You might have heard the stories of your fathers and grandparents discussing the long ques system of banking transactions where they used to wait for their turn only for simple money withdrawal or payment of bills. Yeah, before urbanization, life was pretty much difficult. Further, as things turned better, people along with their networks advanced in every sphere of life.
This was the time when Debit cards were launched and the payments and transactions got a whole new chapter. This journey was further evaluated as the currency turned virtual. Exactly, this happened when bitcoins and cryptocurrency along with blockchain got a kickstart and there it had the beginning of a whole new era that not only offered massive ease in every domain but also altered the things greatly for human benefit. As a person who is trying to learn about blockchain, maybe you have heard some type of words like the statement:
“Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger.”
The best thing is that the concept of blockchain is pretty much simple as compared to the above-said words.
What is blockchain?
The main pondering question should be if this concept is extremely complex, then why is it named as simple as the blockchain? It is merely a chain comprising of the blocks but not conventionally. When we utter the words “block” with “chain” as said above in the context, we are genuinely discussing the digital information that is the “block” saved in a public database referred to as the “chain”. Blocks on the blockchain have three main pieces of information. They are discussed as follows:
- Blocks save information and data regarding the transactions such as the date, time, and dollar cost of your latest purchase from Amazon.
- Blocks save information and data about the person who is taking part in transactions. You can understand it in such a way that the block for your purchase through Amazon will keep the record of your name side by side with Amazon.com, Inc. instead of using your name, your purchase will be recorded as a type of “Digi sign” type user identity.
- Blocks save information that differentiates them from various blocks. Every block stores a unique type of code known as “hash” which offers us to brief it regardless of any other block. Cryptographic codes and hashes are developed by certain specific algorithms. Although the information of your recent transaction would appear nearly the same as that of your former purchase, you can still distinguish them because of their unique coding.
Is Blockchain technology known as a new type of internet?
By offering digital information to be spread but not taken as it is, blockchain technology developed the backbone of a modern form of the internet. Genuinely developed for the digital form of currency, Bitcoin blockchain, the tech world has today found other significant uses for this technology.
Why the blockchain is getting massive hype?
In every era, there has been certain technology that attained hype and attention because of its various features. When we talk about blockchain, everyone can see that it has got hype these days. There are several reasons behind it. here, we are discussing some of the most closely related details. Check them out:
- It is not governed by a single body. This is the reason why it is decentralized
- The data is cryptographically saved within
- The blockchain is immutable, so nobody can alter or even tamper the data that is stored in the blockchain
- It is transparent so one can try to track the data even if they like to do so
Is blockchain practically employed in the modern world?
Blocks on the blockchain are mainly about monitoring transactions. But, instantly, people today realized that it is the safest and most reliable way of saving data and information about different types of transactions. This technology can be utilized to save data regarding property exchanges, halts in supply chains and even voting for a certain candidate.
Professional services network Deloitte a few days back surveyed 1,000 organizations across seven nations about implementing blockchain in their business work. Their survey extracted that 34% of them already had a system of blockchain induction in production nowadays, while a further 41% probably will deploy a blockchain network within the coming year. Here we are highlighting the few most popular applications of blockchain that are currently used nowadays. This will further clarify your concept of blockchain networking and you will easily attain an idea about how you can try this for yourself. Have a look.
Banking industry
No other industry can attain maximum benefits or something in a way which the banking industry does. Financial bodies only function during working hours that is five days a week. This means if you want to deposit a check on Friday after office hours, you probably will have to wait until Monday morning to get that money into your account. Even, if you get successful in depositing money during business hours, the transaction can take around two to three days because they need to verify everything. On the other side, you can claim that blockchain never sleeps.
By inducing the blockchain in banks, users can see check their transactions processed within few minutes, actually the minutes it takes to add on a block to the blockchain, no matter what time of the day or week it is. With the help of blockchain, banks also have the chance to exchange money among institutions more safely and rapidly.
The use in the health care system
Health care professionals can leverage blockchain to safely store a patient’s medical details and records for future reference. Whenever a medical record is made and signed, it can be reproduced inside the blockchain, which offers patients with proof of identity and confidence that their records cannot be altered. These types of one’s health records could be transformed into codes and saved on the blockchain with a personal code or something like a password you can say. This keeps the data confidential and only attainable by specific people and hence maintaining the privacy of everything well.
Property usage records maintenance
If you have ever tried to spend some time in your nearby Recorder’s Office, you might have known that the procedure of maintaining property rights is not only extremely burdensome but also inefficient. Currently, a physical document should be offered to a government employee at the localized recording office, where it is by hand inducted into the nation’s central database and public index. Whenever there is a property dispute, and someone claims to own the property, it must be reconciled together with the public index.
This process is not merely costly and time taking but it is often marked along with human error, where every type of inaccuracy creates a gap in tracking the ownership of property and making it less efficient. On the other hand, blockchain has the potential to culminate the requirement for scanning documents and tracking physical files in a recording office of the area.
Used in the supply chain
Suppliers can easily use the blockchain to maintain a record of the origins of products that they have bought. This would offer companies to make sure of the authenticity of their goods, along with health and ethics labels such as “Organic,” “Local,” or “Fair Trade.” As per the reports the food industry is shifting into the utilization of blockchain to enhance the track and security of food all over the farm-to-user pathway. This ensures the smooth running of the procedure along with transparency at every stage.
Used in voting sessions
Giving the votes through the blockchain have the potential to culminate in any type of election fraud. This is not a mere claim but this was tested in November 2018 midway through elections in Virginia. Every single vote would be saved as a separate block on the blockchain, building them 100% impossible to alter anything. The protocols of the blockchain would also scrutinize the transparency in the process of elections and offers the people to maintain the results and send it to the officials instantly.
The two-way approach of the blockchain
It must not be overlooked that the blockchain has a two-way approach. This means many people today have adopted the implementation of the blockchain in their work but many times people are seen to consider blockchain a burden. Yeah, that’s what we come across sometimes. Although the comparison ratio is very low the fact lies within it. Even today, there is a crowd that prefers to avoid the use of this technology preferring the conventional modes. Below, we are discussing the pros and cons of the blockchain. This will offer a non-biased review of the blockchain and will help you as a beginner to clarify your concept. Check them out.
Pros
- Better accuracy by culminating human intervention in the verification
- Decreasing the costs by dropping the third-party verification
- Decentralization turns it difficult to tamper with
- Transactions are safe, private and effective
- Transparent technology
Cons
- Important technology costs concerned with mining bitcoin
- Lower number of transactions every second
- History of its usage in illicit functional activities
- Chances of being hacked
What lies in the future for blockchain technology?
Blockchain was initially proposed as a research project in 1991, whereas later on, the blockchain is today settling up better and more significant after more than 20 years. Same like most of millennials of its age, blockchain has witnessed its fair number of shares in public scrutiny for the last two or three decades. Alongside, businesses all over the globe observing what the technology can do or where it is headed in the next few years. After checking the brief details of its applications, it is not wrong to claim the bright and widespread future of blockchain further.
Closing the story with a positive thought
With several practical uses for the technology which is already being imposed as well as explored, blockchain today is having fame for itself at the current age of twenty-seven. As widely spread technology, in the minds of every next investor in the country, blockchain is there to make business, as well as the government, functions more accurate, efficient, and safe. This is the reason why today it is one of the most widely used methods that have evolved within a few decades. In the upcoming years, it is not wrong to claim that things will going to rebegin in such a way that the only existence of the blockchain will be served all over the globe.