chore(docs): add medium2019 (#647)

packages/apps/docs/src/pages/docs/blogchain/2019/all-about-chainweb-101-and-faqs-2019-02-01.mdx

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+---
+title: Kadena’s Public Blockchain 101 and FAQs
+description:
+  Learn more about Kadena’s public, proof-of-work blockchain protocol designed
+  for scalability and security.
+menu: Kadena’s Public Blockchain 101 and FAQs
+label: Kadena’s Public Blockchain 101 and FAQs
+publishDate: 2019-02-01
+author: Vivienne Chen
+layout: blog
+---
+
+![](/assets/blog/1_7spjR-a_pYCJmQLt2qEamg.webp)
+
+## Kadena’s Public Blockchain: 101 and FAQs
+
+### Learn more about Kadena’s public, proof-of-work blockchain protocol designed for scalability and security.
+
+## What is Kadena’s public blockchain?
+
+[Kadena](http://kadena.io)’s public blockchain platform, originally conceived by
+Kadena founder Will Martino, is a braided, parallelized **proof-of-work
+consensus mechanism** that improves throughput and scalability while maintaining
+the security and integrity found in Bitcoin. In short, Kadena is a blockchain
+that is faster, more secure, and more scalable.
+
+### What is a consensus mechanism?
+
+A consensus mechanism is how a computer network comes to agreement about what
+information is true or false. In a centralized system, such as a bank, a
+designated authority (the bank) is trusted to determine that information stays
+true. In a decentralized system, like a blockchain, a consensus mechanism
+becomes a set of foundational rules for how a network agrees upon and verifies
+valid transactions, preventing double-spending and fraud.
+
+### What does Proof of Work mean? How is it different from “Proof of \_\_\_\_”?
+
+Proof of Work (PoW) refers to the consensus mechanism that was first realized
+with Bitcoin’s launch in 2008. It differs from other consensus mechanisms (e.g.
+“proof of stake”/PoS) in that it uses computational mining and cryptographic
+hashing to elect a leader who will add the next piece of information to the
+ledger. In proof of work, transactions are bundled into “blocks” and confirmed
+to the ledger through an energy consuming, probabilistic process that requires
+miners (those who own computers capable of) solving a cryptographic hash. Miners
+are rewarded newly created virtual coins (and sometimes network transactions
+fees) for their work.
+
+### How does Kadena work?
+
+Kadena’s public blockchain works by taking the foundation of a Bitcoin mining
+chain and parallelizing this work across multiple chains — each referencing
+their peer’s headers — in specific configurations (see below “Is Kadena a DAG?”)
+that allow for efficiency and better throughput.
+
+_For an in-depth explanation of the technical foundations of Kadena, start by
+reviewing the [whitepaper](https://kadena.io/docs/chainweb-v15.pdf)._
+
+_For some recent (Oct 2018) follow-ups on security and addressing assumptions
+and misunderstandings about Kadena’s public blockchain, check out our
+[Medium](https://medium.com/kadena-io/security-kadena-chainweb-blockchain-97e5bdf88c29)
+post._
+
+## Frequently Asked Tech Questions
+
+### Why does Kadena’s public blockchain use proof of work?
+
+Kadena uses proof of work for a few key reasons:
+
+1.  Evidence: PoW is the only “battle-tested” consensus protocol primitive.
+
+2.  Economic incentive alignment: PoW creates an economic incentive for the
+    majority of the hashpower to validate and honestly support the entire
+    network. It is an open research question if a non-PoW approach can
+    reasonably achieve the same.
+
+3.  Regulation: In the eyes of certain financial regulators, proof of work
+    miners are
+    [not considered money transmitters](https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-regulations/administrative-rulings/application-fincens-regulations-virtual-0),
+    making a probabilistic PoW mining system safer from a US regulatory
+    perspective than a system with more “finality” like PoS.
+
+### How does Kadena ensure security?
+
+Braiding chains together was first proposed for security purposes. By having
+multiple mined blocks at the same height each referencing each other’s past, the
+protocol decreases the duration of time where an attacker could get “lucky”
+against an honest network. Think of an attacker needing to flip 6 coins and get
+all heads (mine 6 blocks) vs needing to flip 12 coins and get all heads (mine 6
+blocks from two related chains). The latter is harder. This same intuition
+applies to Kadena’s multi-chain configuration.
