Blockchain is the leading technology in the world of crypto. It was the first technological advance which served as the foundation for Bitcoin and altcoins. But it’s not the only method of data processing and storage. Now there’s a grandiose alternative coming - Hashgraph. In this article, we will explore this fascinating Hashgraph technology - What is it, and how is it better than Blockchain?

What is Hashgraph?

The Hashgraph is a consensus protocol because it provides a distributed consensus platform. It allows community users to generate transactions, and agree on the order in which they did the transactions, in an environment where everyone trusts no single user. The Hashgraph can achieve a consensus, and still be fast, fair, provable, efficient and inexpensive. It is an alternative to the blockchain. It was developed by Leemon Baird in 2016. Hashgraph is a revolutionary distributed computing and communication algorithm which can make Blockchain technology more versatile. It aims to provide the benefits of blockchain as a distributed ledger technology without the limitations. We can able to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second on Hashgraph.

Features of Hashgraph

Fast

Hashgraph is fast, as it uses the gossip protocol to spread messages to the network and also performs some optimization of the gossiped messages to reduce the communication overhead.

Inexpensive

The hashgraph is inexpensive, in the sense of avoiding proof-of-work. Individuals and organizations running hashgraph nodes do not need to purchase expensive custom mining rigs. Instead, they can run readily available, cost-effective hardware. The hashgraph is 100% efficient, wasting no resources on computations that slow it down.

Secure

The hashgraph is asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant. This is a technical term meaning that no single member (or small group of members) can prevent the community from reaching a consensus. Nor can they change the consensus once it has been reached. Each member will eventually reach a point where they know for sure that they have reached consensus.

Safe

The Hashgraph is resistant to DoS because an attack on one member of the network will not stop the rest of the community from continuing processing transactions successfully. A total DoS attack on a Hashgraph requires the attacker to attack all members at once, which is prohibitively expensive. The Blockchain is resistant to DoS attack, also, but it attempts to avoid proof-of-work using the round robin or leaders system makes it vulnerable to it. The attack only needs to be able to predict the current leader, attack them, identify the next one just before the handover, and attack them as well. The Hashgraph isn’t vulnerable to such attacks and doesn’t need proof-of-work.

Fair

Hashgraph also provides fairness via consensus time stamping. This means that if one transaction reaches two-thirds of the network ahead of other transactions, it is considered to be the first. It is a relatively fair system, as two-thirds of the network are witnesses and it is difficult for a majority of them to make unfair decisions.

Efficiency

The hashgraph is 100% efficient, as that term is used in the blockchain community. In blockchain, work is sometimes wasted mining a block that later is considered stale and is discarded by the community. In hashgraph, the equivalent of a “block” never becomes stale. Hashgraph is also efficient in its use of bandwidth.

Non-Permissioned

Hashgraph is non-permissioned, although it doesn’t require proof-of-work. A non-permissioned system is one where only trusted members can participate. For example, it allows members to vote according to their ownership stake or proof-of-stake. That stops Sybill attacks, where attackers use large hordes of fake accounts to prevent the system from reaching a consensus.

Timestamped

In Hashgraph, each transaction receives a time stamp that is an average of the time it was received by each community member. That timestamp guarantees it’s provable and Byzantine. The timestamp remains reliable as long as the participating members are running reliable clocks on the mining machines. The timestamp consensus is useful in the smart contract because it helps to determine if an event met a deadline or not.

ACID Compliant

The Hashgraph is considered an ACID compliant because it’s used as a distributed database. The Hashgraph helps members of a community to agree on the order in which transactions occurred, and list them accordingly. If each local database is Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable, then the whole community is said to have a distributed but single database with the same properties.

If you still cannot find any difference between Blockchain and Hashgraph, let’s clear the things up -

Hashgraph vs Blockchain

• The hashgraph platform leverages a new type of consensus mechanism, based on gossip about gossip and virtual voting. On the other hand, blockchain uses proof-of-stake and proof-of-work mechanisms of reaching consensus.

• Blockchain processes relatively slow. In contrast, hashgraph processes transactions much faster.

• In blockchain, data is stored in a ledger on nodes directly involved in the consensus. In hashgraph, data is stored on all computers of the network., which makes it impossible to hack.

• In hashgraph, no mining will be used– the nodes will process transactions automatically with ‘gossips’ being about 1-2 bits. On the other hand, in the blockchain, cryptocurrencies can be mined.