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Blockchain is one of the most revolutionary technologies right now, that has the potential to change how we perceive and do every single digital task. There are many competing technologies especially right now, but Blockchain continues to show the most amount of promise. Large fields worth billions such as finance, data processing, and banking are all exploring the possibilities that Blockchain has to offer, leading to a growing amount of industry acceptance.
Due to this, it has also found itself under the radar of many other industries that are waiting to see how blockchain develops further before they invest in it. This article is going to deal with the workings and history of Blockchain and the various situations where it can be used to its maximum potential.
The concept of having a distributed digital ledger was what led to the creation of Blockchain technology. It was built in the fundamentals of running this ledger on a peer-to-peer network which is also called a P2P topology. The point of this ledger is that there are many different users, and all of them access the ledger, but nobody has the ability to alter or change the information recorded in the ledger.
Each bit has a timestamp that links it to the previous transactions. A block is created whenever a specific number of transactions have been made together. Then these blocks are chained into the ledger which keeps growing further and further as more and more transactions are made. This is literally a chain of blocks of data, hence the name Blockchain is used.
Blockchain is safe and secure because transactions can only be made with the mutual consent of the parties of the ledger owners. Secondly, it is made more secure by the fact that the data is not at all editable, which means no one can tamper with it. Lastly, because it is a public ledger, it is accessible and completely transparent to all members.
The idea of Blockchain was incepted way back in the 1990s. Stuart Haber W. Scott Stornetta made the first literary work on the concept of Blockchain as a secure chain of data that cannot be altered, all the way back in 1991. The popularity of Blockchain never really took off for the next few years. Blockchain only entered the limelight in 2008, with the release of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was the first realistic application of a digital ledger and was created by an individual who used Satoshi Nakamoto. It is believed that this was not even their real name. In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto revealed the entire workings of Bitcoin through a white paper and passed down the torch to other developers to continue Bitcoin and Blockchain technology. The next milestone for Blockchain was the development of Ethereum in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin. All of these coins were then stored in a crypto hardware wallet.
Ethereum was made as an evolution of the technology of Bitcoin to improve on its strength and fix its weaknesses. After the ushering of these two mammoth cryptocurrencies, the world slowly started seeing the merit of Blockchain technology and many developers and companies started experimenting with its possibilities.
Through the system of tokenization, you can break down the value of the individual property into tokens of smaller denominations. This makes real estate investments much easier, as instead of buying a property for huge sums of money, you can simply buy a cheaper token that represents a fraction of the land. This promotes joint ownership of assets and opens up access to investment for a huge number of people who earlier couldn’t afford it.
Any data center that hosts vast amounts of data is very susceptible to cyber attacks. Usually, these data centers hold information that is private and belongs only to individuals or could be sensitive trade information about the businesses. Blockchain is much safer from hacking attacks because of its decentralized structure. Hacking or damage to one block does not spread to another block as they are separate entities. Thus it is much easier to isolate and defend against cyber attacks and more and more data from being leaked.
Another method is that instead of sending the actual data to other parties and suffering packet data theft, people can simply give service providers access to the information contained in an encrypted data block. Due to the transparent nature of Blockchain, you can easily track and see where the data goes. In this manner, Blockchain is a dream for security users who want to keep their data in safe databases. Hardware Wallets can also be used to keep your cryptocurrencies safe.
There are two amazing ways in which Blockchain is being adopted in the world of healthcare. First of all, you can store the data of patients in a Blockchain ledger that can include their entire medical history. This way, doctors and nurses can instantly access the data from the Blockchain in emergency situations where the patient cannot provide you their medical data. Blockchain can also be used to set up a supply chain of medical resources that can be used to track and monitor the consumption and purchase of medicines.
Blockchain can be used in the world of banking and finance as a secure ledger that stores transactions. The benefit of Blockchain in maintaining a ledger of transactions is definitely not having large books or data centers to store information. Secondly, you can easily track and review any transactions that are made. The process of making a transaction is also made easier by the fact that there is no mediator. This means the transactions are almost instantaneous, and there are no processing or transaction fees that are charged. All of this leads to time and money saved.
In all of these cases, it is evident that Blockchain has unique incentives to be used. As it is showing success in these fields, there is a snowball effect of more adoption and optimism towards Blockchain. Who knows how much Blockchain is going to grow in the next few years!
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