Some facts you need to know about Blockchain Technology.
Blockchain Despite the inherent ‘Block’ in it, the name has traversed more
miles than any other technical term in the recent past. It is echoing in almost all existing IT infrastructures, posing a potential threat to the very existence of the present establishments. The blockchain is said to be the technology of the future. Here I am trying to explain some facts for all those who wish to understand the technology.
Introduction of Blockchain Technology
Blockchain Technology is used by many people to mention different things. Sometimes they may be talking about Bitcoin, sometimes it’s about the cryptocurrencies or digital tokens, or it may be about the smart contracts. The fact is that often the term ‘Blockchain’ is used inappropriately by many people,consequently, not only the word ‘Blockchain Technology’ but also the whole terms and terminologies related to it became confusing for many. However, all these usages have a common thread, which is the distributed ledger technology underlying them. In distributed ledger technology, the transactions are copied and stored across individual computers on the network rather than storing on a central server.
Structure of Blockchain
Then the blocks are linked together with cryptography and secured from modification. The whole process will create an immutable record of the transactions that happened across the network. Additionally, these blocks of records are copied to every participating node in the network, so everyone will have access to it. The great advantage of blockchain is that it can store any kind of asset, its ownership details, history of the ownership, and location of assets in the network. The powerful feature of Blockchain is that we can create a shared reality across non-trusting entities. That is all of the participating nodes in the network do not need to know each other or trust each other because each can monitor and validate the chain for themselves.
Data Structure of Blockchain
The data in a blockchain is stored as individual blocks, that’s why it is called Blockchain. Just like a linked list, the Blockchain is a collection of blocks linked together. So what does the block contain? Each block in a
blockchain will have the following fields.
1. Data: Stores the data.
2. Previous hash: Stores the hash of the previous block.
3. Hash: Hash value for the current block which can be used to refer to this block
4. Nonce: Number or value that can only be used once.
As far as the user is concerned the Data field is the most important thing. The actual data (like transaction details, asset details, etc.) are stored in this field. The previous hash will store the hash values of the previous block (consider it as a link to the previous block), the blocks are connected through this value.
These are some of the facts you need to know about blockchain technology.
these facts do not include everything you may come across while dealing with blockchain; rather it is a starter pack as more of the facts will be elaborated on the next articles.
