Imagine you’re digging for gold. You have your shovel, a lot of patience and the hope of striking it rich. Cryptocurrency mining is somewhat similar, but instead of using physical tools to dig in the ground, you’re using a computer to solve complex mathematical problems.
What is Cryptocurrency Mining?
Mining is the process through which new cryptocurrency coins are created and transactions are verified and added to a blockchain. The most well-known example of this process is Bitcoin mining. Just as gold miners invest time and resources to extract precious metals, cryptocurrency miners invest computing power and electricity to discover new coins.
How Does Cryptocurrency Mining Work?
The Basics
Cryptocurrency mining typically involves solving cryptographic puzzles. These puzzles are complex mathematical equations that require significant computational power to solve. When a miner successfully solves a puzzle, they can add a block of transactions to the blockchain and are rewarded with new coins. This process is known as “proof of work” (PoW). Once it can be proven that a miner has done the work, the tokens are effectively “mined.”
Transaction Verification: When someone sends a cryptocurrency transaction, it needs to be verified to ensure that the sender has enough funds and is authorized to send them.
Block Creation: Verified transactions are grouped together into a block.
Puzzle Solving: Miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle associated with the block. This puzzle is hard to solve but easy to verify once solved.
Block Addition: The first miner to solve the puzzle gets to add the block to the blockchain and is rewarded with new coins.
Reward Distribution: The miner receives a reward, typically in the form of newly minted cryptocurrency and transaction fees.
Why is Mining Important?
Mining plays a crucial role in maintaining and securing the blockchain network. It ensures that all transactions are legitimate and prevents double-spending. By requiring miners to solve complex puzzles, the network remains decentralized and resistant to attacks. This decentralized nature is a core principle of cryptocurrencies, promoting security and trust without relying on a central authority.
Different Methods of Cryptocurrency Mining
CPU Mining: This was the original method of mining Bitcoin, using a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). However, it’s no longer effective due to the high difficulty of mining puzzles.
GPU Mining: Graphics processing units (GPUs) offer more computational power than CPUs and are more effective for mining.
ASIC Mining: Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are specialized devices built specifically for mining cryptocurrencies. They are the most powerful and efficient miners but are also expensive.
Cloud Mining: This allows individuals to rent mining hardware from a provider. It’s a way to mine cryptocurrencies without having to buy and maintain mining equipment.
Energy Conversion: Turning Electricity into Digital Gold
Mining is essentially the conversion of energy into digital value. Miners use electricity to power their hardware, which performs the complex calculations needed to mine cryptocurrencies. This process consumes a significant amount of energy, leading to debates about the environmental impact of mining. However, the energy used also serves to secure the network and verify transactions, making it an integral part of the blockchain ecosystem.
Mining on GalaChain: Rewarding Founder’s Nodes
In the Gala ecosystem, the equivalent to mining is the operation of Founder’s Nodes. These nodes provide the computational power necessary to maintain the decentralized network and are rewarded with $GALA tokens. Founder’s Node operators play a crucial role in supporting GalaChain’s infrastructure, similar to how miners support the Bitcoin network.
How Founder’s Nodes Work
Computational Contribution: Node operators contribute their computing power to support the network.
Reward Mechanism: In return for their contribution, operators are rewarded with $GALA tokens.
Decentralization: This system helps maintain the decentralized nature of the Gala ecosystem, ensuring that no single entity has control over the network.
Interested in running a Gala Founder’s Node for daily $GALA rewards? LEARN MORE
The decentralized token swapping protocol of the GalaChain ecosystem continues to make great strides and regular updates to its interface. Today we’re pleased to announce a handful of updates surrounding account inventory and p2p transactions beyond the standard creation and acceptance of swaps.
If you haven’t started using GalaSwap yet, it’s now easier than ever to swap any of your GalaChain tokens for $GALA. With a fee of only 1 $GALA to create or accept a swap, this is the cheapest way to swap tokens anywhere on the decentralized web. All it takes is a free Gala account and a little bit of $GALA.
