Blockchain Technology

 History of Blockchain:

First and foremost, let us go through some facts and stats that the web has to offer us regarding the emergence of Blockchain.

·       The first decentralized blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Thus, blockchain got its first real-world application with the launch of Bitcoin in January 2009.

·       Moreover, Cryptographer David Chaum is said to be the first one to propose a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups. Later in the late 1990s, Cypherpunk Nick Szabo proposed using a blockchain how to secure a digital payments system, known as bit gold (which was never implemented).

·       Blockchain as technology was first outlined in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, two mathematicians who wanted to implement a system where document time stamps could not be interfered with.

 

What is Blockchain?

 

The standard definition of blockchain reads that A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and oftentimes public, digital ledger consisting of records called blocks that are used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. This allows the participants to verify and audit transactions independently and relatively inexpensively. A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server.

Thus,

Blockchain is a type of shared database that differs from a traditional database in the way how it stores information; blockchains store data in blocks which are then linked together via cryptography. When new data arrives, it is entered into a new block and when the block is filled with data, it is chained on top of the previous block, causing the data to be chained together in chronological order.

 

Why? and What do you need to know about Blockchain?

1.      Blockchain technology is broader than finance. It can be applied to any multi-step transaction that requires traceability and visibility. Supply chain is a notable use case where blockchain can be leveraged for the management and contracting as well as audit of the origin of products. It could also be leveraged for votation platforms, securities, titles, and document management - amongst many other uses. As the digital and physical worlds converge, the practical applications of Blockchain will only grow.

2.      Blockchain technology doesn't have to exist publicly. It can also exist privately - where nodes are simply points in a private network and the Blockchain acts same as a distributed ledger. Financial institutions specifically are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate regulatory compliance thus many of them are now moving ahead with Blockchain implementations. Secure solutions like Blockchain can be a crucial building block to reduce compliance costs.

3.      The exponential and disruptive growth of Blockchain will come from the convergence of public and private Blockchains to an ecosystem where firms, businesses, customers, and suppliers can collaborate in a secure, auditable, and virtual way.

4.      Various types of information can be stored on a blockchain, but the most common use by far is as a ledger for transactions. Decentralized blockchains are immutable, which means imported data is immutable. For Bitcoin, this means that transactions are permanently recorded and can be viewed by everyone.



Blockchain and Cryptocurrency:

Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrency – for instance the Bitcoin currency, but Bitcoin is not the only version of the blockchain distributed ledger system on the market. There are several other cryptocurrencies that have their own blockchain and distributed ledger architectures. Meanwhile, the decentralization of the technology has also led to some schism or division in the Bitcoin network, creating forks of the ledger where some miners use a blockchain with one set of rules, and others use a blockchain with another set of rules.

The key thing to understand here is that Bitcoin merely uses blockchain to transparently record a ledger of payments, but blockchain can, in theory, be used to immutably record any number of data points. As mentioned above in the reasons, this could be in the form of transactions, votes in an election, product inventories, state identifications, deeds to homes, and much more. 

 

Blockchain from an Engineer’s Point of View:

Perhaps most centrally, the blockchain is an information technology. But the blockchain technology is also many other things. The blockchain as decentralization is a revolutionary new computing paradigm. The blockchain is the embedded economic layer the Web never had. The blockchain is the coordination mechanism, the line-item attribution, credit, proof, and compensation rewards tracking scheme to encourage participation by any intelligent agent in any collaboration. The blockchain “is a decentralized trust network.” The blockchain is Hayek’s multiplicity of private complementary currencies for which there could be as many currencies as Twitter handles and blogs, all fully useful and accepted in their own hyperlocal contexts. The blockchain is a cloud venue for transnational organizations. The blockchain is a means of offering personalized decentralized governance services, sponsoring literacy, and facilitating economic development. The blockchain is a tool that could prove the existence and exact contents of any document or other digital asset at a particular time. The blockchain is the integration and automation of human/ machine interaction and the machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) payment network for the machine economy. The blockchain and cryptocurrency is a payment mechanism and accounting system enabler for M2M communication. The blockchain is a worldwide decentralized public ledger for the registration, acknowledgment, and transfer of all assets and societal interactions, a society’s public records bank, an organizing mechanism to facilitate large-scale human progress in previously unimagined ways. The blockchain is the technology and the system that could enable the global-scale coordination of seven billion intelligent agents. The blockchain is a consensus model at scale, and possibly the mechanism we have been waiting for that could help to usher in an era of friendly machine intelligence.

To Conclude-Blockchain as one of history’s prominent technological inventions:

Speculatively looking towards the longer run, there might be a large possibility space of intelligence that includes humans, enhanced humans, different forms of human/ machine hybrids, digital mind file uploads, and different forms of artificial intelligence like simulated brains and advanced machine learning algorithms. The blockchain as an information technology might be able to ease the future transition into a world with multiple kinds of machine, human, and hybrid intelligence. These intelligences would likely not be operating in isolation but would be connected to communications networks. To achieve their goals, digital intelligences will want to conduct certain transactions over the network, many of which could be managed by blockchain and other consensus mechanisms.


Credits and References: Prathmesh Brahmankar(TY Metallurgy, Team Tech Tuesday)

1. A book by Melanie Swan titled Blockchain: Blueprint For a New Economy.

2. Investopedia articles for Facts, Figures and Definitions. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp

3.    https://www.euromoney.com/learning/blockchain-explained/how-transactions-get-into-the-blockchain

4.   Euromoney.com


NOTE:-

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