How Blockchain actually works?
It is just another day story when we were trying to get addressed the term Blockchain. The introductory concept is liable to sprout with the onus of having some technical concepts.
So, the priority question is how does the Blockchain work? What actually goes behind the curtain?
What are the Blocks?
Well in order to understand the working of Blockchain let us understand what are the ‘blocks’ in the term Blockchain. So, blocks are the numerous chunks of information that are spread all around the network and are connected(chained) together with the internet. Each block is responsible to store the definite set of data that has been recorded and has been traced down multiple times. Each physical system(computer) plays the role of nodes where they act as the witness of ongoing transaction scraping.
Now the question arises of how the Blockchain actually performs its task?
Let us now get our hands dirty with the technical aspect(well, not so technical at all).
Usually, Blockchain follows the ‘Consensus’ feature. Whenever any change is there to happen in the writing of data, all available blocks present their agreement or disagreement in order to proceed with the majority. It is the same as democracy and hence one thing is for sure, we need a minimum of 3 blocks in order to affirm the fair consensus process to happen.
Some rules for consensus mechanism-
- No node has more authority than others,
- Consensus is achieved when more than half of the nodes agree
The hashing way-
After understanding the consensus, let us understand hashing algo.
So, we know that whenever there is a change in the data, there is a change in the address of that specific block and hence its previous links get broken which breaks the entire sequence. Hence this mechanism is very important in order to secure the most necessary feature of Blockchain- The security of data.
It has been found that the address of the block can be traced out easily and hence it is needed to secure the first line of defence-” block address” in Blockchain.
For this only, we need some hashing mechanism. What it does is a hash data gets added with the block data and makes it the block address which cannot be intruded.
This process is called mining. Miners find out the appropriate hash which could be mapped with the appeared data to release a definite set of addresses.
One of the most used hashing algorithms is SHA-256. It comprises 64 characters.
Certain features of a good hashing algorithm are-
-One way of Mathematical function,
- Fast to calculate,
- Nearly impossible to reverse,
- Creates very few collisions,
- Maps i/p to o/p
Mining-
The best miner is one who comes up with the significant hash that fulfills the promise of generating the required type of address with the block data in a given amount of time at its earliest. Such miner is rewarded in the crypto. Here we came across the concept of cryptocurrency.
Now, it is also clear that Blockchain and Cryptocurrency are not the same terms. Rather both are dependent on each other. A blockchain cannot exist without cryptocurrency and a cryptocurrency has no value without blockchain.
In our next blog article, we will talk about cryptocurrency. Thanks for your time and till then keep chaining the blocks!!
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