These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. Among 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.
Sounding this far was probably easy. But, one is yet to know what is Blockchain?
A distributed database
Imagine an electronic spreadsheet, that is copied umpteen number of times across a computer network. Now, imagine the computer network is designed so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. This is a broad overview of the Blockchain. bitcoin holds information as a shared database. Moreover, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its own benefits. It does not permit the database to be stored at any single location. The records inside it possess genuine public attribute and may be verified very easily. As there’s no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users have no 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 across the virtual web.
To make the concept or the technology clearer, this can be a good idea to go over 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 approach, one must wait till receiving the return copy to see the changes designed to the document. This is really because the sender is locked from making corrections till the recipient is done with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases don’t allow two owners access exactly the same record as well. This is one way banks maintain balances of these clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both the parties to access the same document as well. Moreover, it also allows to view a single version of the document to both of them simultaneously. Just like a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant when the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of the concept. However, you should point out here that the Blockchain is not meant to share documents. Rather, it is just an analogy, which can only help to have clear-cut idea concerning this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information across 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 failure point either.
The data is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the overall procedure.
The data stored in 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 available in 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 type of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they need using Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency.