Hashgraph Vs Blockchain- Top 7 Differences That You Must Know
You know that blockchain technology is continuously evolving at a rapid pace. Blockchains impact is powerful and is impacting business, finance, education, governance, healthcare even in sports, music. There are other similar distributed ledger technologies(DLT) to replace blockchain technology by providing a better solution. Hashgraph is one of them. It solves the distributed ledger differently and claims to be safer, fast, and fair. So here, we will compare two technologies, Hashgraph and Blockchain and which one is better. Before we proceed to the comparison, let us see each one in detail.
What Is Hashgraph?
Hashgraph is a form of distributed consensus which offers another approach to distributed ledger technology. It is a peer-to-peer platform that expels the requirement for any intermediary to complete transactions. It offers a secure, fair and fast network, and its is implemented using Java and Lisp programming languages. This means it supports solidity. One of the best advantages of Hashgraph is its speed. It can handle thousands of transactions per second and is able to verify more than one million signatures per second.
What Is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a popular form of distributed ledger technology. This technology is used by every cryptocurrency ie., bitcoin. Here, peers communicate between themselves to form a peer-to-peer network. Bitcoin uses the basic form of blockchain technology but is not so efficient. Hence we have seen an ascent in another type of blockchain technology. Ethereum is successful with a huge active community. It is a second generation blockchain which means it supports dApps and smart contracts.
In technical terms, blockchain is a series of blocks or records and supports append-only structure. Despite that, the database is immutable means that data that once written, cannot be deleted or altered by anyone else. Hence blockchain is a perfect solution for the issue where data immutability is necessary. Best use cases of blockchain are, supply chain management, voting and finance industry.
Hashgraph vs Blockchain-
1. Programming Language-
Blockchain makes use of languages- Java, C++, Solidity, Ruby and Python. For hashgraph, Lisp and Java languages are used.
2. Approach-
Hashgraph makes use of directed acyclic graph to store and access information. Blockchains are an open-source technology. It stores data in blocks in a linear way. The append approach works seamlessly but it is not always a way for blockchain solutions out there. In both DLTs, each node as a copy of the ledger that makes it decentralized.
3. Consensus Mechanism –
Hashgraph is based on asynchronous Byzantine-Fault Tolerance (aBFT), which provides an improved model of DLT by catering solutions to established cryptocurrency platforms. It uses Gossip about Gossip and virtual voting as a form of gaining network consensus.
Blockchain does not depend on a single approach to consensus. Contingent on cryptography and currency, Blockchain uses numerous consensus algorithms, like Proof of Work, Proof-of-Elapsed Time, Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Proof of Stake, and so on.
4. Speed-
Speed of blockchain varies according to the solution(platform, cryptocurrency, etc.). But it is slower than Hashgraphs. Hashgraph can reach a speed of 5,00,000 transactions per second. Blockchain solutions like ethereum, bitcoin are slow and can do 100 to 10,000 transactions per second. And the Hashgraph Gossip method is a reason behind its speed. With this, less information needs to be propagated across a network.
5. Security-
Blockchain uses a different approach where they use cryptographic methods to ensure security. As we already know, blockchain is a series of blocks or records and that blocks are tamper-proof and no malicious actor can change the integrity of data.
To secure a network from malicious actor, Hashgraph uses an approach- Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance(aBFT).
