These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. One of the latest triumphs in this direction may be the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The 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.
Coming across this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to learn what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, that is copied umpteen amount of times across some type of computer network. Now, imagine the computer network is designed so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. 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 benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. worldoftechnicalanalysis.com inside it possess genuine public attribute and may be verified very easily. As there’s 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 millions of computers, making the data easy to get at to almost anyone over 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 eMail, the conventional method of sharing documents would be to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will take their sweet time to proceed 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 designed 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 as well. 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 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 a way, an extension of this concept. However, it is important to point out here that the Blockchain is not designed to share documents. Rather, it really is just an analogy, which can only help to have clear-cut idea about this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information over the network, that are identical. By virtue of this feature:
The data or information can’t be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be no single failure point either.
The info is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the entire procedure.
The data stored inside it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As stated 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 available in 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 form of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most typical GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users make use of the wallet to buy things they need using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.