Microsoft recently announced a new programming language that it’s calling Majorana. If you’ve been following the news on this, you might be wondering how Majorana differs from Lepton, Microsoft’s previous programming language that was only made public in early 2016. Here are the main distinctions between Lepton and Majorana so you can understand the differences between these two languages better.
Types of Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are digital forms of money that use encryption to secure transactions and regulate coin production, making them especially secure and difficult to counterfeit. They’re valuable because they enable financial transactions across borders without incurring any interference from central authorities such as banks or governments while being decentralized and resulting in low transaction fees. Some cryptocurrencies that you might want to investigate include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, and Ripple… Microsoft has also recently introduced a new cryptocurrency called Microsoft Majorana. You can find out more about it here.
Mining Bitcoins
Bitcoin is a virtual currency created in 2009 that can be converted to real money. A process called mining converts highly complex numbers into more manageable, smaller pieces of data for computers and humans to work with without input from another user; this process helps validate transactions by ensuring all bitcoin goes to the person associated with a given set of newly created coins, and isn’t replicated in multiple places or spent twice. Microsoft Majorana could make our online lives safer and easier, too. Imagine if your laptop automatically verified your identity before signing you on to your bank account. Or if you only needed one password for your phone, social media profiles, bank accounts – and even future biometric data. And imagine never having to share passwords again with friends or family members who want access to their own content on your devices
Difficulty Factor of Mining Bitcoin
If we talk about mining bitcoin, this could be a major headache for those who are mining it for the first time. In order to mine bitcoin, you need to have hardware that is efficient and has high hashing power to compete with other miners.
While in the case of litecoin, all you need is a CPU or a graphic card from Nvidia or AMD. You can find cheaper alternatives such as Lepton. These cost around $200 per unit and do not require any assembling whatsoever. They can also be bought by people from many different countries which makes them ideal for those who want to get started but cannot afford expensive equipment like ASICs.
Timestamping on Blockchains
If you’ve been following the crypto world for a while, you may have heard about some recent developments in timestamping on blockchains. In particular, an anonymous programmer recently proposed a new blockchain technology called Microsoft Majorana which would timestamp transactions with each other rather than with blocks, and every transaction is timestamped with two previous transactions and appended with arbitrary meta-data to form proof of existence.
Private Keys VS Public Key Cryptography
Public key cryptography (also known as asymmetric encryption) is a system that provides two keys, one public and one private. Data encrypted with a private key can only be decrypted by its paired public key, while data encrypted with a public key can be decrypted by its paired private key and vice versa. In contrast, in symmetric encryption (also known as symmetric-key or single-key) data encrypted with a single key must be decrypted with the same single key to produce usable information.
Proof-of-Work Vs Proof-of-Stake
Some cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, use Proof-of-Work in order to secure their blockchain. Others use Proof-of-Stake or a different consensus mechanism altogether. Lepton relies on Proof-of-Stake to validate transactions and secure the blockchain by choosing representative nodes from a list of online nodes based on their stake in that cryptocurrency’s network. The node is chosen based on how many coins they own and what percentage of the total Lepton supply they represent.
