The phenomenal rise in the value off Ethereum few weeks ago had people speculating about Ethereum turning out to be Bitcoin killer. The increasing value of Ether and a surge in trading volumes has led to a comparison between both digital currencies.
Now, is the comparison between both platforms exaggerated? Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin is a digital currency which was originally created as an alternative monetary system. On the other hand, Ethereum is created as a blockchain 2.0 platform that can be used to create and execute smart contract applications over blockchain. Bitcoin platform’s crypto token is called bitcoin (which can get confusing) an Ether is the crypto token used on Ethereum platform. Mining
Bitcoin built on SHA cryptographic algorithm uses proof of work algorithm that depends upon the amount of processing power spent by the miner to discover and decrypt new blocks. This has allowed miners to graduate from PCs, GPUs to Application Specific Integrated Circuits. The use of high-performance mining equipment has led to an increase in mining difficulty, leaving miners using PCs and Outdated mining equipment obsolete. Ethereum platform started with its own version of the proof of work algorithm called Ethash . Ethash is designed to resist the use of ASICs by miners due to increased memory requirement. While the miners currently available in the market are not compatible with Ethash, it may soon become available (thanks to falling price of computer hardware). However, they won’t stay useful for long as the platform intends to switch to Casper – A proof of stake algorithm in the next release, Serenity .
Proof of stake algorithm is inherently ASIC resistant as the miner can only mine a certain portion of the blocks depending upon the percentage of cryptocoins they own. This will, in turn, keep the difficulty level in […]
