BLOCKCHAIN FOR NEWBIES
The Tech Blockchain has been in our faces for awhile now but not many understand the what or why.
In my previous post, I did a simplified introduction to Blockchain and Crypto currency.
You got to check it out if you haven’t cause I’ll be kicking off from there.
You see, our lives comprises of daily activities and events. However, the best of it is summed up in records and data which takes different forms.
Photographs are taken as proof to an event. Certificates are issued as evidence to an event participation.
What more?
My footsteps can be recorded by GPS. What I’m doing in this article is a record right? My cash transactions can be recorded too.
so you see, virtually nothing we do goes into thin air. No action of any sort is done in the vacuum, they are all accounted for one way or the other.
“Unsolicited preamble” you can call this, but I hope you see the clearer picture soon.
I have established that our events are being stored. We have a database for all we do.
It's no different with the Blockchain.
WHAT THEN IS THIS BLOCKCHAIN?
At most basic level, Blockchain is literally a chain of blocks. when we say words blocks and Chain, we mean digital information (blocks) placed in a public database (the chain).
There is a block and a chain. Let’s call blocks (data, records), the linking of blocks overtime forms the chain hence the word, blockchain.
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So Blockchain is just like a database. It’s a record, ledger of transactions, strings of records placed in structures called blocks. Each block has the capacity of records it can take and once full, creates another block. When these individual records are created overtime, they form a chain and ultimately Blockchain.
I can put this differently for emphasis but it means one and same.
Blockchain is simply a method of storing data. The data is stored in blocks which are linked together to the previous blocks and when this process is repeated, we call it Blockchain.
Data in the block usually consists of transactions. A block also can contain hundreds of transactions which can be financial, educational, basically any kind of transaction! This block again contains a cryptographic hash that is a unique code which differentiates it from another block.
If so much emphasis is made on this tech, it is not out of place to ask why?
Amongst many reasons, I will highlight only two for now:
We know the blockchain is not just any conventional database which can crash or even be hacked and this is because it is an immutable and distributed digital ledger!
Immutable (unchangeable, meaning a transaction or file recorded cannot be changed) distributed digital ledger (digital record of transactions or data stored in multiple places on a computer network) with many use cases beyond cryptocurrencies.
Immutable and distributed are two fundamental blockchain properties.
The immutability of the ledger means you can always trust it to be accurate. Being distributed protects the blockchain from network attacks.
Do you see the clearer picture now?
Here's where I stop
Hope you learned something new!
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See you again!
