These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. One of the latest triumphs in this direction is the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The brand new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. Actually, it had been initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. But now, it finds its application in several other things as well.
Sounding 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 number of times across some type of computer network. Now, imagine the computer network is designed so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet on its own. This is a broad summary of the Blockchain. Blockchain holds information as a shared database. Moreover, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. The records inside it possess genuine public attribute and will be verified quickly. As there is no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users haven’t any methods to manipulate with and corrupt the data. 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 make the concept or the technology clearer, this can be 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 need their sweet time to go through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this process, one needs to wait till receiving the return copy to see the changes made to the document. This happens because the sender is locked out from making corrections till the recipient is performed with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases don’t allow two owners access exactly the same record at the same time. This is one way banks maintain balances of these clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both parties to access the same document at the same time. Moreover, it also allows to view an individual version of the document to both of these simultaneously. As being 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, coincapcentral is very important point out here that the Blockchain is not designed to share documents. Rather, it is just an analogy, which can only help to have clear-cut idea concerning this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information across the network, which are identical. By virtue of this feature:
The data or information cannot 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 wonderful world of finance and banking. Based on the World Bank, 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 had been the invention of the GUI (Graphical User Interface), which facilitated the normal man to access computers in type of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most typical GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency.