WHAT IS HASHGRAPH?
Hashgraph in current scenario has gained a lot of attention recently, they claimed to be very fast and able to handle over 250,000 transactions per second and they claim to be secure and also claim to be fair.
Hashgraph technology was created by Prof. Lemon Baird. Hashgraph is a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralized network, it is a mathematical algorithm similar to blockchain and they have compiled it in a piece of software which they call distributed ledger technology, which is somehow similar to the block chain technology.
Hashgraph uses the gossip-protocol where every node in hashgraph can spread signed information also known as events to a newly created transaction and also can receive transactions from others, thus making the whole system a decentralized, which means that transaction will be handled asynchronously.
HOW DOES HASHGRAPH WORKS?
The above figure depicts the hashgraph which shows the lines and circles which represent a graph in mathematical sense. Each circle contains a couple of hashes thus known as hashgraph. The members are the computers who represents the full nodes in the network. Alice (A), Bob (B), Carol(C), Dave(D) & Ed (E)are the five nodes. And according to the figure above each of the nodes started off by creating an event (represented as circle ‘O’) it is a container for transactions like the Blocks in Blockchains. Typically, one creates so many of events that one can get away with the smaller ones then one might have fewer transaction in each event. Even one can have an event which is empty if one doesn’t want to have any transaction with it. Each of these node A, B, C, D, E have created one event and time is going to uphill. And the bottom of the figure represents the beginning of time. In this whole process the main goal is to stop an attacker from shutting down the network and or freezing it from reaching to consensus. It must able to continue to have consensus even when there is a distributed denial of service attack.
It uses the Gossip Protocol, when nodes (say B) get some information it will randomly pick another node (say E) and share all the information that node B has, now node E will take another node (say C) and share all the information that both B & E has, Then node B can chose some other node and share the information it knows. By this way each node randomly picking a neighbor node and share information they the hats. Eventually all the nodes in the network will get the information. So, when they share information it not only shares what is the information but also who shared the information to whom, simultaneously it tells about when (time aspect), this is where the Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS.) lack, namely they lack fairness in the systems, which means that order of transaction is not guaranteed PoW and PoS.
So, this way When (time aspect) in the Gossip protocol guarantees Fairness.
With this setup of Gossip Protocol comes the concept of Virtual Voting, which means even if 2/3rd of the nodes in the network agrees upon the certain transaction which took place then the transaction will be considered valid. This also provides a very useful information about what each node knows and what it would vote, moreover we have seen that each node share information within each other but in virtual voting it doesn’t share information with all, which says if one node knows all the information of the other node then the parent node may deduce the other node because it have its all information as it exactly knows what the other node is going to vote for.
Thus, in this system the nodes only share information, randomly to neighbor (nodes) but not to every node at once. As the information spreads there is a convergence of information, now or then everyone comes to know about the entire set of information that is on the network. That is how Hashgraph claims to have 250,000 transactions per second.
Team:
• Leemon Baird is the Co-Founder/CTO of Swirlds and inventor of Hashgraph. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, he was Director of Security Engineering at Motorola & Professor of Computer Science for the US Air Force Academy.
• Mance Harmon, the Cofounder and CEO at Swirld, achieved an MS in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• Jordan Fried is an Investor & Head of Global Business Development at Hashgraph. Previously he was a Partner & Business Development Director of Higher Click, which is a professional SEO management company.
• Experienced advisors on board are Slava Rubin who was the co-founder of INDIEGOGO, John Best -CEO, Best Innovation Group, and Co-Founder, CULedger — Dave Asprey Founder of Bulletproof which is an international coffee company. Aaron D. Moore — CTO, Cyber and Intelligence Mission Systems Division.
Verdict:
Hashgraph has got a very strong team and the advisors are quite eminent in the tech field so its add an advantage to them.
Pros:
• Hashgraph entered the market claiming itself better than blockchain technology in terms of speed, fairness and providing security. It has excelled every feature which blockchain is currently providing and has also overcome the problems or issues faced in blockchain technology.
Cons
• Hashgraph being the private network is providing various benefits over blockchain, but the question is whether hashgraph will continue to perform the same when operated on public network or it may face the same problems as public networks are facing today?
• The clear idea can be acquired only when hashgraph will become the public ledger.
• The technology is patented, in order to use this the programmer, have to request for a SDK (Software Development Kit) from their company.
It is way to early to give a comment that in near future will Hashgraph replace Blockchain.
Token Metrics: Yet to announced
Whitepaper: http://www.swirlds.com/downloads/SWIRLDS-TR-2016-01.pdf
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hashgraph/?ref=br_rs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashgraph
