Oversimplified: What The Heck Is Blockchain?

By Yusuf Olalere on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Yusuf Olalere
Nov 1 · 5 min read

Don’t get left behind! Blockchain is the next big thing! It will change the world! You can make money from Bitcoin! Everything will become decentralized! Cryptocurrencies!! Bla bla bla!

Let there be blockchain

In The Beginning There Was Blockchain

Before we continue let us make a very quick and short clarification; chronologically, blockchain came before bitcoin. Bitcoin came into the picture in 2009 but computer gurus have been dancing around blockchain since the ’90s. Bitcoin just happened to be the first application of blockchain that went mainstream, thanks to one blockchain guru called Satoshi Nakamoto (not real name). Using an analogy, Bitcoin is to Blockchain what Facebook is to the Internet.

Why The Hype?

The popularity of bitcoin has brought lots of attention to the technology powering it; Blockchain. To understand the hype, let us put blockchain in perspective and forget about bitcoin for the rest of the article.

Complete strangers doing business without intermediaries.

Trust Gap? What Is So Special About Trust

How long did it take you to trust the most reliable person you know? What would you say if I told you that in the not too distant future, it will take less than a second to completely trust people you haven’t met before (complete untraceable strangers), no previous recommendations whatsoever from friends, family or trusted parties. Plus they won’t be able to break your trust even if they wanted to.

You could work with the most evil of people and not bother to ask yourself if they will cheat you or compensate you...

Before we go into how blockchain automates trust, lets pause for a second and think about the kind of things that we could do if we didn’t need to ask around about someone or look them up to transact or work with them. You could work with the evilest of people and not bother to ask yourself if they will cheat you or compensate you because you know they can’t even if they wanted to. Your trust machine got you covered. Now I’m thinking about the usefulness of this in electing political representatives and holding them accountable to their promises. Juuuust thinking.

But How Does The Blockchain Do This Trust Thingy?

Now you are treading the technical space. But let's keep it simple, blockchain is an Immutable Distributed Ledger. Analogy again, why will you keep all of your life savings with a foreigner you met 5 seconds ago? Crazy right? But remember it won’t be crazy if you kept your life savings in a box kept in a blockchain and you gave it to them. And why will you be able to sleep well at night knowing fully well your life savings is with a total untraceable stranger?

Blockchain Is Immutable

First, anything kept in a blockchain is immutable, it cannot be changed or altered, it is sealed. To understand how blockchain achieves this you need to understand cryptographic hashing (you can learn this later). It means you rest assured that the foreigner who you gave your box to can’t touch a dime of your savings, even if they wanted to.

Blockchain Is Distributed

Secondly, anything kept in a blockchain somewhere is duplicated and exact copies of it are kept in several places called nodes. It means whatever valuables (in this case your savings) kept in a blockchain exist in lots of places all at once, the same exact thing (keep in mind that this is only possible in the digital world). If you kept your savings with a stranger in France, a node containing the same exact box with all your savings could be in your street in Nigeria without altering or tampering with your savings in France. If you as the owner with your own private key were to take your savings, it will disappear everywhere on the blockchain, but if your foreigner altered what you kept with them (which is very difficult), the blockchain will automatically replace the altered version with the correct version from other nodes around the world. You might want to read that again.

Blockchain Is A Ledger

Simply put, a ledger is a record of things. Whatever goes into a blockchain is immediately recorded into a ledger, it was designed to work that way. That savings you kept with the foreigner automatically became a record in a ledger immediately you put it into the blockchain.



ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The best damn place to read and write about crypto and blockchain.

Yusuf Olalere

Written by

Passionate about the collective progress of the human race. Entrepreneur In Training @mestafrica I think design and do code

ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The best damn place to read and write about crypto and blockchain.

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