In our day-to-day business, we interact with other service providers both online and offline. We buy
clothes in online stores; we import goods from different parts of the world. We also use remote financial
services. Everything is available at our fingertips. Everything except trust for the other party. How do we
confirm the authenticity of clothes we bought at an online store? Or how do we know that our financial
data is stored securely? -Blockchain
Mainstream adoption
In the blockchain, education is now a hot topic. The top consulting firms, the likes of Accenture and PWC no
actively invite experts in blockchain and metaverse to train their staff. It has become part of the curriculum
in leading higher institutions of learning.
Due to its advantages, many industries now attempt to use the blockchain to get the benefits. It
developers are now working to enhance the technology and solve the issues that could affect large-scale
adoption. In the light of these, we talk about the basics of blockchain that are indispensable for
professionals.
What is blockchain?
It is a distributed digital ledger. This ledger is unique because it is safe, transparent, and
decentralized. It operates like the ledger that banks use to keep track of customer transactions. The
difference is that for the latter, only the bank can see the transactions.
In the blockchain, there is no central authority. The ledger runs on multiple computers and it doesn’t rely on
on a single person to run.
How The Blockchain Works
Every professional should have a good idea of how blockchain works.
We refer to this record as a ledger. This is because it records the value that changes hands. Each block in
a blockchain has a limit to the number of records that can be included in it. For instance, in Bitcoin, the
limit is 1500. So, what happens when the block becomes full? At this point, we have to add it to the
network in a process called Mining. Since Ethereum and Bitcoin are POW networks, we have to prove that
we mined it. This brings us to something we call a Hash.
Properties of Blockchain
There are some properties of the blockchain that make it a great choice for many industries:
- Decentralized
One of the most important properties of the blockchain is decentralization. This means a transfer of
control from a single entity to a distributed network.
2. Distributed Ledger
Distributed Ledger is the second critical feature that makes it so powerful and effective. The
word distributed ledger is composed of two terms — Distributed and Ledger. Ledger, as the name
suggests, is the record of all transactions, and distributed means that the ledger is shared with every
person on the same network. The distributed ledger contains the record of each and every transaction
that took place over the network.
3. Immutability
It is another critical component of Blockchain. Immutability means something that can’t be
changed or altered. Once the data has been recorded inside a Blockchain, it becomes nearly impossible
to change it, thus making it tamper-proof and immutable.
4. Consensus
It is a group of blocks that are used to store information about transactions. We can consider
each block as a page in the ledger. Where there are transaction entries on the page. A new block of
transactions is added after a fixed duration. The block is then moved to each node and the node performs
the verification. After this is complete, the node adds the block to the blockchain. The non-Techy process of
verification and validation of blocks is known as consensus.
In summary, we have blocks of data and we get the hash of the data to prove its validity. A combination of
blocks of data forms a chain and there is a process of validation of blocks. The mechanism of validation
adopted varies for different blockchains.
