Genesis, Blockchain Version

“In the beginning Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin and the Blockchain. The internet was a trustless network and information covered the face of technology, while efforts from Satoshi swept over the face of innovation. Then Satoshi said, “let there be Blockchain,” and then there was Blockchain. Satoshi saw that Blockchain was good; and Satoshi separated Blockchain from traditional databases.”

A genesis block is considered the first block in a blockchain. It is almost always hardcoded into the application that utilizes its blockchain. It does not reference a previous block since there wouldn’t be a preceding block. A genesis block should not be confused with a generation transaction which is considered the first transaction a miner creates in a block. Blocks hold transactions that store unalterable data related to the network. Blocks are then hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree. A block, plus all of the blocks preceding and following it, form a blockchain. Each block replicates all of the data contained in the previous block. A blockchain is a list of records that is expanding all of the time. It all begins with the Genesis block.

“When Satoshi created Blockchain, he made it in the likeness of Distributed Ledger Technology. Permissioned and permission-less he created them, and he developed them and named them “Blockchain” when they were created.”

The Genesis block began with some key configurations. In 2009, GPU mining was not readily implemented, although Satoshi may have thought about it, GPU mining did not truly begin until around 2011. This implies that Satoshi was mining on a CPU leading us to question how many CPUs Satoshi may have used to mine the first block. As we continue to trace the early beginnings, it appears that Satoshi’s client source code did not have a special routine or a command line switch to mine a Genesis block. In fact, the Genesis block was hard-coded, meaning that Satoshi may have generated it using another application to keep the source code a mystery. However, Satoshi wasn’t too keen on modularity appearing as though it may have been unlikely for Satoshi to have operated in a separate application. Nevertheless, Bitcoin did not have any value at the time, making it for little to no competition between miners.

Often, miners calculate the processing time to estimate how long it would take to solve for a genesis block. Typically, a PC CPU in 2009 did not have double-hashing or restoring optimization. In order for Satoshi to solve the Genesis block, his calculations may have included approximately 20-23 bits nonce per second making it quite a strong possibility that Satoshi may have found the Genesis block after six days, resting on the seventh day.

The Day Satoshi Rested

There exists a possible explanation that Satoshi had 500 computers while mining the Genesis block, however, the number of initial zero bits in the first block is only 32. This questions why Satoshi would not use the additional computing power or it may have been that Satoshi was just mining with hardware different from a PC. Although various theories exist surrounding the early beginnings, Satoshi certainly foresaw the advantage of Blockchain much sooner than everybody else.

“…By the seventh day Satoshi had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested his miner from all his work and Satoshi blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it his miner rested [or ceased] from all the work of creating that he had done.”