BITCOIN
Bitcoin White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is first and widely used cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is inspired by the Cypherpunk Movement in the 1980s, which advocated for protection of privacy from external entities using cryptography. Satoshi Nakamoto first outlined and created Bitcoin in 2008 and 2009. Bitcoin aims to be pseudonymous, trustless, decentralized, and immutable. In addition, anyone with a computer and internet connection can join the Bitcoin network. Each computer is a node in the Bitcoin network, and each node may verify and audit the transaction history of their own funds. In Bitcoin. (Blockchain at Berkeley)
Since its public launch in 2009, Bitcoin has risen dramatically in value. Although it once sold for under $150 per coin, as of March 1, 2021, one Bitcoin now sells for almost $50,000. Because its supply is limited to 21 million coins, many expect its price to only keep rising as time goes on, especially as more large, institutional investors begin treating it as a sort of digital gold to hedge against market volatility and inflation.(https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-bitcoin/)
ETHEREUM
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-sourceblockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. It is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after Bitcoin. Ethereum is the most actively used blockchain.
Ethereum was proposed in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin. Development was crowdfunded in 2014, and the network went live on 30 July 2015, with an initial supply of 72 million coins. The platform allows developers to build and operate decentralized applications that users can interact with. Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications provide a broad array of financial services without the need for typical financial intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks, such as allowing cryptocurrency users to borrow against their holdings or lend them out for interest. Ethereum also allows for the creation and exchange of NFTs, which are non-interchangeable tokens that can be connected to digital works of art or other real-world items and sold as unique digital property. Additionally, many other cryptocurrencies operate as ERC-20 tokens on top of the Ethereum blockchain and have utilized it for initial coin offerings.
In 2016, a hacker exploited a flaw in a third-party project called The DAO and stole $50 million of Ether. As a result, the Ethereum community voted to hard fork the blockchain to reverse the theft and Ethereum Classic (ETC) continued as the original chain.
Ethereum has started implementing a series of upgrades called Ethereum 2.0, which includes a transition to proof of stake and aims to increase transaction throughput using sharding. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum) (https://ethereum.org/en/what-is-ethereum/)
HYPERLEDGER
Hyperledger is an open source community focused on developing a suit of stable frameworks, tools and libraries for enterprise -grade blockchain deployments. It serves as a netural home for various distributed ledger frameworks including hyperledger fabric, Sawtooth, Indy as well as tools like Hperledger Caliper and libraries like hyperledger Ursa. (https://www.hyperledger.org/)
Hyperledger was first introduced on 9th Feb 2016 in San Francisco, California. It was introduced by The Linux Foundation, which at that time had 30 founding members. Out of those 30 founding members, there were big names, including Guartime, SWIFT, R3, ConsenSys, VMware, Blockchain, IBM, and others. It came into existence with a goal to improve blockchain technology. They also want to make blockchain more accessible to everyone out there.
With an Open Technical Governance Structure, the goal is to create a community that follows standard tools, frameworks, and guidelines when it comes to blockchain implementation. The approach is very effective as it welcomes contributors to do proposals to improve codebase and guidelines.
Now, it has more than 100+ members who are constantly working towards improving the blockchain technology and making it more accessible to everyone else out there.
Digital Asset donates the name Hyperledger to the Linux Foundation for the blockchain technology improvement. This also means that the Hyperledger Project Governing Board can use it, but will always require the Linux Foundation approval before they can use it.(https://101blockchains.com/hyperledger-history/)
Quorum
Quorum is a project of JPMorgan Chase.
Quorum is distributed ledger and smart contract platform designed for enterprise applications. This platform can be customized according to specific business needs and provides support for transaction-level privacy as well as network-wide transparency.
Quorum is based on Ethereum and is a fork of go-ethereum. Unlike Ethereum which is open and permissionless, Quorum is a permissioned (i.e. private) network. In other words, the Quorum blockchain is a distributed ledger but it is not a decentralized network because node operators are all known parties, and it therefore does not use decentralized consensus mechanisms such as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
There are several performance advantages to operating permissioned networks versus permissionless ones. For example, Quorum uses raft-based consensus and Istanbul BFT (a consensus algorithm based on the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant Algorithm), which enable faster transaction speeds and higher throughput relative to decentralized blockchains. (https://golden.com/wiki/Quorum_(blockchain))
ConsenSys Quorum (For further information)
Corda
Corda enables businesses in Banking, Capital Markets, Trade Finance, Insurance and beyond to transact directly and in strict privacy using smart contracts, reducing transaction and record-keeping costs and streamlining business operations.
Privacy: Unlike permissionless blockchain networks, transaction data between parties on Corda is private.
Corda Network: Get your business up and running quickly and easily with a suite of network capabilities and business network options available on Corda Network.
Flexible and agile: Corda is a flexible, agile multi-platform that scales to meet business needs. Get started quickly on Corda and easily migrate to Corda Enterprise, as business requirements evolve.
David E. Rutter and Todd McDonald founded R3 in 2014 with the belief that digital transformation is the future for highly regulated industries everywhere.
With 50+ years of combined financial services and capital markets experience, they knew first-hand that there was a lack of trust in how firms collaborate and transact with each other. They believed that if businesses were less centralized and more connected through the use of networked digital technology, then entire industries could be streamlined and transformed. With a passion to drive this vision forward, R3 developed Corda—a purpose-built DLT application development platform that has facilitated hundreds of blockchain networks across trade finance, insurance, capital markets and banking.
Building on the success of Corda, the R3 team next launched Conclave, a confidential computing platform for developing applications that enable multiple parties to securely share and analyze data.
Today, with the support of our diverse ecosystem, our team of industry and technology experts are committed to bringing their best practice and expertise to every customer engagement. Because we believe with each multi-party application built on our next-gen platforms, we move one step closer to a truly digital and connected world.(https://www.r3.com/history/)
Ripple
Ripple is a technology that acts as both a cryptocurrency and a digital payment network for financial transactions. It was first released in 2012 and was co-founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb. Ripple’s main process is a payment settlement asset exchange and remittance system that is similar to the SWIFT system for international money and security transfers that is used by banks and financial middlemen dealing across currencies.
The token used for the cryptocurrency is premined and utilizes the ticker symbol XRP. Technically, Ripple is the name of the company and network, and XRP is the cryptocurrency token. The purpose of XRP is to serve as an intermediate mechanism of exchange between two currencies or networks, as a sort of temporary settlement layer denomination.
- Ripple is a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol with its own cryptocurrency, XRP.
- Rather than use blockchain mining, Ripple uses a permissioned consensus mechanism via a group of bank-owned servers to confirm transactions.
- Ripple transactions use less energy than Bitcoin, are confirmed in seconds, and cost very little, versus Bitcoin transactions which use more energy, take longer to confirm, and include higher transaction costs.
- Ripple ranks among the top 5 most valuable blockchain-based tokens by market cap (Source https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/ripple-cryptocurrency.asp
- https://ripple.com/)