Blockchain – a Handy Guide

Everyone has heard about BITCOIN, where it came from is a concept that is called blockchain. Today I will present to you a basic dummy guide to blockchain and its basic understanding.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is record-keeping technology behind much of the development now days. As you remember banks, libraries, enterprises and institutions have maintained and kept ledgers and those ledgers are what you can call a blockchain to be in layman language but way to secure, decentralized and publicly accessible.

How it works?

Next, question arises how this technology works or maintained. The answer is in the name given to it blockchain, though not in literal sense. The “block” here stores the information that is valuable like a transaction that to with a unique signature in hashed format. Hashes are cryptographic codes created algorithmically. To blockchain to function the following are the necessary steps:

1. A Transaction must occur
2. That transaction must be verified
3. The information of that transaction must be stored in a block
4. The block must be given a hash

Once the block is created and added to the chain or queue, it becomes publicly available for anyone to view with information like the blocks it is related to and the time it was created.

What is mining?

Mining is a process by which users or miners produce new blocks by solving proof of work problems for which they are rewarded.

Difference between blockchain and bitcoin?

The basic frame to blockchain was first presented in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, two researchers who wanted to create a non-forgeable and tamper-proof system to store timestamps but the first real world application was not before 2009 with bitcoin. The motive behind the blockchain technology is to allow digital information to be stored and shared without being able to edit it. Hence blockchain is a technology on which an application bitcoin is built.

Applications:

• Blockchain in finance: Easily guessable decentralized cryptocurrencies, or coins which are basically created based on this technology.
• Asset management: Trade execution process
• Insurance: Claim processing
• Payments
• Smart property
• IOT
• Contracts
• Healthcare
• Music
• Governance
• Identity
• Logistics tracking
• Voting
• Food safety
• Immutable data backup
• Regulations and compliances
• Video games
• Supply chain

Conclusions and Take-away:

A blockchain is a ledger which is ever growing and decentralized. This ledger can be referred as a list of hashed blocks of information interconnected which have timestamps and are immutable after it is been recorded. Though being this secure it is publicly available. It is field of in-depth research and learning and highly recommendable for the aspiring and curious technology enthusiasts. Other application can be checked here.

This technology is disruptive in itself and we previously covered one of the easiest available platforms to exchange and  trade cryptocurrencies you can check here. If you like this blog do not forget to share and like it while you can leave your comments, thoughts and suggestions below. Our basic goal is to spread learning while keeping the growth in mind.