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Blockchain (database)
The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a ''chain'' (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are resistant to alteration because, once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be changed retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks and obtaining network consensus to accept these changes. Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network for use as a public distributed ledger, where nodes collectively adhere to a consensus algorithm protocol to add and validate new transaction blo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distributed Ledger
A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger or distributed ledger technology or DLT) is a system whereby replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutions. Its fundamental rationale is Argumentum ad populum whereby its veracity relies on a popular or majority of nodes to force the system to agree. In contrast to a centralized database, a distributed ledger does not require a central administrator, and consequently does not have a Single point of failure, single (central) point-of-failure. In general, a distributed ledger requires a peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network and Consensus (computer science), consensus algorithms so that the ledger is reliably replicated across distributed computer nodes (servers, clients, etc.). The most common form of distributed ledger technology is the blockchain (commonly associated with the bitcoin cryptocurrency), which can either be on a public or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto ( – 26 April 2011) is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin until December 2010. There has been widespread speculation about Nakamoto's true identity, with various people posited as the person or persons behind the name. Though Nakamoto's name is Japanese, and inscribed as a man living in Japan, most of the speculation has involved software and cryptography experts in the United States or Europe. Development of bitcoin Nakamoto said that the work of writing bitcoin's code began in the second quarter of 2007. On 18 August 2008, he or a colleague registered the domain name bitcoin.org, and created a web site at that address. On 31 October, Nakamoto published a white paper on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolute notion of time, however. They can have any epoch, can be relative to any arbitrary time, such as the power-on time of a system, or to some arbitrary time in the past. A distinction is sometimes made between the terms datestamp, timestamp and date-timestamp: * Datestamp or DS: A date, for example -- according to ISO 8601 * Timestamp or TS: A time of day, for example :: using 24-hour clock * Date-timestamp or DTS: Date and time, for example --, :: History The term "timestamp" derives from rubber stamps used in offices to stamp the current date, and sometimes time, in ink on paper documents, to record when the document was received. Common examples of this type of timestamp are a postmark on a letter or the "in" and "out" times on a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Chaum
David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is an American computer scientist, List of cryptographers, cryptographer, and inventor. He is known as a pioneer in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies, and widely recognized as the inventor of Digital currency, digital cash. His 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups" is the first known proposal for a blockchain protocol. Complete with the code to implement the protocol, Chaum's dissertation proposed all but one element of the blockchain later detailed in the Bitcoin White paper, whitepaper. He has been referred to as "the father of online anonymity", and "the godfather of cryptocurrency". He is also known for developing ecash, an electronic cash application that aims to preserve a user's anonymity, and inventing many cryptography, cryptographic protocols like the blind signature, mix networks and the Dining cryptographers protocol. In 1995 his company DigiCash created the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing Communication protocol, protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, information security, electrical engineering, digital signal processing, physics, and others. Core concepts related to information security (confidentiality, data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation) are also central to cryptography. Practical applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, Smart card#EMV, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, password, computer passwords, and military communications. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snake Oil
Snake oil is a term used to describe False advertising, deceptive marketing, health care fraud, or a scam. Similarly, snake oil salesman is a common label used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a general proponent of some valueless or fraudulent cure, remedy, or solution. The term comes from the "snake oil" that used to be sold as a cure-all elixir for many kinds of physiological problems. Many 18th-century European and 19th-century United States entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil (often mixed with various Active ingredient, active and Inactive ingredient, inactive household herbs, spices, drugs, and compounds, but containing no snake-derived substances whatsoever) as "snake oil liniment", making claims about its efficacy as a Panacea (medicine), panacea. Patent medicines that claimed to be panaceas were extremely common from the 18th century until the 20th century, particularly among vendors masking addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, Alcohol (d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Payment Rail
A payment rail is a payment platform or a payment network that moves money from a payer to a payee. Either party could be a consumer or business, and both parties are able to move funds on the network. Credit card rails are the credit card payment system. Blockchain is considered a newer type of payment rail, as are centralized electronic payment systems such as PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ..., Venmo and Zelle. If the transferred funds are available immediately, a payment rail is referred to as a real-time rail. References {{finance-stub Payment systems Payment networks Banking technology Banking terms Payment clearing systems Banking in the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptocurrencies
A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership records are stored in a digital ledger or blockchain, which is a computerized database that uses a consensus mechanism to secure E-commerce, transaction records, control the creation of additional coins, and verify the transfer of coin ownership. The two most common consensus mechanisms are proof of work and proof of stake. Despite the name, which has come to describe many of the fungibility, fungible blockchain tokens that have been created, cryptocurrencies are not considered to be Currency, currencies in the traditional sense, and varying legal treatments have been applied to them in various jurisdictions, including classification as Commodity, commodities, Security (finance), securities, and currencies. Cryptocurrencies are generally viewed as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Server (computing)
A server is a computer that provides information to other computers called " clients" on a computer network. This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide various functionalities, often called "services", such as sharing data or resources among multiple clients or performing computations for a client. A single server can serve multiple clients, and a single client can use multiple servers. A client process may run on the same device or may connect over a network to a server on a different device. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers. Client–server systems are usually most frequently implemented by (and often identified with) the request–response model: a client sends a request to the server, which performs some action and sends a response back to the client, typically with a result or acknowledgment. Designating a computer as "server-class hardwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double-spending
Double-spending is the unauthorized production and spending of money, either digital or conventional. It represents a monetary design problem: a good money is verifiably scarce, and where a unit of value can be spent more than once, the monetary property of scarcity is challenged. As with counterfeit money, such double-spending leads to inflation by creating a new amount of copied currency that did not previously exist. Like all increasingly abundant resources, this devalues the currency relative to other monetary units or goods and diminishes user trust as well as the circulation and retention of the currency. Fundamental cryptographic techniques to prevent double-spending, while preserving anonymity in a transaction, are the introduction of an authority (and hence centralization) for blind signatures and, particularly in offline systems, secret splitting. Centralized digital currencies Prevention of double-spending is usually implemented using an online central trusted thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vice (magazine)
''Vice'' (stylized in all caps) is a Canadian-American magazine focused on lifestyle, arts, culture, and news/politics. It was founded in 1994 in Montreal as an alternative punk magazine, and its founders later launched the youth media company Vice Media, which consists of divisions including the printed magazine as well as a website, broadcast news unit, a film production company, a record label, and a publishing imprint. As of February 2015, the magazine's editor-in-chief is Ellis Jones. On 15 May 2023, Vice Media formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as part of a possible sale to a consortium of lenders including Fortress Investment Group, which will, alongside Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital, invest $225 million as a credit bid for nearly all of its assets. In February 2024, CEO Bruce Dixon announced additional layoffs and that the website Vice.com will no longer publish content. The print magazine returned in September 2024. History The precursor to ''Vice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Bayer
David Allen Bayer (born November 29, 1955) is an American mathematician known for his contributions in algebra and symbolic computation and for his consulting work in the movie industry. He is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College, Columbia University. Education and career Bayer graduated from Swarthmore College with a Bachelor of Arts with highest honors in 1977. As a Swarthmore undergraduate, he attended a course on combinatorial algorithms given by Herbert Wilf. During that semester, Bayer related several original ideas to Wilf on the subject. These contributions were later incorporated into the second edition of Wilf and Albert Nijenhuis' influential book ''Combinatorial Algorithms'', with a detailed acknowledgement by its authors. Bayer subsequently earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1982 under the direction of Heisuke Hironaka with a dissertation entitled ''The Division Algorithm and the Hilbert Scheme''. He joined Columbia University thereafter. Bayer is th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
