What is a blockchain?

In this current digital age, blockchain is the future of technology. So what is blockchain? Let me share some information regarding the blockchain I have learned so far.

Blockchain has multiple definitions. Let’s go through the simplest one. Blockchain is a distributed shared ledger, which can be considered as a shared ledger of transactions, transactions are ordered and grouped in blocks. In current real-world model is based on a private database that each organization maintains. A distributed ledger, it serves as a single source of truth for all members that are using the blockchain. Blockchain is basically a linked list that uses hash pointers instead of normal pointers. Hash pointers are used to point to the previous block. The structure of blockchain can be visualized as shown in the following diagram.

Elements of blockchain.

Every block has an address, hash, transaction, nonce, timestamp, etc. There are other elements as well, but these 4 are major and we are going to discuss that in this article.

Addresses are unique identifiers that are used in a transaction on the blockchain to denote sender and receivers. An address is usually a public key or derived from the public key.

Hash is an encrypted hash of all data included in a block like the address of the previous block, nonce, transaction, timestamp, etc. In block we store has of the previous block to maintain the immutability of the blockchain.

Nonce is a random number used to create a hash between the desired target.

Timestamp is a timestamp of the block when it was mined.

Feature of Blockchain.

Blockchain provides security. As data of blockchain is available to nodes of blockchain and they are responsible for adding a block to the blockchain after approval by all nodes by using a consensus mechanism it is too much difficult to mess with data.

Immutability is another key feature of blockchain: records once added to the blockchain are immutable. to reverse the changes of data on the blockchain is almost impossible as it requires an unaffordable amount of computational power.

Uniqueness: blockchain ensures that every transaction ins unique and has not been spent already.

There are many more features of blockchain available. I have shared the only 3 features of blockchain right now.

References: Mastering Blockchain book.

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