I do an awful lot of videos that speak about blockchain technology and how it’s pretty much amazing. It’s often described as the best thing since the invention of the internet, I mean there’s a reason why I decided to create a youtube channel dedicated to educating others on how it can change our lives. But just wait a second, there’s a new kid on the block that’s making some noise with some bold claims.

Swirlds is labeling its Hashgraph technology as a “radically different approach to distributed consensus.”

They're also claiming that this new approach will be able to solve scaling and security issues.

Their Hashgraph technology uses a protocol called “Gossip about Gossip”. Despite what you may think, “Gossip” is actually a well-known computer technology phrase that refers to how computers communicate with each other.

The Hashgraph team describes it as,

“...calling any random node and telling that node everything you know, that it does not know. In distributed ledger technology the “baseline” or minimum bandwidth required is that the transactions go to every node. Gossip about Gossip refers to attaching a small additional amount of information to this Gossip, which contains the last person we talked to, hence, we are gossiping about the information we gossiped. Using this information, we can build the Hashgraph.”

This is the key for how Hashgraph would be able to know exactly when consensus would be reached.

Another aspect of the blockchain that Hashgraph is aiming to improve is the relative wastefulness of “stale” blocks and also to radically reduce the computing power needed compared to things like proof of work and proof of stake.

There is no doubt that Blockchain technology is a great step forward.

But it’s very much worth it to note that it has room to improve. And despite the fact that I am finally beginning to feel confident in my own knowledge of how blockchain technology works, I’m finding myself eager to learn more about other ideas on how it can be improved upon.

Swirlds’ Hashgraph isn’t the only platform that’s focusing on changing how a blockchain can be tweaked.

Byteball and other cryptos using DAGs are more or less on the same page in regards to their ideas for providing alternative options.

These are also called blockchain-free cryptocurrencies. The list of these types of cryptocurrencies includes Byteball, as I mentioned before, IOTA, and DagCoin.

Basically, a blockchain-free cryptocurrency is any distributed database that uses different tools to achieve essentially the same objectives as a blockchain.

These different tools used include what are called DAGs. This stands for Directed Acyclic Graphs. A quick Google search of this will show you an image of a DAG. If you’re like me and imagery tends to help you understand certain concepts, then take into account the context and imagery of a blockchain, and compare it to the imagery of a DAG. It might be a bit easier to wrap your head around how DAGs can be faster and more effecient in certain ways.

Now I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m still working towards understanding this concept better so I welcome anyone who can supplement with additional information on ways to break this down to please leave a comment down below so we can all learn more about it.

Additional Reading/Sources:

Swirlds Website

Swirlds Whitepaper

Squawker Article on Hashgraph

Dags Defined

Blockchain-free cryptocurrencies

Medium Article on Scalable Cryptocurrencies

Byteball

IOTA

DagCoin