These days, technology is scaling newer heights of success at an unbelievably fast pace. Among the latest triumphs in this direction is the evolution of the Blockchain technology. The new technology has greatly influenced the finance sector. In fact, it had been initially developed for Bitcoin – the digital currency. But 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, 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, this database gets reconciled continuously.
This approach has its own benefits. It does not allow the database to be stored at any single location. The records in it possess genuine public attribute and can be verified very easily. As there is no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users have no means to manipulate with and corrupt the data. 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, it is just a good idea to go over the Google Docs analogy.
Google Docs analogy for Blockchain
After the advent of the e-mail, the conventional way 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 made to the document. This happens because the sender is locked from making corrections till the recipient is performed with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases do not allow two owners access exactly the same record as well. This is one way banks maintain balances of their clients or account-holders.
As opposed to the set practice, Google docs allow both parties to access the same document at the same time. Moreover, it also allows to view a single version of the document to both of them simultaneously. As being a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. distributed part only becomes relevant once the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of this concept. However, it is important to point out here that the Blockchain is not meant to share documents. Rather, it really is just an analogy, which can only help to have clear-cut idea relating to 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 overall procedure.
The data stored in it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As mentioned earlier, Blockchain technology includes a very high application in the world of finance and banking. According to 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 was 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 make use of the wallet to buy things they want using Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency.