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 is the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. In fact, it was initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. But now, it finds its application in a number of other things as well.
Coming across this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to know what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, which 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 on its own. This is a broad overview of the Blockchain. Blockchain holds information as a shared database. Moreover, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its own 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 have no means to manipulate with and corrupt the data. The Blockchain distributed database is simultaneously hosted by millions of computers, making the data easily accessible to almost anyone across the virtual web.
To make the concept or the technology clearer, it is a good idea to discuss the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the eMail, the conventional way 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 go through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this approach, one needs to wait till receiving the return copy to see the changes made 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 the same record at the same time. This is how banks maintain balances of their clients or account-holders.
In contrast to the set practice, Google docs allow both the parties to access the same document at the same time. Moreover, it also allows to view a single version of the document to both of them simultaneously. Just like a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant when the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in a way, an extension of this concept. However, it is important to point out here that the Blockchain is not meant to share documents. Rather, it 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 across the network, that are identical. By virtue of this feature:
- The data or information cannot be controlled by any single, particular entity.
- There can’t be no single failure point either.
- The data is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the overall procedure.
- The data stored in it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As stated earlier, Blockchain technology has a very high application in the world of finance and banking. According to the World Bank, more than US$ 430 billion money transfers were sent through it only in 2015. Thus, Blockchain developers have significant demand in the market.
The Blockchain eliminates the payoff of the middlemen in such monetary transactions. It 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 common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users make use of the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.