What is the Blockchain?
What is the blockchain and blockchain network?
The blockchain is a ledger for saving progress data in a business network and plus easy way tracking data and sharing with partners and the blockchain’s big one property is not changeable any data.
Because the datas’s haven’t an owner, the data isn’t storage one point, it is stored with a community. The data assets have tangible (house, car) or intangible (intellectual property, patents). Since the assets can’t be changed, data is secure and reliable.
So, the blockchain’s importance is fast and reliable data. Plus, these data only can access by authorized persons in the network. Therefore, low risk and maximum productivity.
For example, in the IBM project for Sea Food tracking, X fishing ship, registered the blockchain network all caught fish. After that, the factory knows which fish catch with location and time data and after catch processes knowledge. After that point, the factory works with some processes and saves all data to the blockchain network. Some supermarkets buy these fish in packs. If the supermarket is curious about any fish, it can check from the network and found all steps. the last one is the supermarket registered the last info to wit buyer identity to the blockchain network.
In this case, we can track any point before and after data. This is just a small example. Can you imagine the car factory and all the steps? From the creation of the first screw to the sales stage, to the last step and after that, second-hand sales, service records, etc.
What are the capabilities of a blockchain network?
Access control
Ensuring that only stockholders access data. If you cannot join to network, you won’t read any data or change any data.
Transparency
Making the entire transaction ledger visible to all participants. Any transaction connects with a chained algorithm to another transaction therefore we are easily tracking any specific value.
Security
Every transaction has a chained encryption algorithm. So, no one can change data between two blocks.
What are the components of a blockchain network?
Blocks
The blocks are data containers, imagine like a database row but more complex. Because all blocks have slightly more information due to the nature of the chain structure. These pieces of information are the pointer and info of transactions.
Chain
Blocks within a blockchain network are interconnected. Multiple blocks combined form a blockchain.
Node
The blockchain network has generally two types of nodes. Full node and partial node, plus not all the time but some networks have specific nodes like miner node for bitcoin. Back to our topic full node maintains a full copy of all transactions. Also, validates the transaction, accepts, or rejects the transaction
Ledger
Ledger is a database. The blockchain network has three types of ledgers.
The public ledger: It’s open and transparent to all. Anyone in the network can be read or write.
Decentralized ledger: No one node or group of nodes has a central control. Every node participates in the execution of the job.
Distributed ledger: All nodes have a local copy of the database. A group of nodes collectively execute the job. i.e., verify, add block.
Consensus
A consensus mechanism is a fault-tolerant mechanism used in computer and blockchain systems to achieve the necessary agreement on a single data value or a single state of the network between distributed processes or multi-agent systems such as cryptocurrencies. It is useful in record keeping, among other things.
Some consensus mechanisms are shown in the items below.
· Proof of Work (PoW)
· Proof of Stake (PoS)
· Proof of Capacity (PoC)
· Proof of Activity (PoA)
· Proof of Burn (PoB)
· Proof of History (PoH)
· Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET)
What is the structure of a piece of the block?
A block is a container data structure that aggregates transactions for inclusion in the public ledger, the blockchain. The block is made of a header, containing metadata, followed by a long list of transactions that make up the bulk of its size. The block header is 80 bytes, whereas the average transaction is at least 250 bytes, and the average block contains more than 500 transactions. A complete block, with all transactions, is therefore 1,000 times larger than the block header. Table 1 describes the structure of a block.
Block Header
The block header consists of three sets of block metadata. First, there is a reference to a previous block hash, which connects this block to the previous block in the blockchain. The second set of metadata, namely the difficulty, timestamp, and nonce, relate to the mining competition, etc. The third piece of metadata is the Merkle tree root, a data structure used to efficiently summarize all the transactions in the block. Table 2 describes the structure of a block header.
What is the smart contract?
Smart Contracts are computer programs when under some conditions. This piece of programs automatically triggered, therefore, must doing jobs some doing. Smart contracts working principle is if-then form. For example, Factory sells a product after that point, a smart contract triggers and decrement stocks.
In this way, smart contracts block missing operations or manual calculation errors, etc.
References
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Kumar, A. (2018). Is Blockchain a Linked List like Data Structure? https://vitalflux.com/blockchain-linked-list-like-data-structure
Coşkun, Ö.F. (2021). What is the Smart Contract? Where is used to it? https://medium.com/@iublocktech/ak%C4%B1ll%C4%B1-kontrat-nedir-nerelerde-kullan%C4%B1l%C4%B1r-1e68aa0883a7
Frankenfiled, J. (2021). Consensus Mechanism (Cryptocurrency). https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consensus-mechanism-cryptocurrency.asp
