The Blockchain magic!
Blockchain is proving to be more addicting then any drug! Its magic is already orbiting our world like a strong hypnosis.
Ever since the boom of crypto currencies, particularly bitcoin, every one is trying to figure out blockchain, the primary technology powering these new currencies.
If you thought blockchain’s buzz ends with money and payments only, then think again! Blockchain is an open database, passing vital information across the peers, through a peer to peer network. Why limit the thoughts?
A blockchain is like a massive open database which is used to store records, which we call as blocks. Each record or block contains a set of information, making it unique to the database, like timestamp (in simple words, a long number which represents date and time, with a large amount of precision), info on previous block, etc. Read More about blockchain here.
Promoting truely trustless contracts, blockchain removes the complete dispute of data authenticity, supported by the unique hashes generated via timestamps.
Some key take aways from the definition above:
1. Its a database
2. Only permits unique records
3. Is managed by the peer network
4. Its open and completely trustless
Another amazing thing to note here is, blockchain solves The Byzantine Generals Problem — an amazing story of an army camped around an enemy city, facing the communication issue for the battle plan. Imagine, communicating without an intermediary, and still ensuring the message is delivered and a response is received — to fight or not to fight. This theory appeared in 1982, and took almost two decades to answer.
Browsing through the web, I also came across this story:
Bitcoin solved a problem thought to be impossible to solve amongst computer scientists. How to get a bunch of people who don’t trust each other to reach a consensus. The implications are mind blowing. /r/Bitcoin
With this, we can certainly suggest that imagination will power the future with blockchain. Some concepts already making rounds on the web are:
1. Cloud Storage — a decentralized mechanism for storing and sharing files.
2. Identity Management — managing your digital identity for authenticating banks, shopping and even KYC or how about even replacing your passport!
3. Voting — right after identity management, comes voting! Elections would never be so open, fair and simple!
4. Health Information Exchange — managing your healthcare info, doctors tracking your details, even insurance tracking, all in a single channel
5. Decentralized notary — imagine, validating your documents online simply by the trust contracts
6. Fire the CEO! — this is somewhat crazy, but yes, with all the information and knowledge flowing through the network, this will not only save millions of dollars, but also permit informed, more efficient and legal system made decisions
The list can grow really really large. What we are essentially focusing on today is — expand the horizon for the technology utilization. I welcome your feedback on this.
