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 new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. In fact, it was initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. But now, it finds its application in a number of other things as well.
Coming across this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to know what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, which is copied umpteen amount of times across some type of computer network. Now, imagine the computer network was created so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. 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 own 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 is no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users haven’t any means 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 help make the concept or the technology clearer, this is a good idea to go over the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the eMail, the conventional way of sharing documents is to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will take their sweet time to go through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this approach, one needs to wait till receiving the return copy to start to see the changes made 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 concurrently. This is how banks maintain balances of these clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both the parties to access exactly the same document at the same time. Moreover, it also allows to see a single 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 the concept. However, it is very important point out here that the Blockchain is not meant 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 across the network, that are identical. By virtue of the feature:
The data or information can’t be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be coincapcentral .
The data 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 includes a very high application in the wonderful 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 such monetary transactions. It had been the invention of the GUI (Graphical User Interface), which facilitated the normal man to access computers in form of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users make use of the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency.