Blockchain technology in a Nutshell
- gist
- blockchain
After exploration driven by curiosity, here I put the gist of blockchain technology.Initially, the developers create what is called a genesis block which is the first block of the blockchain and then the blockchain network is made publicly available. Every node(user) on the network has a copy of the entire blockchain.Every block in the chain has a 'hash' property which is unique and corresponds to the contents of the block . This hash is generated by algorithms such as SHA256. The hash of the preceding block is also an attribute for a block except for the genesis block. This way, any malicious change in a block leads to a hash mismatch in the entire blockchain. This also makes it extremely difficult to make changes to the blockchain and this makes it immutable.To add a new block to the chain, a complex mathematical problem has to be solved which is energy intensive which makes it secure. This is called mining and the miners are rewarded with newly created cryptocurrency. This is the 'Proof of work' scenario. Other technologies may adapt different methods to ensure legitimacy. Next, blockchain references of all nodes in the network is collected and the majority state of blockchain is considered to legitimate. Thus, blockchain technology relies on Network Integrity. Further security measures such as cryptographic signatures and hash functions would detect and ignore malicious node.Any change to the technology would require consent from the decentralised nodes.That is very much how Blockchain technology works.Best,Skndash