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. In fact, it had been 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 number of times across a computer network. Now, imagine the computer network was created 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.
Bitcoin Revolution has its benefits. It does not permit the database to be stored at any single location. The records in 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 easily accessible to almost anyone across the virtual web.
To help 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 method of sharing documents would be to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will need 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 start to see the changes designed to the document. This is really 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 the same record concurrently. This is one way banks maintain balances of these clients or account-holders.
In contrast to the set practice, Google docs allow both the parties to access exactly the same document as well. Moreover, it also allows to see an individual version of the document to both of them simultaneously. Just like a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant once 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 will help to have clear-cut idea relating to this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information across the network, that are identical. By virtue of this feature:
The data or information cannot 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 overall 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. In line with 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 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 normal man to gain access to computers in type of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application may be the most typical GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they need using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.