Sending Tokens
In addition to accepting and creating swaps, you can now send tokens directly to other GalaChain wallets through the GalaSwap interface. This is especially useful for the abundance of Project Tokens that have been created by the community– Until this update, there has been no simple way to transfer these tokens, with the exception of distribution by the project owner and in the completion of swaps.
Now all users have the option to send any fungible token listed on the platform to any GalaChain wallet. The ability to transfer NFTs will come with a future update.
This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including through the Send tab or the Token list view, by choosing the 3-dot menu on the right as pictured below.
Additionally, you can now easily generate a QR code to receive tokens to your GalaChain wallet, using the updated navigation menu on the left side of the page.
View Your NFT Inventory
You can also now browse your GalaChain NFT Inventory right there on GalaSwap. Soon we’ll implement the ability to trade and transfer NFTs directly from GalaSwap, but for now you can only view them.
We’re extremely excited to bring the community this new and improved GalaSwap interface, and we want to remind you that this is only the beginning. We have a lot more awesomeness in store! Thanks for being part of this community.
Have you ever been listening to someone who works deep in an obscure niche of tech talk only to realize that you only understood two out of the nine words in that last sentence? It’s ok. Most of us have been there.
Welcome back to DevSpeak, where we dispel confusion around dense tech jargon. Often people who are fully capable of understanding some big topics in technology are pushed away, simply because they don’t know the lexicon. No more! DevSpeak is here to clarify!
Today we’re diving into three terms you’ll hear pretty often across all sectors… front end, back end and full stack development!
Front End Development: The Dining Area
Imagine you’re going out to eat at a restaurant. The dining area is designed just for you down to every detail. It’s comfy and well-lit with a relaxing ambiance. The waitstaff is friendly and ready to answer your questions. It’s a polished user experience. This is similar to what front end development is all about.
Front end developers work on everything you see and interact with on a website or app. They design the layout, choose the colors, and ensure that the buttons and links work as expected. They test and make sure everything is up to the standards of the customer.
Just like how a restaurant’s dining area is crafted to create a pleasant atmosphere and make your dining experience smooth, front end developers use languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create an engaging and user-friendly interface.
Back End Development: The Kitchen and Staff
Now, think about what happens behind the scenes in the restaurant’s kitchen. The chefs prepare the food, the kitchen staff manages the inventory, and the dishwashers clean up. There is an entire different workplace with its own systems and procedures going on back there just one wall away from you!
This is what back end development is like. Back end developers work on the server, database, and application logic that you don’t see directly. They ensure that when you place an order (like submitting a form or searching for information), it gets processed correctly and the right information is delivered back to you. This is back end development. Even though it’s all working to serve your need as the user, none of it is designed for your eyes.
Full Stack Development: The Restaurant Manager
This brings us to full stack. Let’s think about the restaurant manager. This person understands both the dining experience and the kitchen operations – and more importantly, how they work together. They ensure that everything runs smoothly. They troubleshoot problems in the front of the house where customers are all the way to the back of the house where food is prepared. They handle staff, manage inventory, and resolve any issues that arise. They are often the ones who have the best context to deal with issues that affect the entire pipeline from prep table to dining room table!
This is similar to what a full stack developer does. Full stack developers are skilled in both front end and back end development. They manage the entire web development process, ensuring that the user interface and the server-side functions (work seamlessly together. Just like a restaurant manager coordinates every aspect of the restaurant, a full stack developer oversees both the visual and functional aspects of a website or app.
Now You Have the Full Stack
That’s all for this DevSpeak. These aren’t huge concepts, but they’re important pieces to understand the language developers use. Hopefully these short summaries give you a little more context and confidence to take part in the greater conversations out there about technology! We don’t all start from the same knowledge level, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t all have valuable input!
It wasn’t very long ago that we released the GalaChain SDK. Honestly, it wasn’t all that long ago that we were just getting started with big dreams and a long road ahead.
