Blockchain Explained
A non-technical, high level explanation of blockchain
Background
On the 31st of October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto, published a paper that had a profound effect on the world. In this paper, Satoshi describes an electronic peer-to-peer payments system using blockchain technology.
This paper was essentially the basis of bitcoin and what helped popularise blockchain technology.
Simply put, Blockchain technology is essentially a very smart system comprised of a number of key attributes, which allows us to capture transactional information securely. To better define blockchain and its key attributes, we first need to understand some core concepts.
Blockchain’s key attributes:
- Encrypted Process of linking transactions
- Distributed, Secure Ledgers
What is a blockchain?
Blockchain, as the name suggests, is a chain of blocks. You can think of blocks as baskets of information. They basically contain information about a number of transactions. A chain of valid blocks, represents the latest transactions and adds to the ledger.
Before we dive further into that, it would be prudent to first understand how blocks work and how they are linked…
