Blockchain and The Future of Digital Trust

What is Blockchain Technology?

A blockchain — is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. A blockchain can serve as “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.” For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks.

Blockchain security methods include the use of public-key cryptography. A public key (a long, random-looking string of numbers) is an address on the blockchain. Value tokens sent across the network are recorded as belonging to that address. A private key is like a password that gives its owner access to their digital assets or otherwise interact with the various capabilities that blockchains now support. Data stored on the blockchain is generally considered incorruptible.

“The practical consequence for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.”

- Marc Andreessen

“The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.”

- Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016)

Is blockchain technology the new?

The first distributed blockchain was then conceptualized by an anonymous person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Implemented the following year as a core component of the digital currency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions.

It’s a technology, which apply three basic technology and those are

1. Public and private key Cryptography.

2. P2P Network

3. Program(The Blockchain protocol)

So, it is not a new technology for all it’s merits but, it’s is a combination of proven technologies applied in a new way.

Importance Of blockchain technology:

“The most interesting intellectual development on the Internet in the last five years.”

- Julian Assange

“Blockchain solves the problem of manipulation. When I speak about it in the West, people say they trust Google, Facebook, or their banks. But the rest of the world doesn’t trust organizations and corporations that much — I mean Africa, India, the Eastern Europe, or Russia. It’s not about the places where people are really rich. Blockchain’s opportunities are the highest in the countries that haven’t reached that level yet.”

- Vitalik Buterin, inventor of Ethereum

There are various reasons that make this technology more acceptable to other. Like

Ø Transparent and incorruptible.

Ø Durability and robustness.

Types of Block Chain:

1. Public Blockchain: A Public Blockchain is completely decentralized by the permissions to read and write data onto the Blockchain are shared equally among all the connected users, who come to a consensus before any data is stored on the database. For Example, Ethereum and Bitcoin are blockchains which are easy to access for anyone.

2. Private Blockchain: In Private Blockchain, the permissions to write data onto the Blockchain are controlled by specific organization which is highly trusted by the other users.

3. Consortium/Permissioned Blockchain: A Permissioned Blockchain or Consortium blockchain is partly private. It provides a hybrid between the ‘low-trust’ provided by Public Blockchains and the ‘single highly-trusted entity’ model of Private Blockchains.

Who are the user of blockchain?

Some of them are

Ethereum:

Ø Block time: 10 Sec.

Ø Number of Ether earned for each mined block: 5

Ø Number of blocks mined: more than 1,400,000

Ø Number of transactions per day: over 30,000

Ø Number of nodes in the network: over 6,000

Ø Ether value: around $10, but it varies a lot.

Bitcoin:

Ø Block time: 10 min.

Ø Number Of Bitcoins Earns for every mined block: 25

Ø Number of blocks mined: over 4,00,000

Ø Number of transactions per block: over 1200

Ø Number of nodes in the network: ~7000

Ø Bitcoin value: $420

Conclusion:

In the digital world authenticity is a very important for digital property. In the case of block chain technology, it uses public and private key encryption and transactions are store in a block and every block is chained so there is less possibilities of data corruption. In other word you can’t alter a block retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks.

So, It would be the trust of digital security for next generation Internet, the Decentralized Web, or Web3.