These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. coincapcentral of the latest triumphs in this direction may be the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. In fact, it was initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. However now, it finds its application in several other things as well.
Coming across this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to learn what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, which is copied umpteen amount of times across a computer network. Now, imagine the computer network was created so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet on its own. This is a broad overview of the Blockchain. Blockchain holds information as a shared database. Moreover, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its own benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. The records inside it possess genuine public attribute and can be verified very easily. As there is no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users have no methods to manipulate with and corrupt the info. The Blockchain distributed database is simultaneously hosted by an incredible number of computers, making the data easily accessible to almost anyone across the virtual web.
To help make the concept or the technology clearer, this is a good idea to go over the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the e-mail, the conventional way of sharing documents is to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will take their sweet time to go through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this approach, one needs to wait till receiving the return copy to start to see the changes made to the document. This happens because the sender is locked from making corrections till the recipient is performed with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases don’t allow two owners access the same record simultaneously. This is how banks maintain balances of their clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both parties to access the same document concurrently. Moreover, it also allows to see a single version of the document to both of these simultaneously. Just like a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant when the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of this concept. However, you should explain here that the Blockchain is not designed to share documents. Rather, it is just an analogy, which will help to have clear-cut idea about this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information across the network, that are identical. By virtue of the feature:
The data or information can’t be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be no failure point either.
The data is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the entire procedure.
The data stored in it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As mentioned earlier, Blockchain technology has a very high application in the world of finance and banking. Based on the World Bank, a lot more than US$ 430 billion money transfers were sent through it only in 2015. Thus, Blockchain developers have significant demand on the market.
The Blockchain eliminates the payoff of the middlemen in such monetary transactions. It was the invention of the GUI (Graphical User Interface), which facilitated the common man to access computers in type of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users make use of the wallet to buy things they need using Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency.