+
+### How does Kadena scale?
+
+Kadena’s public blockchain scales by providing a mechanism to asynchronously
+produce many blocks on different peer chains all at the same height, with each
+block requiring a fraction of the hash power of the total network. This
+configuration drastically increases the number of transactions per second over
+the total network.
+
+### What are the main limitations to scaling ?
+
+Kadena can scale to meet the needs of its users, but the scaling isn’t
+automatic. Initially, the main limitation to scaling is adoption. The public
+blockchain will \*\*hard-fork to higher throughput configurations, but each
+hard-fork needs to be motivated by alleviating congestion as the upgrade to a
+larger network requires miners to procure more replicating servers. To upgrade
+from a 50-chain to 100-chain network, the 50-chain network needs to be congested
+and demonstrating continued adoption. Long-term, bandwidth becomes the main
+resource that is constrained.
+
+### Is Kadena a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph)?
+
+All blockchains are technically DAGs. Kadena, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, is not
+an arbitrary DAG, as compared to a structure like that of Hashgraph, for
+example. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Kadena’s DAG structure is fixed and
+multi-channel. By fixing the DAG structure, Kadena limits the worst-case (e.g.
+real-world) performance. Arbitrary DAGs have known performance problems under
+adoption — they initially have many more execution channels, because
+transactions are largely unrelated, but as adoption picks up and killer apps
+appear on the platform the overall performance decreases because transactions
+become increasingly related.
+
+### Is Kadena like Lightning?
+
+Kadena’s public blockchain is a base-layer/layer-one architecture. Lightning
+network is a layer-two solution and can run on top of Kadena as an even greater
+force multiplier than it does on existing Proof of Work blockchains. Pact,
+Kadena’s smart contract language, has baked-in support for integrations of
+layer-2 scaling solutions (e.g. lightning, state channels and side-chains),
+ready to experiment with at testnet.
+
+### What are side-chains? Does Kadena use them?
+
+Sides chains are separate blockchains (with their own consensus ledger) that run
+outside of a “main chain.” While this may sound similar to Kadena’s public
+blockchain, our chains are NOT side-chains because (a) there is no “main” chain
+as all chains are peers and (b) every chain is advanced under the same consensus
+umbrella as its peers.
+
+### What is sharding? Is Kadena “sharding”?
+
+“Sharding” most commonly refers to splitting the network up into distinct
+partitions called shards, each falling under its own consensus region. Kadena’s
+partitioning differs from other methods of sharding because Kadena’s public
+blockchain maintains a global consensus umbrella.
+
+Under sharding in Proof of Stake, each shard has its own ledger and subset of
+transactions that are independent from transactions that have been allocated to
+different shards within the same network. In PoS sharding, nodes and validators
+are only required to process transactions that are local to their respective
+shards. This allows for greater throughput as each node is only required to
+validate a small subset of transactions from the total that have been sent
+throughout the network. While funds can be moved between shards, the is no
+enforceable protocol-level requirement that the validators of shards overlap.
+
+Forcing validators to validate every shard is untenable. Kadena differs from PoS
+sharding by using the economics of PoW. In Kadena’s public blockchain, it’s
+economically dominant for miners to mine/replicate/validate each chain (“shard”)
+in the Chainweb network.
+
+### What are tokens used for on Kadena’s network?
+
+Tokens are used to pay for computing power, known on other platforms as “gas,”
+on the blockchain.
+
+### \*\*How does Kadena deal with congestion?
+
+Transaction costs will rise as the number of transactions rise on one chain. You
+can set up an account on a less congested chain, where transaction costs are
+cheaper, and move your tokens through a simple burn-receipt using on-chain SPV.
+Miners have economic incentive to cooperate with reconfiguring the network to a
+larger size when the entire network starts to become congested.
+
+### How would you move tokens between different Kadena chains?
+
+Tokens are moved across chains using a Simple Payment Verification (SPV) smart
+contract.
