BlockChain Application Development
What is BlockChain?
If someone has been following investing, banking, or cryptocurrency over the years, they may be familiar with the term block chain, which is record-keeping technology behind bitcoin. However, before understanding the term block chain we should understand the term “bitcoin”, it is related to real money but in digital form. We are not going to talk about term bitcoin, but to create an understanding of blockchain it is the primary thing you should know about.
In trying to learn more about blockchain, people might be encountered a definition such as: “blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and public ledger.”
Relax everyone there is good news for you that blockchain is actually easier to understand than that definition sounds. It might not look that different from the term you are familiar with, say Wikipedia. As in Wikipedia entries are not the product of a single publisher, information cannot handle by a single person. However, blocks on the blockchain are made up of digital pieces of information. Basically, they have three parts:
It holds information about transactions like time, date, and dollar amount of your most recent purchase.
It stores information about who is participating in transactions; it would record your name along with detail of online shopping application.
Each block store information that distinguishes them from other blocks. It’s like you and I have names distinguish us from another, every block contains a unique code called a “hash” which allows us to tell it apart from every other block.
With this example of the block each block store a single purchase from online shopping applications; the reality is a little different. The blockchain can actually store up to 1 MB of data in single. That is all depending on the size of the transactions.
How does blockchain technology work?
Now, when a block stores new data it is added to the blockchain. As blockchain name suggests, it consists of multiple blocks strung together. In order to add a block in a particular block chain, four things must happen:
There must be an occurrence of a transaction. Like previous example of impulsive online purchase.
The transaction must be verified. After purchase, your transaction must be verified. With another public record of information,
After that when your transaction verified as accurate, it gets the green light. All information of transaction must be stored in a block. This single transaction likely to join the thousands of others like it.
That must be given a code with it like a “hash”. To make it unique the blocks add a hash of most recent block where this information added. After hashed, block can be added to block chain.
With the addition of a new block to blockchain, it becomes publicly available for anyone to view- even you. You have look at Bitcoin’s blockchain, then you will be able to see that you have access to transaction data, along with information.
Is Blockchain private?
By connecting their computers to the blockchain network, the user can view the contents of the blockchain. By doing so, their computer receives a copy of the blockchain that is automatically updated whenever new block is added to the blockchain, like a Facebook news feed that gives a live update whenever new status is posted.
Each user in the blockchain has its own copy of the blockchain which means that there are thousands, of copies of the same blockchain. Although each copy is identical, spreading this information across the network of computers makes the information more complex or difficult to manipulate. There is no single, definitive information of any events that can be manipulated, with blockchain. A script kiddie or a hacker would need to manipulate every copy of blockchain on the network.
Is Blockchain Secure?
This technology accounts for the issues of security and trust in several ways. Firstly, new blocks are always saved linearly and chronologically. That means they are always added at the “end” of the blockchain. If you have a look at Bitcoin’s blockchain, you’ll see that each block has a position on the chain, called a “height.”
Just because each block contains its own hash along with the hash of the block before it, it is very difficult to alter the content of the block, after a new block has been added to the blockchain. These hash codes are generated with a math function that turns digital information into a string of numbers and letters. If that recorded information is edited in any way, the code changes as well. Here comes to security. If a hacker attempts to change your transaction information from online purchase so that you actually have to pay for your purchase twice. As they change the dollar amount of your transaction, the block’s unique identity will change. The next block in blockchain with still contains the old hash and the hacker would need to update that hash to cover their tracks.
If a hacker edits a single block in a blockchain, they would need to change every single block after it on the blockchain. In simple words, once a block is added to a blockchain it becomes very difficult to make any change and impossible to delete.
To address security or issue of trust, blockchain networks have implemented tests for computers that want to join and add blocks to the chain. So the user needs to prove themselves before participating in blockchain network. Most common example employed by bitcoin is called “proof of work”. In this system, computers must prove that they have done work by solving a complex computational math problem.
The aim of blockchain is to allow digital information to be recorded and distributed, but not edited. How the real-world application of blockchain technology actually works.
Blockchain technology was first named in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, who wanted to implement a system where document timestamps could not be tampered with. Almost 20 years later, with the launch of Bitcoin in January 2009, that blockchain had its first real-world application.
The Bitcoin application protocol is built on the blockchain. Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto referred to it as “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”
In the case of real money, the use of currency is regulated and verified by a central authority, usually a government or bank. But in the case of bitcoin, it is not controlled by anyone. Its transactions are verified by a network of computers.
In this even though a user receives payment in bitcoin to their public key, they will not be able to withdraw them with the private key. This public key is a shorthand version of their private key, created through a complex mathematical algorithm. For this reason it is impossible to reverse this process and generate private key from a public key. That is why blockchain is considered the most confidential.