UPSC GK Questions 2026

A blockchain is a ledger whose identical copies are held by many nodes, with new entries grouped into blocks, each linked to the previous one by its hash, and added only when the network agrees by a consensus rule.

The transactions in a block are hashed in pairs, the resulting hashes are hashed in pairs again, and the process repeats until a single hash remains; that hash is the Merkle root, named after Ralph Merkle, and it is stored in the block header.

Ethereum was described by Vitalik Buterin in a white paper of 2013 and the network went live in 2015.

In proof of work, the computers called miners compete to find a nonce that makes the hash of the proposed block meet a difficulty target.

The bitcoin protocol fixes the total supply at twenty-one million coins. New coins enter circulation only as the reward paid to whoever adds a block, and that reward is halved every two hundred and ten thousand blocks, which works out to roughly every four years, so issuance falls geometrically towards…

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hash function, part of the Secure Hash Algorithm family, which turns an input of any length into a fixed output of two hundred and fifty-six bits.

The paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was circulated in 2008 under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym whose owner has never been established, and it set out how a chain of hashed blocks and proof of work could prevent double spending without any trusted third party.

Like the Rajya Sabha, a Legislative Council is a continuing body: it is not subject to dissolution, each member holds office for six years, and one-third of the members retire every second year, so the house is renewed in stages.

Article 170 provides that the Legislative Assembly of a state shall consist of not more than five hundred and not fewer than sixty members chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies, with lower minimums permitted by law for small states such as Goa, Sikkim and Mizoram.

The jurisdiction of the Kerala High Court, which sits at Kochi, extends over the state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep, whose capital is Kavaratti.

When the old High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad was bifurcated with effect from the first of January 2019, the Telangana High Court continued at Hyderabad and a separate High Court for Andhra Pradesh began functioning at Amaravati.

Under the Nagpur Pact of 1953, agreed when the Vidarbha region joined the new bilingual Bombay State and later Maharashtra, Nagpur was made the second capital of the state and at least one session of the legislature each year, the winter session, is held there.

The principal seat of the Madhya Pradesh High Court is at Jabalpur, with benches at Gwalior and Indore, while the capital of the state is Bhopal.

Chandigarh is the capital of both Punjab and Haryana and is itself a union territory, and the common High Court for the two states and for the union territory sits there.

It empowers Parliament by law to abolish an existing Legislative Council or to create one where none exists, but only if the Legislative Assembly of the state first passes a resolution supported by a majority of the total membership of the House and by not less than two-thirds of the…

West Bengal had a Legislative Council in the years after independence but abolished it in 1969, and its legislature has been unicameral since then, consisting of the Governor and the Legislative Assembly alone.

It states plainly that there shall be a High Court for each state, and the following articles complete the scheme: Article 215 makes every High Court a court of record, Article 216 leaves the number of judges to the President, Article 217 provides for their appointment, and Article 231 allows…

The Kerala High Court sits at Kochi, in the Ernakulam area, although the capital of the state is Thiruvananthapuram.

It was established in July 1862 under the Indian High Courts Act of 1861, which allowed the Crown to replace the old supreme courts and sadar courts of the Presidency towns with High Courts.

The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act of 2018 applies where a warrant of arrest has been issued for a scheduled offence involving a value of one hundred crore rupees or more and the person has left India to avoid prosecution, or refuses to return to face it.