Blockchain – This is the new buzzword in the technology world. What is it all about, why do we need it? What is the rave about. Is it a flavor of the year or is it here for a new revolution.
Blockchain – Is nothing but a distributed database. What is distributed database, the availability of the data across multiple nodes to be accessible and verifiable is called distributed database? The ability to be distributed across the whole network makes it very apt to secure against hacking and security holes. The distributed node structure does not have a single point of failure, which makes it strong against manipulating the data or information.
The concept of Blockchain has been there for ages. But, with the bitcoin implementation – it gained momentum. Bitcoin, the new digital currency started gaining momentum from 2015. The founder Satoshi Nakamoto leveraged block chain has its backbone for the digital/cryptocurrency. The concept of block chain was there from the birth of Algorithm in the form of linked list.
Interesting Note – The founder Satoshi Nakamoto is not real, it is a pseudo name of some individual.
Why is Blockchain key for going forward –
Let us examine the attributes of Blockchain technology. Each block in the chain is atomic, it can not be further disintegrated. The block has pointers to its parent or predecessor. Block can not be destroyed unless it is self-coded for destruction at a specific time or event. The block has basic properties like a sequence number, the data, the hash key and a pointer to the previous block. The hash is nothing but a generated key of the content, which can not be modified. The standard block chain implementation uses SHA 256 as the hashing algorithm. The data used may be open to the public, to obfuscate the data some key mapping can be used or some pass phrase with hashing can be done. The pass phrase is available to the right audience and only those can understand the data.
The blockchain node is distributed across the nodes in the network. If the data or hash key is changed, it will through a red flag across the network. There is no way to data mine across the world network to manipulate the nodes. This makes it secured.Since the node that is created can not just destroy externally. This makes the block chain nodes more transparent.
The combination of transparency and security allows it be used for financial, legal and all kind of monetization process.
The transparency portion and being immortal properties of the block chain has paved way for new process for existing use cases. Look at the monetization of a music industry, having a smart contract for each music under commercial use, Noncommercial use etc allows the producer to monetize on each transaction. Each transaction is transparent to all. The rate can be morphed through obfuscation. But, the existence of the transaction can not be avoided.
One interesting aspect of this music use case is, the parties that are downloading the music does not need to be known to the producer. Two unrelated parties can just make a transaction and the trail does exist as a proof.
The land record management is another interesting use case. If we look at the broader picture, All legal proceedings can be leveraged using block chain. This will help in making sure the public documents have transparency and change log available for viewing. The basic nature of Block chain to have secure transaction and not allowing data/information to be manipulated enables Block chain for a machine to machine communications. Especially, the usage scenario of health care data from different health wearable to generate proper information for the doctors and paramedics is very useful.
Going forward for Blockchain –
The future has a lot of potential for block chain. This underlying technology will enable a lot of secure transactions. We expect good adaptation in both financial and transportation initially. Read more about Blockchain startups.
Recommended for you
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.