Hashgraph (Hedera)
Distributed databases are often prone to attackers and other malicious damaged since they are often required to be replicated state machine with fault tolerance. If not, the risk of databases damage in high. The Hashgraph (Hedera) is a consensus algorithm and data structure proposed for replicated state machines.It is fast, secure and fair. Moreover, It is described as the future of decentralized technology by the official website. To make it fast and secure, the platform uses a data structure and consensus algorithm that if:
- Fair: the fairness of access, time stamping, and ordering
- Fast: with a very high throughput and low consensus latency
- Secure: asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant.
How does the Hashgraph work?
The Hashgraph uses the Gossip about Gossip and the Virtual voting in order to achieve a fast secure and fair consensus. The Gossip about Gossip is a well-known computer science term defined as calling any random node and telling the node everything you know. The Gossip protocol in HashGraph refers to attaching a small additional amount of information the transaction/Gossip payload. The Hashgraph they use the information to build or update as more information is gossiped by each node.
Hashgraph also uses the Virtual voting to make it extremely easy to know what nodes would vote. They use the data as an input to a 3—year voting algorithm and know which transaction has reached consensus quickly. According to Mance Harmon, CEO of Swirlds, Hashgraph when compared to others in the market, it offers both performance and security at the highest level.
Benefits of Hashgraph
Prevent Sybil attacks
A Sybil attack refers to an attempt to compromise a network by creating large numbers of spurious identities. Sybil attacks are a concern for public DLTs. Hashgraph offers protection against Sybil attacks by deploying a number of various voted weighting models such as weighted votes by a node’s stake or ability to perform some work.
Security
Using the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) Hashgraph guarantees all participants reach consensus and they are never wrong. In addition, BFT are of different levels depending on the assumptions made about the transmission of messages and the network.
Fast
According to the official website, Hashgraph is fast and has a low consensus latency. This allows a new range of use cases and applications.
Conclusion
Hashgrapgh offers one of the best platforms for distributed databases. It can be used in an identity since it is a radically different approach to distributed consensus or for IOT because it leverages distributed consensus algorithms.