What is Blockchain Technology? A Complete Beginner’s Guide

You might have come across the term ‘blockchain’ while browsing the internet, reading magazines or newspapers, and dismissed it as an argot, a buzzword, or even a technical lingo. But actually, blockchain Technology is an innovation that will have a broad-reaching significance that will not just transmute the Digital services but many other businesses and sectors.

A blockchain is a circulated database, meaning that the storage devices for the memory are not all linked to a parent processor.  It maintains an increasing list of organized records, called blocks. Each block has a timestamp and a web link to a previous block.

Cryptography promises that users can only edit out the parts of the blockchain that they “possess” by owning the private keys essential to write the file. It also ensures that everyone’s copy of the circulated blockchain is retained in synch.

Imagine a digital media record: each entry is a block. It has a timestamp, the time period when the register was created. And by design, that entry cannot be altered retroactively, because we want the record of the edition, publication, etc. to be clear and unrestricted. Only the Editor, who has one private key, and the consumer, who has the other, can access the information, and the information is only distributed when one of those users shares his or her private key with a third party — say a Media House or Journalist. This describes a blockchain for that Digital Media database.

Blockchains are secure databases by a pattern.  The concept was fabricated in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, and then followed up for the first time in 2009 as a function of the digital bitcoin currency; the blockchain serves as the primary ledger for all bitcoin transactions. By implementing a blockchain system, bitcoin was the sole digital currency to resolve the dual spending issue (unlike different physical coins or tokens, electronic data can be copied and spent twice) without the utilization of an authoritative body or main server.

The protection is figured into a blockchain system through the shared time-stamping host and peer-to-peer network, and the result is a database that is handled autonomously in an artificial way.  This makes blockchains invincible for organizing events — like digital media records, identity management, and proving provenance. It is, importantly, offering the potential of public disintermediation of trade and digital processing.

How does Blockchain actually function?

Some people have addressed blockchain as the “internet of value” which we consider is a good metaphor.

On the internet, anyone can upload information, and then it can be accessed by others anywhere in the world. A blockchain permits anyone to share value anywhere in the world where the blockchain data can be accessed. But you should have a private, cryptographically formed key to access only the blocks you “possess.”

By providing a private key that you own to someone else, you effectively transmit the value of whatever is stored in that category of the blockchain.

So, to use the bitcoin model, keys are used to access addresses, which comprise units of currency that have technological value. This makes the role of recording the transfer, which is traditionally carried out by different tech sectors.

It also makes a second role, constituting trust and identity, since no one can edit a blockchain without having the corresponding keys. Edits unverified by those keys are eliminated.  Of course, the keys — like a solid metalized currency — could theoretically be stolen, but a few lines of computer coding can normally be kept protected at a very small expense.

This means that the major functions carried out by corporates, cross-checking identities to stop fraud and then recording legitimate transmission can be carried out by blockchain technology more swiftly and with accuracy.

What is the importance of Blockchain Technology?

Nowadays we all share information through a complex networking platform: the internet. But when it comes to transmitting valuable information – we are usually forced to fall back on old-fashioned, centralized traditional establishments like Print Media. Even digital publishing methods that have jumped into existence since the formation of the internet – Facebook being the most obvious example – generally require integration with a publication unit or online magazine to become useful.

Blockchain technology unfolds the intriguing probability of segregating this “middle man”. It accomplishes this by making three important roles – recording proceedings, building identity, and maintaining contracts – traditionally executed by the media and services sector.

This has huge implications because, worldwide, the media and advertising market is one of the largest sectors of the industry by market capitalization. Substituting even a fraction of this with a blockchain scheme would result in a huge disruption of the media services industry, but also huge growth inefficiencies.

But it is the third role, maintaining contracts, that prolong its usefulness outside the traditional services sector. Apart from a unit of value (like a bitcoin), blockchain technology can be implemented to store any kind of digital information, including computer code.

That fraction of code could be programmed to execute whenever particular parties put their keys, thereby forming a contract.  The same code could be learned from extraneous data feeds — stock values, weather reports, trending news, or anything that can be analyzed by a computer, really — to make contracts that are automatically filed when certain terms are met.

These are called “smart contracts,” and the possibilities for their usage are practically unlimited.

Furthermore, it might be put to use in the ordinance of intellectual property, controlling how many times a user can enter, distribute, or practice duplicity on something. It could be used to create hoax-proof polling systems, censorship-immune information circulation, and much more.

The remarkable hack is that the potential uses for this technology are wide and effective, and we are hopeful that the number of industries will simultaneously increase and find ways to put it to good use in the imminent digital revolution we are about to witness.