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I wanted to introduce you guys to a technology which may change the future of our planet much more than Bitcoin will. It may even make Bitcoin obsolete. If you know how Blockchain works, this topic should interest you. ––––––––––– So... Does expending huge amounts of resources to solve math problems that nobody really cares about make the world a better place? Does "7 transactions a second maximum" sound like future world currency technology? Is it fair that approximately every 10 minutes one single computer likely part of a supercluster wins the lottery and decides which transactions get to be included in the next block? Is waiting for 1 hour for confirmation of a payment that even then isn't 100 % guaranteed sound viable in today's age, let alone in 20 years from now? I'd say no, no, no, and no. But is there an alternative? Yes. It's called Hashgraph. ––––––––––– Hashgraph is a Distributed Ledger Technology much like Blockchain, yet very different – and much better. In a nutshell, in Hashgraph every node (the client, like your computer running the program) tells random other nodes the data it has (transactions, coordinates, or other data), plus information it randomly received from other nodes. It's called "Gossip protocol" for obvious reasons and is not a new invention. So my node A sends my transaction to another node B, then A and B send to C and D, next round four nodes send out my information (exponential, so it only takes 20 iterations for 1 million nodes to know my transaction). Also, the nodes tell each other what they heard other nodes telling other nodes together with the timestamps, so they "gossip about gossip." The benefit of that gossip about gossip is that every node has all the data every other node has. This also demonstrates the fairness in Hashgraph, because all nodes are equal in power and no single node decides which transactions get to be included. To decide on the correct order of the transactions, a voting system is used. But instead of sending votes all around in the network of who has seen which data when and to "vote for it", we can just forget about that part because everyone already knows how everyone "would" vote if there was a an actual vote – hence it's called "virtual voting" and is, together with the Gossip protocol, what makes Hashgraph incredibly efficient. It's extremely efficient and fast, plus fair and secure. In fact, it's much more efficient, faster, fairer and securer than Blockchain! It's a straight upgrade. It was invented 5 years ago by Leemon Baired of http://www.swirlds.com/ and they have only been public about this technology since September 2017. ––––––––––– You want to learn more? See their website (above) or check out the following resources: Hidden Secrets Of Money Episode 8 featuring Bitcoin and Hashgraph (video) Overview of Swirlds Hashgraph (article) How Hashgraph Consensus Works (presentation) Swirds' Leemon Baird Talks Hashgraph (lecture) ––––––––––– It may sound like I'm here to advertise, but I am of course in no way affiliated to them. I just have recently stumbled across Hashgraph in The Hidden Secrets of Money and have been learning much about it. I find Hashgraph fascinating as this seems to solve all the problems that Bitcoin currently has. Most notably the extreme energy expense (between 1/2000th and 1/1200th of world's electricity!) and limited scalability. Maybe you guys find this interesting, too? Have you heard about it before? What are your thoughts? Cheers!