Satoshi Nakamoto Started the Bitcoin Genesis Block
A fantastic achievement, the Bitcoin blockchain has now been operational for 14 years. The genesis block was mined on January 3, 2009, amid the height of the financial crisis, and today is the anniversary of that event. The controversial Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still unknown, started the Bitcoin genesis block.
The genesis block, the very first one on the Bitcoin blockchain, was one of the most innovative ideas of this century and signaled the start of a new era in decentralized digital money.
Cryptographers hypothesized that the 50 Bitcoins in the genesis block would be viewed as a reward for maintaining nodes on the network, thus they were not spent. The London Times’s “Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks” headline is also included in the document.
Given that banks were being bailed out as a result of reckless banking activities, this was seen to be a statement on the state of money in general at the time.
It has been hypothesized that Satoshi used this header to express opposition to the way major banks handled business before the advent of cryptocurrencies and how Bitcoin could render those same banks obsolete by offering decentralized methods for handling financial transactions.
With 770,111 total blocks from its humble beginnings 10 years ago, the Bitcoin network itself has undergone a significant transformation. In terms of trading digital currencies, Bitcoin continues to lead the way.
According to a recent announcement, Hedera will start quarterly resets of the testnet on January 26, 2023, from 17:00 to 19:00 UTC, during which the testnet will be unavailable. Resetting the Hedera testnet regularly guarantees that old data is cleared out, spam is eliminated, and the system is kept up to date.
Attempts will be made by Hedera Core Engineering to make testnet resets as developer-friendly as feasible. Dates for testnet resets will be announced at least two weeks in advance through email to testnet users, the Hedera Network Status website, and the official Hedera developer Discord.
Owners of testnet mirror nodes will be given advance notice of the availability of their mirror nodes and instructions to configure them before the planned reset. This scheduled maintenance affects Hedera Testnet (v0.33.3), Individual Nodes, Hedera-Managed Mirror Node Testnet APIs (v0.71.0), and Hedera Testnet (v0.33.3).
Bitcoin Cash and Polygon To Undergo Hard Forks in 2023
A hard fork upgrade of Polygon, Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling solution, is planned for 2023. A proposed hard fork to Polygon’s proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain has been made public.
The software change is scheduled to take place on January 17 if approved, and it will address gas price increases and chain rearrangements (reorgs). The Polygon community was initially made aware of the hard fork debate in December 2022.
The first modification in Polygon’s new split relates to how gas fees, a form of tax one must pay to a blockchain to conduct transactions, are set. Polygon hopes that the fork will reduce gas price increases that occur when there is a lot going on in the chain.
The second suggested improvement deals with reorgs, which can happen when one of the machines running the Polygon blockchain, a validator node, receives data that momentarily produces a new version of the blockchain.
Due to the necessity for nodes to reconcile which chain is the right one (also known as the “canonical” one), such an event makes it challenging to accurately verify whether a transaction has been accomplished.
Polygon seeks to shorten the time it takes to finalize a block and verify successful transactions to solve its issue of relatively frequent reorgs. The goal is to decrease Polygon’s “sprint length” from 64 to 16 blocks, allowing block producers to manufacture blocks in considerably less time (from 128 to 32 seconds).
Bitcoin Cash Hard fork
The Bitcoin Cash fork is anticipated to take place in May 2023. With plans for “CashTokens,” which, according to developers, would enable decentralized applications directly on Bitcoin Cash, the hard split is expected to increase the network’s security and anonymity.
Smaller transaction sizes, which speed up transaction times, and smart contracts functionality, which could enable the development of Bitcoin Cash-based applications that provide users with opportunities for crowdfunding, recurring payments, and derivatives trading, among other uses, are other proposed improvements that have already been locked in.
