These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. One of the latest triumphs in this direction may be the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The brand new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. Actually, it was initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. However now, it finds its application in several other things as well.
Coming across this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to know what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, which is copied umpteen amount of times across a computer network. Now, imagine the computer network was created so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. This is a broad summary of the Blockchain. Blockchain holds information as a shared database. Moreover, technical analysis gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. The records in it possess genuine public attribute and will be verified very easily. As there is no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users haven’t any methods to manipulate with and corrupt the info. The Blockchain distributed database is simultaneously hosted by an incredible number of computers, making the data easy to get at to almost anyone over the virtual web.
To make the concept or the technology clearer, it is just a good idea to discuss the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the eMail, the conventional method of sharing documents would be to send a Microsoft Word doc as attachment to a recipient or recipients. The recipients will need their sweet time to proceed through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this process, one must wait till receiving the return copy to start to see the changes made to the document. This is really because the sender is locked out from making corrections till the recipient is performed with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases don’t allow two owners access the same record as well. This is how banks maintain balances of these clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both parties to access the same document as well. Moreover, it also allows to view an individual version of the document to both of these simultaneously. As being a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant once the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of the concept. However, you should explain here that the Blockchain is not meant to share documents. Rather, it really is just an analogy, which will help to have clear-cut idea about this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information over the network, which are identical. By virtue of this feature:
The data or information can’t be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be no single failure point either.
The info is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the entire procedure.
The data stored inside it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As stated earlier, Blockchain technology has a very high application in the world of finance and banking. Based on the World Bank, a lot more than US$ 430 billion money transfers were sent through it only in 2015. Thus, Blockchain developers have significant demand on the market.
The Blockchain eliminates the payoff of the middlemen in such monetary transactions. It had been the invention of the GUI (Graphical User Interface), which facilitated the normal man to gain access to computers in form of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.