Explaining Blockchain to my complete family

People with a non-computer science or a non-technical background are not generally equipped enough to understand new technologies that are invented every day. They tend to run away generally when a technical discussion is taking place either on internet, or television, or in a group of friends.

Any technology which is new, and has the potential to change the world, needs people (as many as possible) to understand it, talk about it, discuss its advantages and disadvantages, talk about its applicability, how it can help or not help different processes and businesses across sectors, etc. To be able to do that you need people of all categories to be able to understand that technology to a certain level.

One such technology is Blockchain, which is a little difficult to understand if you go into technical details of it (and considering you have a non-computer science background). Its only fair when someone could convert these difficult jargons and technicalities into a real-world understandable example, that can be understood by people all ages (from 5 years old to 75 years old).

We at BlockDigest are focused on providing Blockchain solutions and are constantly involved in Blockchain and Crypto education. So, I will try to explain Blockchain with the easiest real-world example which you will be able to relate to (no matter what your age is or what educational background you have). I am sure about it because I explained Blockchain to my family with the same example 😊 (and they understood it quite well).

The Story begins:

Imagine a group of 12 friends (named as January to December), these friends have the following qualities:

· All 12 of these friends are honest people and they do not cheat/ lie with anyone “EVER”.

· There is a ritual within this group to share everything happening with them over walkie-talkie (they all have one).

· It never happens that any information is left without its broadcast over their walkie-talkie network.

· These friends are super smart and have great memory. They never (I repeat, never ever) forget anything that has ever been broadcasted on their network.

· If anyone has ever tried to lie, everyone else in the group has sent alert “LIE DETECTED!! I REPEAT, LIE DETECTED!!”, to make sure that everyone will know that this information is a lie/ fake news and we shouldn’t store it in our minds for future use.

Due to these properties of this group, they remain best friends who trust each other a lot and that is because it is really difficult to lie about something that has happened in the past (which has been shared with the group — and the group shares everything). Since things are shared, and they have good memory, if anyone would lie or would modify a truth, they all will immediately know about it (through alerts).

So now imagine the following scenarios:

1. If September gave a rose to April on Valentine’s Day, everyone in the group will eventually know about it and then neither September nor April will be able to deny about this event in future (because all of them know about it).

2. if June bought an iPhone from January in exchange of $100, everyone will know about it. If after a year of use, June tries to sell that iPhone to August saying that this is a brand-new iPhone, then August can straightaway deny this lie because he listened the broadcast on their walkie-talkie network a year ago. Not only this, if asked to any of the friends (other 10 in the group), they will also confirm the same (as they are truthful and they never forget).

3. March had 5 imported chocolates which his father gifted him 2 months ago. They were so precious and delicious that every group member wanted to get 1 from March in exchange of any precious thing they had. But March was not interested initially and kept consuming those chocolates in the last 2 months. 2 days ago, he ate his 4th chocolate, but just before he consumed that chocolate, October’s walkie-talkie had a glitch and he wasn’t able to get this update (and 2 days later i.e. today his walkie-talkie started working again). Now March wanted a pair of Nike shoes that October has, and he also wanted the skate-board that December has. Since he only had 1 chocolate left, he could only exchange it either with October or December. Since October didn’t know about the 4th chocolate, March tries to trick him and offered him 1 chocolate in exchange of Nike and also offered 1 chocolate to December in exchange of the skate-board. October was unaware of this, so he agreed for the deal. But everyone else in the group started sending alters “MARCH TRYING TO CHEAT!! I REPEAT, MARCH ONLY HAS 1 CHOCOLATE LEFT!!”. Soon October realises (after receiving alters from all) that March was lying, and he backed off with the deal.

Looking at above scenarios, it should be clear to you by now that it is very difficult to lie or manipulate any information that has been exchanged in past over their network. Because even if 2 or 3 friends agree on lying on an activity which took place in past, others can deny that fraudulent information. For a lie or manipulation of a fact to take place, more than half of the entire group should agree on lying (majority wins). But it is very, very difficult in a group of such truthful people to convince more than half of them to lie.

Such is a Blockchain network. A Blockchain network is just like how any network works (internet, intranet, LAN, VPN, etc.). It has digital devices like computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. as part of their network (called participants/ nodes/ parties etc.). All these parties store every information being transmitted on the network (transactions), that can never be modified or deleted once stored (called immutability). Because everyone stores the same information and they approve every transaction happening in the network, everyone together makes such a network possible and it is not owned by any single person.

Imagine in our above example of 12 friends, if January was the leader of the group and only January maintained all information of the group, then all the validations would only go through January to be proven right or wrong. Whatever January says will be considered as the final truth.

Which means that in our 2nd example above, if January would have told August that the iPhone which June is offering you is brand new (lying, because it is actually a year old), then August would have believed him no matter what, because only January stores and maintains all the data (so August and everyone else would consider it as the final truth).

Such a centrally owned arrangement is an issue because of the following reasons:

· What if January starts lying for his own good?

· What if all data stored with January is lost?

· What if secrets of the group are stolen from January?

· What if January gets corrupted (it’s easy to manipulate 1 person than 12)?

· What if January decides to leave this group of friends and dumps/ deletes/ destroys all the information collected till date?

· What if January dies?

To remove/ tackle all these issues from centrally owned systems like Banks, Insurances, Energy, etc. Blockchain technology was thought of. The first application of Blockchain technology was Bitcoin launched in 2009 as a virtual/ digital currency on the internet (not owned by any bank or any single organization, rather by all the parties who wants to be a part of that network).

Blockchain tackles all the above problems, and we get the following benefits:

· More trust, as everyone has the entire history of what happened in their network

· If someone lies, others can easily prove it

· No single person owns the network, so no single point of failure

· Even if one person/ participant leaves the network, others will still have all the information (history of the network) and thus the network will not crash

· It is very difficult to convince or manipulate a bigger set of participants than just1 party.

Because of these benefits, Blockchain today is being used in a lot of different sectors like Finance, Retail, Manufacturing, Insurance, Energy, Real Estate, Healthcare, Telecomm, Social Media and many more. Blockchain is for everyone and anyone who can make sense out of it.

All Cryptocurrencies in the world are made up of Blockchain technology, but Blockchain is not limited to just that. Today it is being used across sectors throughout the world. Some industry experts believe that it will play a very vital role in coming times to improve businesses and processes. And some people also call it the next big thing after internet.

If this makes sense and excites you (like it did to me when I first came across Blockchain), you can dive deeper into the world of Blockchain through various courses on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies by BlockDigest.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website:

https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/

There are several courses to choose from like:

Blockchain for Leaders — If you are an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Manager, a Consultant, a Professional, or a Professor looking for application of Blockchain in their work area, can help you understand Blockchain in detail with real-world Blockchain implementation

Certified Blockchain Professional — Take you from Zero to Fluent in Blockchain.

Certified Ethereum Smart Contract Developer — Learn Blockchain and develop an end-to-end Smart Contract based application (dApp).

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain — Learn connection of Cryptocurrencies with Blockchain (the technical aspect of things)

For any other queries or issues you can email at: blockdigest@gmail.com