+
+### Have more questions about Kadena?
+
+Join our [Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/bsUcWmX) community chat.
+
+You can also find us on: [Twitter](http://twitter.com/kadena_io) |
+[Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kadena-llc/) |
+[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/pg/Kadena-194125367992879)|
+[Github](https://github.com/kadena-io)| [Reddit](http://reddit.com/r/kadena) |

packages/apps/docs/src/pages/docs/blogchain/2019/announcement-kadena-public-blockchain-testnet-live-2019-03-26.mdx

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+---
+title: Announcement Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE
+description:
+  Kadena is excited to announce that Chainweb–Kadena’s public proof-of-work
+  blockchain–is now LIVE in testnet!
+menu: Announcement Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE
+label: Announcement Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE
+publishDate: 2019-03-26
+author: Vivienne Chen
+layout: blog
+---
+
+![](/assets/blog/1_G4ggggsptLXt7z0Rry7UJA.webp)
+
+## Announcement: Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE
+
+Kadena is excited to announce that Chainweb–Kadena’s public proof-of-work
+blockchain–is now LIVE in testnet!
+
+_Update: 03/26/19 3:34PM ET: Kadena’s Chainweb testnet is now live in South
+America (Brazil), bringing us up to 4 global regions._
+
+**What is Chainweb Testnet?** This version features the core innovation of
+Kadena’s Chainweb: multiple, braided proof-of-work chains progressing in
+parallel, each referencing its peer chains, synced over four global regions
+(Asia, US, EU, LA) to represent a truly distributed, secure, scalable
+blockchain.
+
+Chainweb Testnet v0 includes:
+
+- **10 chains** — This is the most innovative and important feature of Chainweb.
+  We are testing the security and scalability of braiding multiple Bitcoin-like
+  (proof-of-work) chains.
+
+- **Multiple regions** — In order to truly test the speeds of a global network,
+  Kadena’s Chainweb Testnet v0 will test global latencies by syncing across
+  servers in Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.
+
+- **Fully open source** — Download and test the network yourself
+  ([Github](https://github.com/kadena-io/chainweb-node)). _If you are setting up
+  Chainweb and have questions, head over to #chainweb on
+  [our Discord](http://discord.io/kadena)._
+
+- **Process Pact transactions** — Kadena’s open-source
+  [Pact](http://github.com/kadena-io/pact) language is easy to learn, and is
+  purpose-built for blockchain, capturing simple transactions and more complex
+  business workflows; Chainweb v0 intends to support Pact transactions.
+
+**Why is this testnet important?** Kadena is a fundamental believer in the
+legacy and integrity of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocol. Chainweb is designed
+to give blockchain scalability AND security through its multi-chain
+configuration; we believe it is the first of its kind. For more about Chainweb,
+check out our
+[101/FAQ](https://medium.com/kadena-io/all-about-chainweb-101-and-faqs-6bd88c325b45)
+and read the [whitepaper](https://kadena.io/docs/chainweb-v15.pdf).
+
+**How can I participate in testnet?** Beginning with v1 and v2, our testnet will
+become open to the public to participate in the network. v0 is private but open
+source on [Github](https://github.com/kadena-io/chainweb-node), so you can look
+at the code, compile, and run your own network and tests. *Find something
+interesting? [*Let us know](http://discord.io/kadena) in the #chainweb channel).
+**Sign up for testnet participation updates via our
+[newsletter](http://kadena.io/newsletter).**
+
+**What else is next?** Look forward to our next versions (with weekly updates
+all summer) for the following additional upgrades:
+
+- Scaling up (via hard fork) to 20, 50, 100 chains
+
+- Mining client
+
+- Wallets
+
+- More dashboards
+
+- KIPs\*, including: coin contract
+
+\*KIPs (**Kadena Improvement Process**) are modeled after Ethereum and
+[Bitcoin’s improvement proposals](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Improvement_Proposals).
+We’ll soon publicize the methods by which our community can introduce and
+execute improvements to our protocol.
+
+**Interested in mining Chainweb? **Our next test version aims to have a mining
+client, sign up [here](https://upscri.be/26f493/) to get on our Mining Waitlist.