An Introduction to the Blockchain Technology for the Beginners
These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. One of the latest triumphs in this direction may be the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The brand new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. In fact, it had been initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. However now, it finds its application in a number of other things as well.
Sounding this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to know what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, that is copied umpteen number of times across a computer network. Now, imagine the computer network is designed so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. This is a broad summary of the Blockchain. Blockchain holds information as a shared database. Moreover, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. The records in it possess genuine public attribute and can be verified very easily. As there’s no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users haven’t any means to manipulate with and corrupt the info. The Blockchain distributed database is simultaneously hosted by millions of computers, making the data easy to get at to almost anyone across the virtual web.
To make the concept or the technology clearer, it is a good idea to go over the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the e-mail, the conventional method of sharing documents is to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will take their sweet time to proceed through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this approach, one must wait till receiving the return copy to see the changes designed to the document. This happens because the sender is locked out from making corrections till the recipient is done with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases do not allow two owners access exactly the same record as well. This is one way banks maintain balances of their clients or account-holders.
In contrast to the set practice, Google docs allow both parties to access the same document as well. Moreover, it also allows to view an individual version of the document to both of these simultaneously. Just like a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant once the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of this concept. However, you should point out here that the Blockchain is not meant to share documents. Rather, it really is just an analogy, which will help to have clear-cut idea about this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information over the network, that are identical. By virtue of the feature:
The data or information cannot be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be no single failure point either.
The info is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the overall procedure.
The data stored inside it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As mentioned earlier, Blockchain technology includes a very high application in the wonderful world of finance and banking. In line with the World Bank, a lot more than US$ 430 billion money transfers were sent through it only in 2015. Thus, Blockchain developers have significant demand available in the market.
The Blockchain eliminates the payoff of the middlemen in such monetary transactions. Bitcoin Era Review was the invention of the GUI (Graphical User Interface), which facilitated the common man to access computers in form of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most typical GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.
