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Starting from this issue, Uncle Wu will teach [100 Essential Knowledge Points of Web3 Metaverse], which is full of practical information. I hope it can help everyone better understand the Web3 Metaverse ecosystem. Welcome everyone to like and support and continue to pay attention 💖

The content of this video is the popular [Story of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto] and the frequently heard [What is mining]?

I believe everyone has heard of Bitcoin, but do you know the story of its founder Satoshi Nakamoto? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Is mining the same as mining Bitcoin? What is a mining machine, and why does China frequently issue laws to prohibit mining with mining machines?

Well, before we officially begin, new friends are welcome to like and follow Uncle Wu. I will continue to share the top 100 essential knowledge points about the Web3 metaverse and blockchain to help everyone learn Web3 in a systematic way. Please continue to pay attention!

1. Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin

Everyone is familiar with Bitcoin, right? In recent years, there have been endless news reports, such as Bitcoin is a scam, Bitcoin rich cases, etc. Here, Uncle Wu hopes that everyone will look at it rationally. Since there is attention and hot spots, there must be reasons for it.

Bitcoin has experienced ups and downs, from being worthless at the beginning to reaching its highest point of 69,000 US dollars per coin last year. Many people have made a fortune from it, while many have lost their entire fortunes. Here, Uncle Wu once again reminds everyone that cryptocurrency investment is risky, so please invest with caution!

Well, back to the main text. Before talking about Bitcoin, we have to mention a person or a team called Satoshi Nakamoto. Why does Uncle Wu say it is a person or a team? Because from the time Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" in 2008 to the last email in 2011 announcing his withdrawal from the Internet, no one still knows his true identity. There are endless speculations about him. Curious friends can search online by themselves. If you want the electronic version of the Bitcoin white paper, you can also find Uncle Wu.

In 2008, the world was experiencing a financial crisis. At this time, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed to invent an electronic currency. This currency is not issued by the state, but is issued and circulated by computer algorithms. Theoretically, as long as you have a computer, you can participate in the creation of Bitcoin. So how can you get Bitcoin?

Before talking about this knowledge point, I would like to talk about the four core technologies of blockchain, which will also be mentioned in the top 100 knowledge points later. They are [distributed ledger (also called distributed storage)], [cryptography technology], [consensus mechanism] and [smart contract]. These blockchain technologies are used at the bottom layer of Bitcoin.

Among them, I want to talk to you about the technology of distributed ledger. We all know that in traditional Internet, such as Taobao and WeChat, all user data is actually stored in their company's database servers, and the data processing and packaging are handled by their database specialists. Technically speaking, it is easy for them to see who bought what or talked about what. If you think about it carefully, isn't it terrible? This is what is often called centralization. The right to data is in the hands of these centralized companies, and the data information is relatively concentrated. Once the database is hacked or there is a problem, it will be catastrophic.

For example, Ma Huateng once said about the Tianjin Port explosion in 2015. At that time, Tencent built the largest cloud computing data storage center in Asia in Tianjin, with a total area of ​​80,000 square meters and more than 200,000 servers, carrying some data needs of WeChat, instant messaging and other businesses. The explosion site was only 1.5 kilometers away from this data center. If it had unfortunately affected hundreds of millions of WeChat users, it would have been a historic disaster. Can you imagine the consequences of all your chat records, Moments, friends and various information in WeChat being cleared now? This is the disadvantage of centralized databases.

In the blockchain world, all data is carried by each block, and the data is stored in a decentralized manner. Even if a hacker attacks one of them, the others will remain unaffected. This is the benefit of distributed storage. In addition, these databases have the same permissions and can view and store all data, which is the so-called "decentralization."

In this technical context, careful friends have discovered a problem: centralized companies have so-called database specialists responsible for data processing and storage, but who will handle the decentralized distributed database? At this time, the famous mining mechanism appeared.

2. What is mining?

In order to solve the problem of who will process the data, Satoshi Nakamoto stipulated on the Bitcoin chain that all people who access the network can freely choose to become miners. They can access the network by downloading specific software and use the computer's computing power to calculate a random number "nonce". The first person to accurately calculate the "nonce" value will synchronize the result to other nodes in the entire network. After other nodes confirm that there is no problem, the data packaged by the miner will be connected to the entire blockchain network, accepted by everyone, and receive corresponding Bitcoin rewards. This entire process of competing for data processing rights through computing power and being rewarded with tokens is called "mining."

During the mining process, miners need to continuously contribute the computing power of their computers to calculate the correct "nonce" value. This process requires very high-intensity calculations, which places high demands on the computer's graphics card and CPU, and the CPU often fails.

Under such a "mining" mechanism, many smart people joined the mining team in the early days and built large-scale mining farms, that is, many servers like this one mining together. With the rise in the price of Bitcoin, many myths of getting rich quickly were created, but the large amount of electricity and computing power consumed was also an extremely wasteful behavior. In the past few years, the country has introduced laws strictly prohibiting Bitcoin mining, and the mining industry has suffered a severe blow. These miners have since embarked on the "profit" road of building factories abroad. It is really a mixture of joy and sorrow, and they have been displaced.

At present, there are still many public chains that still adopt the "mining" mechanism, and there are also many public chains that have transformed and embarked on the path of POS consensus mechanism. For example, the major blockchain event in September, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade merger, each has its pros and cons, let us look at it rationally.

Conclusion

Well, that’s all for this issue. Welcome to continue to pay attention to Uncle Wu’s series of 100 essential knowledge points about the Web3 Metaverse. In the next video, Uncle Wu will talk to you about the deflation mechanism of Bitcoin halving and the first festival in the blockchain world, which is the “Bitcoin Pizza Day” when Bitcoin was first given value. Welcome to continue to pay attention and learn.

Follow Uncle Wu, an entrepreneur who has experience in major Web2 companies and is actively heading towards Web3. I look forward to meeting you who share the same ideals as me and exploring the Web3 world together. See you next time!