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What is Blockchain?


What is Blockchain:


Haven't we all come across this term repeatedly? Maybe a colleague in the office or a friend at the tea stall just kept bloating the fact that he made $1 above his investment in Bitcoins (BTC).Well he made that money because of the technology that supports these tokens.


So "What is Blockchain?" after all!


Is Blockchain software?

Is Blockchain a MLM chain?

Is Blockchain some new kind of technology?


So what is it?


"Blockchain" is a digital diary. Just like the one that your parents keep to maintain accounts with your local kiranawalla. The same diary that your parents maintain and a copy of it is stored by the shopkeeper. Both of them maintain a list of products purchased independently. When you ran down the store to buy a pack of bread the shopkeeper made an entry and then your mom made one back at home.

Sometime both of you signed against each others entries to ensure that both of you agreed upon the entry made in the ledger.And this relationship is maintained month on month. Every month fresh entries are made and at the end of the month the family clears the bill and starts a fresh ledger.

Definition

"A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed and incorruptible digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers."

To simplify, "Blockchain" in simple terms is a:

Distributed network of computers (nodes),where each node contains a chain-of-blocks,where each block contains a ledger with a list of transactions, where each transaction is incorruptible and is linked to the previous transactions for the resource it is representing.

One could say blcokchain is a powerful concept that has the potential to change the way the world functions.

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency are not the same, but are used together because of the the Bitcoin that made them popular.

Blockchain is a concept and cryptocurrencies are the applications using that concept to solve real problems.

I read it somewhere which correctly summarizes the relationship

“Cryptocurrency is to blockchain, what email is to internet”.
And there are many other applications to blockchains over cryptocurrencies or tokens. Some of the popular ones are

  • Identity 
  • Notary 
  • Digital 
  • Assets 
  • Smart Contracts 
  • Digital Voting 
  • Distributed Storage 

So to summarize the basics to "What is Blockchain", it is a technology that is going to change the world. We will come across many different use cases. Some might drop drastically and some might slyly get us to adopt them in ways that we might not realize.


Will get into technical details on my next post.
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Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

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