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Dale, O. (2017, November 07). Beginner's Guide to Ethereum Casper Hardfork: What You Need to Know. Blockonomi, Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://blockonomi.com/ethereum-casper/

Oliver Dale’s perspective on Ethereum switching over to the Casper protocol is one with a bit more numbers and speculating in mind for what might actually take place in the transition. In his article, he states, "As opposed to the PoW consensus protocol, the PoS protocol achieves consensus through stakers—sometimes referred to as minters, too—who “stake” their coins by locking them down in specialized wallets." This does a few great things for the network. For one, it ties up the amount of available Ethereum in circulation, and locks it down to where it can't be touched or used for transactions. This makes each of the coins more scarce and hence, more valuable. The second thing that this does is that it puts up some collateral for the network to fall back on. Say that the "stakers" started supporting another variant of the blockchain. Doing it this way allows for a punishment (loss of coinage) to be handed down for not supporting the correct variant.

Another thing that Dale states is, "Ether miners currently consume approximately 2.5 TWh of electricity per year ." Now, this amount of power is equivalent to the amount that small countries use in a year. One can see how this might be a large cost. Not only financially in having to pay for the power, but also ecologically. These power plants have to output large amounts of electricity in order to keep up with the demand that mining is causing. Most of these power plants are not running on zero emissions such as nuclear or solar, but they are running on nonrenewable resources such as natural gas or coal. Switching over to Casper would allow for a lot less of an environmental impact and also reduce the strain that our power grids are experiencing because of this.

DeLisle, B. (2018, January 06). Ethereum Suprasses $1,000 On Strong Market and Launch of Casper Testnet. Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://cryptoslate.com/ethereum-suprasses-1000-strong-crypto-market-launch-casper-test-net/

DeLisle’s article focuses more on the financial side of crypto. Delisle states, "At the start of 2017, Bitcoin enjoyed around 80% of the entire cryptocurrency market cap. Today, Bitcoin’s dominance by market cap hovers around 35%." The reasoning behind all of this is that a lot of alternative cryptocurriencies are gaining steam on their own. it used to be that when someone said the word cryptocurrency, everyones minds would think to bitcoin. Now, a lot of those same people think of other currencies or blockchain technology as a whole. Bitcoin has still risen in price, increasing by a magnitude of hundreds of percents just in 2017 alone. The traction that these currencies are enjoying is due to discovery as well. More people being exposed to the market gives a greater chance for someone to invest in them.

Delisle also goes into how Ethereum's Casper will affect all of this, stating, "The recent price improvements follow Ethereum’s test launch for Casper, which will transition Ethereum from a proof of work (PoW) model to a proof of stake (PoS) algorithm." A cornerstone for cryptocurrency is decentralization, not relying on one large institution to take care of all that's happening in the world. Ethereum switching would cause ether to become more decentralized than it currently is. A lot of the mining power that is being contributed to the network constitutes in gigantic data farms with tens of thousands of computers running the bulk of the workload that is required. Switching over to PoS would move the network depending on miners to process transactions, to stakers to support the network. It will be exciting to see what happens with Casper as the technology develops and enters implementation to the network.

Mcintosh, R. (2018, January 03). Lightning Network For Ethereum? ETH Surges as 'Casper' Approaches | Finance Magnates, Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/lightning-network-ethereum-eth-surges-casper-approaches/

Mcintosh states simply that the amount of users that have been using Ethereum has really skyrocketed. "Ethereum also reported that the 'number of accounts created per day passed 100,000' as well as an increase of nodes (computers that uphold a blockchain’s network) despite 'rising system requirements'. " This is a big milestone for the community as more users in the network provides for a larger network as a whole, therefore providing a more stable and secure network for everyone to use.

More users also comes with a larger network requirement as well as more transactions are being requested by the network each and every day. This introduces more miners into the equation. While most of those miners are in large data centers, there are also smaller miners who get into mining because of the increased profitability. Most of the newer miners, once they get a little bit of experience, will start to branch out and start mining other, smaller coins. The large players in the field can't really do this as easily since it would take a lot to move all of the infrastructure over to a new algorithem. Hence, smaller coins are also getting supported a great deal as well. "However, mining equations have gotten to be so complex that the only way to mine Bitcoin profitably is to have a roomful of expensive equipment – mom-and-pop miners have been priced out of the game." Mcintosh says.

Rosic, A. (2017, December 28). What is Ethereum Casper Protocol? Crash Course. Blockgeeks, Blockgeeks Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://blockgeeks.com/guides/ethereum-casper/

Rosic provides an incredibly in depth article about the Casper protocol. He explains, "As you can see, ~65% of the hashrate is divided among five mining pools alone! Theoretically speaking, these big mining pools can simply team up with each other and launch a 51% on the bitcoin network. So, to solve these problems, Ethereum looked to Proof of Stake as a solution." This is just the start of his guide. A 51% is an idea where if a group has enough mining power and are looking to do something nefarious to the network, they can hijack the network and start mining on their own set of blocks. Effectively splitting up the original coin into 2 seperate forks. Now, sometimes these forks can be a good thing. Bitcoin Cash, which established a higher block size so more transactions could be fit in faster is a fork of bitcoin, but this hijacking of the network can also lead to the destruction of a coin value wise, as they could generate false transactions to be verified by them.

"However, things look a little different when you bring in POS. If you are a validator, then you can simply put your money in both the red chain and blue chain without any fear of repercussion at all." says Rosic. Called "Nothing at Stake" this problem introduces one of the solutions that Casper is looking to solve. The way that Casper has come up with is that if someone were to act maliciously towards the network, then they would get reprimanded and the stake getting subsequently deleted proportionate to the stake thrown at the malicious block.

Rosic, A. (2017, August 01). What is Monero? The Ultimate Beginners Guide. Blockgeeks, Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://blockgeeks.com/guides/monero/

In this article, Rosic talks about Monero. Monero is a currency where all of the transactions are completely private. As opposed to bitcoin where each transaction can be traced back to it's origin on a public blockchain. Monero goes through quite a few steps to do this. "One of the more confusing aspects of Monero is its multiple keys. In bitcoin, ethereum, etc. you just have one public key and one private key. However, in a system like Monero, it is not quite as simple as that." What Monero does is for each individual transaction it generates a set of private keys for the individual wallet to access and retrieve/send funds to/from, then the network generates a set of public keys to be accessed only by the private keys for the actual entry into the blockchain. So it's still a public blockchain, but there isn't any way for a wallet address to be connected to a transaction without knowing the one-time private and public keys. This, as one might think, can add lots of data worth of encryption to transactions. As such, Monero's transactions are much larger than say, Bitcoin's for example.

References

Dale, O. (2017, November 07). Beginner's Guide to Ethereum Casper Hardfork: What You Need to Know. Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://blockonomi.com/ethereum-casper/

McCallum, T. (2018, January 04). First impressions of Ethereum's Casper - Proof of Stake (PoS). Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://medium.com/cybermiles/first-impressions-of-ethereums-casper-proof-of-stake-pos-5ce752e4edd9

Mcintosh, R. (2018, January 03). Lightning Network For Ethereum? ETH Surges as 'Casper' Approaches | Finance Magnates. Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/lightning-network-ethereum-eth-surges-casper-approaches/

Rosic, A. (2017, December 28). What is Ethereum Casper Protocol? Crash Course. Blockgeeks, Blockgeeks Retrieved January 30, 2018, from https://blockgeeks.com/guides/ethereum-casper/