Blockchain 101

“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.”-Tim O’Reilly

There is a new technology in the market and people are really curious for what we can achieve with it. It has not been in the practical world for so long but has indeed made its place theoretically as an extension of the internet. This new technology of ours is Blockchain and yes, it is not just Bitcoin. People are usually confused about the difference between cryptocurrency and Blockchain. Cryptocurrency is the implementation of Blockchain, there are a lot of things that we can do with Blockchain.

What is Blockchain?

In the good old days we used to have a ledger to note all the transactions in an offline market, so in the same way we now have a digital ledger which works around the world and no particular individual has the right over it. This is like a database which is managed by thousands of computers around the world on a decentralised network.

Each “block” represents a number of transactional records, and the “chain” component links them all together with a hash function. As records are created, they are confirmed by a distributed network of computers and paired up with the previous entry in the chain, thereby creating a chain of blocks, or a blockchain.

Why does it matter?

There are various real-life implementations of blockchain. Despite having to go through tricky legal issues, A lot of money is being invested to blockchain technology to get various commercial applications. Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow from 1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated 15.9 billion by 2023. Big players like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook are investing in blockchain to have great new innovations in the world. Some applications based on Blockchain are as follows-

OASIS LABS

Industry: Cloud

Location: Berkeley, California

How does it help: Oasis Labs is a privacy-first, cloud computing platform running on blockchain. Oasis creates smart contracts that allow for total privacy without any corruption. Based in Berkeley, Calif., the company’s cloud computing offers a diversity of options in decentralized trust and privacy protection products.

2)Ripple

Industry: Fintech

Location: San Francisco, California

How does it help: Ripple is a payment network using blockchain to transfer money all over the globe. International financial institutions like American Express, BBVA and BMO use Ripple’s platform to process and send payments on its secure blockchain network.

3)Coinbase

Industry: Fintech

Location: San Francisco, California

How does it help: Coinbase is a digital portfolio that lets users buy and sell cryptocurrency. The company’s technology makes buying and managing cryptos easy with features like recurring buys and vault protection. Since 2012, Coinbase has seen over $150 billion exchanged by more than 20 million people.

4)Brave

Industry: Web Browser

Location: San Francisco, California

How does it help: Brave is the first web browser which comes with an inbuilt adblocker and a cryptocurrency wallet. The browser itself helps in protection of privacy of the user. It provides privacy-respecting ads to the user and allows the user to pay different sites their contribution by the use of BAT.

(On a side note i also use this browser for my day to day work)

5)HYPR

Industry: Internet of Things, Cybersecurity

Location: New York

How does it help: HYPR terminates cybersecurity risks in IoT devices with its decentralized credential solutions. By taking passwords off a centralized server, while using biometric and password-free solutions, the company makes IoT devices virtually unhackable.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Any form of currency that only exists digitally, that usually has no central issuing or regulating authority but instead uses a decentralized system to record transactions and manage the issuance of new units, and that relies on cryptography to prevent counterfeiting and fraudulent transactions is called a cryptocurrency. Some of the most prevalent cryptocurrency in market right now are as follows-

· Bitcoin(BTC)

· Bitcoin Cash(BCH)

· Litecoin(LTC)

· Ethereum(ETH)

· Monero(XMR)

· TRON(TRX)

· Ripple (XRP)

· Stellar(XLM)

· Cardano(ADA)

· EOS

Is it Secure?

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tool, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”-Steve Jobs

To Establish trust between ourselves we trust an individual third party. The irony of the Blockchain is the sense of security not by the centralized third party but the inability of two random humans trusting each other.

Is there a secure way to work with ourselves and ditching the third guy who profits by the middle man business?

Well yes, we can ensure security by the idea of cryptographic hash functions. We process a list of data and then create a block, hash of each block is generated in relation to the hash of the previous block, and that is what creates a chain of linked blocks. The hash of each block is generated based on both the data contained within that block and the hash of the previous block. So changing anything in the block (data changed by an attacker) after it is implemented would lead to a different hash and will cause a break in the chain. These hash identifiers play a major role in ensuring blockchain security and immutability.