Blockchain: Beyond a Database
By Taha Dhailey on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
I was really confused about whether to have the title as “Blockchain: Beyond a database” or “Blockchain: A combination of technology and social engineering” but decided on the former with the expectation that it might come easily in search engines.
Coming to the topic. We all by now have passed the level I of blockchain learning defining it as a Distributed/Decentralized ledger to store transactions and tons of such definitions available online.
Well, if you cannot define blockchain without the use of the word database it is business-as-usual and databases are just boring…. — As mentioned by Andreas Antonopoulos.
Considering “Blockchain: A combination of technology and social engineering” we all know the technical part of it but the true revolution blockchain brings is by social engineering.
Let's have a look :
Incentivize good actor and kicking out bad actors: We all are aware that blockchain incentivizes users with block reward for adding the correct block to the blockchain, any bad actor trying to add a double-spend transaction will be rejected and will result in wastage of computing resource hence penalized as well. This is one form of social engineering.
6 Block confirmation: A block is confirmed in the blockchain until and unless there are 6 other correct blocks after that particular block. This is one of the most intriguing parts of blockchain’s social engineering which is not at all backed by any technical reason or IT requirement rather purely on the basis of social consensus and understanding whether an event took place or not. With this factor, we basically make logical assumptions that an event is 99.9% true when we have 6 pseudonymous witnesses from different locations witnessing the same event.
Pseudonymity: In the blockchain network, participants are not anonymous rather pseudonymous. The participants do have identity only different from the real one. With pseudonymity, the participant can represent itself as someone else, unlike anonymity. Pseudonymity adds another major factor to the blockchain network as social engineering.
Open: Last but not the least social engineering factor blockchain or perhaps public blockchain has is the openness, neutrality and censorship-resistant features. Anyone in this world from any place can participate in the network only using his smartphone and internet. It's free from any sort of eligibility criteria for example nationality, age, gender, etc.
And nobody means nobody (google or government or anyone) can block any participant or service in and from the network respectively.
Hope this changes your perspective about blockchain as a database or technology but beyond.
P.S. All the factors explained are based on bitcoin blockchain (POW consensus) which is the fundamental and legendary blockchain currently.
