Blockchain eBook epub

This in an excerpt from this book
Blockchain is invented by a group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto. They are still unknown to anyone, but here main moto to create these blockchain gateways for the cryptocurrency is to stop the double-spending problem. It is also a growing list of records, called blocks which are linked using cryptography. Blockchain is considered as a type of payment rail. Private blockchains have been proposed for business uses also. They don’t have a proper security model, so they were called snake oil.

Let’s talk about the history of blockchain and from where it comes into recognition. The very first work on cryptographically secured chains of blocks was described by W. Scott and Stuart Haber in 1991. They design so that the files or documents could not be tampered or misused. The first blockchain was conceptualized as we know by Satoshi and they improvised the design in an important way using a hashcash like to add blocks to the chain so that there could be no chance of tampering. By this, the file containing the records of all the transactions that occurred on the network reached twenty GB.

The words block and chain are used separately by Satoshi but get popularity by single name blockchain in 2016. Smart contractors which run on blockchains invoices that pay themselves when shipment arrives or share certificates which automatically send dividends to the owners when it reaches to a certain level. According to Accenture, an application of diffusion of innovation theory suggests that blockchain attained 13.5% adoption rate within the financial year 2016. The rate has an immense effect on the market due to which more and more people attracted to invest and to transact their money through cryptocurrencies via blockchain technology.

Blockchain is not just theoretically implemented but also it has its own structures by which it is easily recognized by the person who is using it. As it has a structure like blocks, decentralized and openness. Further, they are divided into substructures, which will be discussed later.

It does not restrict the area and popularity of blockchain to a one-time thing but also influences some academic research. Like in mid of 2014, MIT bitcoin club which is funded by MIT alumni, provided undergraduate students access to $100 of bitcoin at Massachusetts Institution of technology. After that, in September 2015, the first peer viewed an academic journal dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology research, which later announced as a ledger. This journal encouraged authors to digitally sign a file flash which is of submitted papers, which will then timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain.

As discussed earlier blockchain has its uses, which will defy at best possible way. Uses of blockchain could be cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, financial services, blockchain with video games, supply chain, blockchain in space and other uses. This all will be discussed afterward and in brief.

Now the question arises that why this sudden need of blockchain? This came from the vision of the developers as they have second thoughts about the banking system and they have ideas about the flaws they are having in the banking system. Developers know that the banks are acting as a third party and banks have their own set of protocol and code of conduct, which will take five to six business days to transfer or to transact money, especially in the cross border transactions. But on other side blockchain has real-time transaction and do not charge any fees for that transaction. Some other and important uses are payment process and money transfer, monitor supply chains, retail royalty rewards programs, digital ids, data sharing, copyrights and royalty protection, digital voting, land, real estate, and auto title transfers. It further includes tracking prescription drugs, securing access to belongings, expediting energy futures trading and many more, which are going to be discussed further in detail.

So why blockchain technology has so much of importance and what could be the reasons behind this importance? This question is a matter of course, as blockchain technology is way beyond cryptocurrencies. It has a seemingly endless number of applications in various industries. Some of the reasons could be like, it gives digital ownership, a person can own its money on blockchain, it provides you with the improves social media functionalities, it keeps your ids and personal data secure along with your identity, it gives the holder digital freedom and many more important and crucial functionalities.

So many people have a question mark as they have a slight doubt that if a blockchain and cryptocurrency has any relation or they work together. So blockchain is designed to keep records all the transaction that will take place from peer to peer network and it obviously works as an anonymous ledger. But by keeping the details of that transaction secret and making ledger public so that one can view it to check or to confirm that the transaction has taken place or not. Cryptocurrencies most of the time rely on blockchain, to mine cryptos such as bitcoin, blockchain are inevitable. Each of the individual blocks is made of some puzzle which can only be solved by the miners to validate transactions. Blockchains are the reason which ensures that cryptocurrency wallets calculate their spendable balance so that they can confirm new and to satisfy that there is no multiple spending going on. This is the main point as without the blockchain it will be impossible for most of the cryptocurrencies to run successfully. One need blockchain to attract all the benefits of the securities that come with cryptocurrencies.

So the above points mentioned are to be discussed later on and there will be a full overview to the link shared by cryptocurrency and blockchain and there relation to go hand in hand. Further, it will discuss some points like what are the types of blockchain, what are its uses, what procedure and process it follows, or it goes through, what is a link between blockchain and cryptocurrency and much more to be discussed later in the segment.