Gala grew fast… and so did GalaChain. This quaint little neighborhood is getting more bustling by the day so we thought it’d be a great time to make a quick little reference guide for everyone.
Sites that are not owned and/or controlled by Gala are indicated with *
We’ll try our best to keep this updated regularly for now. If we’ve missed something, let us know on Discord!
The world of tech is full of buzzwords and jargon that seems to change faster than many can keep up with. Never fear. DevSpeak is here! Today, we’re learning all about virtual machines!
Imagine you have a powerful computer at home, capable of handling many tasks simultaneously. Now, picture this computer being able to run not just one, but several different “mini-computers” inside it. Each of these mini-computers can run its own software, operate independently, and even have its own operating system. Sounds like science fiction? It’s actually a reality, thanks to something called a Virtual Machine (VM). If you’ve ever wondered how a single computer can do so many things at once, or how developers test software in different environments without needing multiple physical computers, you’re about to find out!
Virtual Machine, Defined
A virtual machine is basically a computer within a computer. Imagine your computer is a big, fancy hotel with several rooms. Each room can be rented out separately and has its own furniture, decor, and amenities. The hotel is your physical computer, and each room represents a virtual machine.
Just like rooms within a hotel can be used for different purposes, each virtual machine can run different types of software and operate under different operating systems (like Windows, Linux, or macOS) and perform different tasks. For example, a software developer might use one VM to test a new app on Windows, while another VM runs a different app on Linux.
Virtual Machines are incredibly useful in various situations:
Testing and Development: Developers often need to test their applications in different environments to ensure compatibility. Instead of buying and setting up multiple computers, they use VMs to simulate those environments.
Simulation of Different Environments: If you need to use software that only runs on a specific operating system, you can create a VM that runs that OS without affecting your main computer.
Security: By isolating potentially risky software or browsing activities within a VM, you can protect your main operating system from malware and other threats.
Better Development Through VMs
Let’s walk back to your hypothetical hotel. Regardless of how many rooms it has, those rooms are what they are and can’t be changed without sinking some remodeling money into it. Not the case with virtual machines. You can easily adjust your environments to do what you need them to when you need them to do it.
There are lots of ways that a VM could be leveraged for more effective use of digital tools, beyond just making yourself a fresh computer environment.
Cloud Computing: Many cloud services use VMs to provide resources on-demand. If you run a website, your traffic demands aren’t exactly consistent all the time. Cloud providers can use VMs to handle high traffic by creating more VMs to accommodate more visitors. When traffic decreases, they can easily reduce the number of VMs to optimize cost and resources.
Resource Efficiency: Virtual Machines maximize your use of physical hardware. Instead of having one physical server for each task, you can run multiple VMs on a single server. This not only saves space but also reduces energy consumption and hardware costs.
Disaster Recovery: VMs play a crucial role in backup and disaster recovery plans. If a VM crashes or gets corrupted, you can quickly restore it from a backup without affecting the entire system. This is akin to having those multiple hotel rooms in the above example. Say one room floods… you’ve got other rooms to move guests to that provide the exact same quality night’s stay.
Sandboxing: Developers and security professionals often use VMs as “sandboxes” where they can experiment with new software or analyze potential threats without risking their main operating system. This also can be referred to as “staging”. You copy your main environment to the stage or sandbox, then implement your changes there first. That way, if you bork your whole site or app, the part you need to stay working stays working undisturbed.
You’re Virtually an Expert Now!
In essence, Virtual Machines transform a single physical computer into a versatile, multi-functional tool.. They provide immense flexibility, efficiency and safety in computing. Whether it’s for running multiple operating systems, testing new software, or managing resources efficiently in the cloud, VMs are a cornerstone of modern technology.
Next time you use a cloud service or hear about tech-savvy developers working on different systems, you’ll be a little wiser about what this all means.
We’ll be back with another DevSpeak before too long… there’s so much jargon out there and so little time! Have a topic you want us to cover? Let us know on Discord!
