Exploring More into Blockchain Technology and Why IT Matters

So what is blockchain? It’s the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but its uses go far beyond that. It all sounds complicated, but let me try and break it down into one sentence, an important concept that you need to remember is that blockchain is a continuously updated record of who holds what. These records are split into linked blocks and then secured using cryptography. Cryptography algorithm is a mixture of math and code combined. The cryptography part just means that you can be sure about the records. This is dubbed as automated trust or trust that is inherently built into the system. The rundown of records, known as a dispersed record, is decentralized and accessible to everybody to see and verify. Furthermore, the blockchain is obvious and unhackable because of its dispersed nature and each person knows when a block has been tampered with because the system rejects automatically.

Blockchain has a social recognition unequivocally identified with Bitcoin and other forms of digital currencies. Also, many people see the blockchain as something for scholarly educated criminals or individuals that are against government. But the emerging truth is that the blockchain has applications far beyond crypto and as a whole will be nothing short of revolutionary.

Blockchain technology has been called the next stage of the internet by many. Let look it at this way. Our current internet is an internet of information. It’s based on the concepts of copying and distributing information via video, email, or data. All of these are copies. For example, if you want to watch a video on YouTube or receive an email, you’re looking at a digital copy of the original. But what if we take this further to the next stage?

What about assets which provide real value? Like contracts such as house or car ownership, a stock, a bond, money, votes, or digital identities. The problem is you don’t want to have these things as copies. For example, you don’t want to send someone $5,000 yet still have the original $5,000 under your name. This was called the double-spending problem by cryptographers. Despite the name, this basically means the problem of having two digital copies of something that should only have one unique identity. The cryptography element of the blockchain enabled it to be the first technology of its kind to solve the double spending problem.