Not All About Cryptocurrencies
When we talk about blockchain people often think about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dodgecoin, Ripple, Litecoin, Cardano, and many more other digital currencies. The thought of this word is quite involved around money, money which is around the network with different kinds of programming languages and programming algorithms. With little to know that blockchain is actually a type of database which collects information that is stored on a computer system and structured in a way that the data is easier to explore with target information. As you know digital currency such as bitcoin is not a core blockchain itself in fact it is a use case of blockchain technology. Therefore, bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing since blockchain provides record and storage of data in the system. Blockchain technology is a gigantic warehouse that is capable of keeping enormous amounts of data that can be accessed, filtered, manipulated at the same time with a mass number of active users in that or any moment at a light speed. Well to be specific depends on your network speed at that particular moment. Blockchain is like a housing data on servers which process by high performance computers power to maintain storage capacity for simultaneous users access at the same time. The server is built of at least hundreds or thousands of high performance computers made in a way that anything virtual can be shared, recorded, tracked, and traded.
Blockchain Application Movement System
As mentioned above bitcoin is built on the foundation of blockchain that serves as a bitcoin shared ledger an application that runs on a blockchain system. Blockchain records all bitcoin transactions, as the shared ledger and this shared ledger is also used to record all kinds of transactions as well as tracking the movement of any asset whether they are tangible, intangible , or digital. Blockchain stores transaction data in blocks that are linked together to form a chain the more transactions the more blocks and chain creates. Each block record confirmation time and its transaction sequence that are to be logged into the blockchain discrete network by the government rules that agreed on by the network participants. Every block contains a digital fingerprint, its own unique identifier that is called hash, a hash timestamped recent valid transactions batches, and the previous block hash links all blocks together to prevent any block from being altered or any new block to be inserted between two existing blocks. Thus, each subsequent block would strengthen the verification of the previous block by holding the entire blocks in the same way.
Characteristic Keys in Blockchain
The blockchain method makes it tamper-evident lending to the keys attribute of immutability. Participants in both transactions systems have shared records available to all parties in the blockchain network.
Blockchain network has the characteristics key as follow:
Consensus: For a transaction to be valid, all participants must agree on its validity.
Provenance: Participants know where the asset came from and how its ownership has changed over time.
Immutability: No participant can tamper with a transaction after it has been recorded to the ledger. If a transaction is in error, a new transaction must be used to reverse the error, and both transactions are then visible.
Finality: A single, shared ledger provides one place to go to determine the ownership of an asset or the completion of a transaction.
Imagine that a company owns a server composed of 10,000 computers with a database holding all of its client’s account information. This company has a warehouse containing all of these computers under one roof and has full control of each of these computers and all the information contained within them.
The Five Principle of Blockchain
Think of blockchain as an operating system that runs its own blockchain applications. Decentralized applications that can be distributed to different sectors like the governments, industries, academia, agriculture, and many more with the five basic principles of blockchain.
They involve smart contracts to exclude the middleman by using a computerized protocol for verifying, enforcing on legal contracts.
- Distributed database/ Public ledger: Every party in the blockchain network system has full access to the entire database or public ledger record. None of the parties own or manipulate anything on the system. All records of transactions are directly verified without any centralized controller.
- Peer-to-Peer transmission: Every contact between two parties are meant to be directly to each other with no extra party involved. All involved parties have the capacity to store and forward data to all other parties on the network.
- Transparency with Pseudonymity: Anyone with access to the network system can view the transaction that is involved with them by using a unique identifier characters key address for their party. They can remain anonymous or provide proof of their identity to each other.
- Irreversibility of Records: All records can not be changed once deployed into the database as all transactions are linked and updated to the previous block that formed the chain. Records are permanently in chronological order and available to all others on the network.
- Computational Logic: The algorithm is programmed in a way that all transactions between nodes are auto triggered to link it to the computational logic as a public ledger digital form.
To conclude, as blockchain contains transaction data, it is not a replacement for database, messaging technology, transaction processing, or business processes. Instead, the blockchain contains verified proof of transactions when blockchain essentially serves as a database for recording transactions, its benefits extend far beyond those of a traditional database. Most notably, it removes the possibility of data tampering by a malicious actor such as database administrator. Blockchain applications have gone far beyond cryptocurrencies; it is a system that creates transparency, fairness, time efficiency, cost efficiency to all technology aspects that we have.