When it comes to complicated things like blockchain, people try to seek an easier explanation for it. And unfortunately, there aren’t many available on the web. Well, if you’re reading this article & you know nothing about blockchain, this article is a great place to start.
So by general definition, blockchain is a decentralized network of nodes.
Well, it wasn’t that useful, right?
However understanding blockchain far easier than you might think. The name itself clearly states that this blockchain is nothing but a chain of blocks, where chain is nothing but network & block is nothing but data.
A blockchain stores information regarding transactions, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, etc. If you are overwhelmed by this complex nature of blockchain, it’s completely fine because they are meant to be that way, they are meant to be complex. Thus it is not easy to tamper with the information stored in the blocks. Why is that? We'll see soon...
In a blockchain, new blocks keep on adding but previous blocks remain unaffected. Each block contains some data like the digital signatures of the transaction owners, hash of the previous block, hash of itself. The new block is always added to the end of the blockhain & it contains a 'hash' of the previous block.
A hash is nothing but a unique id of each block. A hash is determined by the contents of each block so in case if the data in the block is modified, the hash will change accordingly. But block next to it will contain the hash of the unmodified block. In this way, anyone can easily find out if the block is modified or not. this makes it difficult for attackers to tamper with data of the blockchains.
Apart from hash, there are several other factors which contribute blockchain in order to make it more secure. As previously mentioned, blockchain is completely distributed among several computers which could range from few hundreds or less to millions. More the blockchain is distributed, more the secure it becomes. Those computers are known as nodes.
Every node who wants to join the blockchain network needs to go through a verification phase. Once the node is verified, it becomes a part of the blockchain network & receives a copy of it. Every node in the blockchain network have a copy of the entire blockchain network. If a new transaction takes place then, a new block is added to the blockchain through a node. Then this new block is verified and validated through other nodes. After validation, the blockchain copy of all other nodes updates accordingly so that every node has has the same copy of blockchain at all times.
This is the reason why blockchain is so popular around these days. Blockchains provide facility to make transactions without the involvement of the third party in the process. It is the backbone of the Bitcoin.
Although Blockchain has several well-known applications, the most popular ones are Bitcoin & Ethereum. Bitcoin is used as a cash system for conducting transactions while Ethereum is a software which is used to create distributed applications based on Blockchain technology.
If you wanna know more about Ethereum, I've explained it very well in one of my blog posts, don't forget to check out:
Aditional sources for more info:
That's all folks, for now! I'll keep this blog post updated with new information constantly as I discover more amazing facts about it, until then why not follow me so that you can stay updated when I post new articles. Also if you can spare your few minutes & share it with your friends, it will be massively appreciated.
Top comments (1)
A distributed ledger period.