verification
The data that is recorded to the blockchain has to be verified by a network of computer nodes. These nodes are blockchain validators that run full-nodes. When a transaction takes place is broadcasted to the network where some validators take the transactions check the validity and place them in a block - a group of transactions.
Consensus Mechanism
This is the part of the technology that powers these currencies, it is a fault-tolerant mechanism (algorithm) that is used to blockchains for achieving agreement on single data values or in the state of nodes of a distributed system.
Proof of Work (PoW) is the most common algorithm that powers bitcoin and other cryptos which is very secure but needs a lot of computer power and high energy consumption.
Proof of stake (PoS) is the alternative algorithm that needs less energy consumption which shifts the responsibility of data integrity to the nodes with the highest number of tokens.
Smart Contracts
Later the need for just simple recording information was not enough so comes ethereum extends the ability of blockchains from just a simple recording information system to create apps on the top. This opened new opportunities to make applications other than currencies and mainly custom apps that are called smart contracts.
The contracts in ethereum are created using solidity a programming language similar to C++;
The next step seems to connect different kinds of blockchains on private and public domains under certain rules. The connection of the blockchain between them on exchanging data, tokens, assets brings into play the cosmos using the Inter-Blockchain protocol (IBP).
In the first years of ethereum one of the most popular applications was the ICOs (initial coin offer) that offer tokens as an exchange that was used as a fundraising mechanism through crypto. The second popular are the DeFi projects, a special case of smart contracts is the decentralized financial projects aka DeFi.
A quick intro is to use Metamask a piece of software that run as an addon in web browsers and someone can have and ethereum wallet where the user can ether or ERC-20 tokens.
DeFi Projects
An introduction on Defi in short is that is the transformation of old finance technology and tools to run independently distributed and without the middle man. An example of this is the uniswap protocol to exchange ERC-20 tokens, Yarn.finance on aggregated liquidity and automated market-making, chainlink a Datafeed for connected off-blockchain data to on-blockchain, compound that allows loaners to borrow by backing crypto-assets.
We can help you to become an innovator of blockchain technology, just bring the idea and we create the smart contract blockchain developer. Despite the fact of currency, the use of crypto it is seems to be more of an investment vehicle for the time.
Fungable Tokens
Can be devided in smaller parts and imply equal value
Non-fungable Tokens
These are tokens that are used to verify ownership of digital projects and works as music.
What is Cosmos.network
Is a decentralized network that you can deploy a blockchain that can be connected with other chains like currencies or smart contracts cosmos.network . The Cosmos Hub is called the set of interconnected chains that follow the BTF consensus protocol.
The integrity of this distributed ledger is maintained by the validators, which are independent computer nodes or clusters owned by companies or people. These are responsible for committing new blocks in the in blockchain and as a reward, they earn revenue from transaction fees, block rewards.
The main Token of Cosmos hub is Atom and currently is trading in some exchanges like Coinbase. A strange characteristic compared to other currencies is that the tokens can be lent to validators of the network, these are called delegators so they can earn more Atoms.
Agoric easy to create javascript Smart Contracts
Agoric is a framework that provides an easy way to create and manage smart contracts in javascript, also provides specialized tools for DeFi Decentralized Finance. One area that this kind of technology could be applied is financial contracts also known as futures, options, etc. These types of derivatives were trading for the first time at the Chicago Board of Trade, now is the time to find use on hedging assets at interconnected blockchains.
You can install agoric samples software from GitHub using yarn a well-known javascript package manager. Two interesting features are
Electronic Rights Transfer Protocol where you can create digital assets and transfer them under certain conditions. There are two types of assets, the first one is fungible assets where all the items have exactly the same properties.
The second one is the non-fungible assets where items that belong on these sets may have different characteristics on some properties like a partial-ordered set.
Zoe Mechanism provides a secure and safe way to transfer digital assets and crypto tokens aka money. In one line someone could say that is an auction mechanism for matching buyers (that making offers) to the seller and that mechanism holds all assets in escrow record until there is a match else all assets return back to the initial owners.
The selling point on Zoe is the type-safety property, which means there are in place mechanism that protects the transfer of digital assets and tokens from failures on systems that could freeze them on chains.
An example is a Call Option, is a financial contract between two parties that the buyer has the option to buy an underline asset at a defined price on a future date regardless of the spot price of this asset that future date. This is a call option because if the buyer has an option not to exercise the contract.
