Bitcoin and Ethereum

What are the main stages in the evolution of a public blockchain?

Conceptualisation > Deployment > Early Ecosystem Growth > Maturity (scalability issues) > Mainstream adoption > Community governance > Regulatory scrutiny

When was the Bitcoin whitepaper released and by whom?

31 October 2007 by Satoshi Nakamoto

What message is encoded in the Bitcoin genesis block?

‘‘Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’’ - from The Times 03/Jan/2009

Who received the first Bitcoin transaction and how much?

Hal Finney received 10 BTC from Satoshi on 12 Jan 2009

What was the Bitcoin Pizza transaction and why is it significant?

10,000 BTC used to buy two pizzas in May 2010 - First real-world BTC purchase

What is the Bitcoin halving and how often does it occur?

Mining reward cuts in half every 210,000 blocks (-4 years)

What is the final expected supply of Bitcoin?

Approximately 21 million BTC

3 Types of Bitcoin Nodes

Full nodes, mining nodes, light nodes

Why is a higher number of miners beneficial to Bitcoin?

Increased security (hash rate), decentralisation, stable block time, reduced attack risk

What is a hash rate?

Total computational power used to mine and verify transactions in the network

What is a mining pool?

A collaborative group of miners who combine hash power and share rewards

What problem does the Lightning Network solve?

Slow and costly Bitcoin transactions - offers fast, low-cost, layer-2 payments via payment channels.

Who created Ethereum and when?

Vitalik Buterin, published whitepaper in 2014

What is a smart contract?

A self-executing program stored on blockchain that automatically performs actions when conditions are met.

What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)?

The runtime environment where smart contracts are deployed and executed.

What language is commonly used to write Ethereum smart contracts?

Solidity

What is the Beacon chain?

Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake chain launched in 2020 to transition Ethereum from PoW to PoS

2 Ethereum testnets

Goerli, Sepolia

How many ETH is required to become a validator?

32 ETH

What are epoch and attestors in Ethereum PoS

Epoch = 32 blocks (6.4 minutes)
Attestors = validators who confirm blocks

How is transaction fee calculated on Ethereum?

Gas used x gas price

What is sharding?

Splitting blockchain into smaller shards so transactions can be processes in parallel

What are rollups and why do they help scalability?

Layer-2 solutions that process transactions off-chain and submit proofs on-coin

Types:
ZK-rollups > validity proofs
Optimistic rollups > assume validity unless challanged

What consensus mechanism does Ripple use?

Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA)

What unique feature does Solana use for speed?

Proof of History (PoH) - cryptographic timestamps enabling fast ordering of transactions