Sure, you have heard about Blockchain, but what exactly is it and how does it work? Why would I even want to use Blockchain anyway? What does it do for me?
Every second of every day, businesses exchange value with suppliers, partners, customers and others. By value, we mean goods, services, money, data and more.
Each exchange of value is a transaction. Successful transactions need to be fast, precise and easily agreed on by parties participating in the transaction.
Blockchain for business provides a way to execute many more of these transactions — a much better way.
What is Blockchain?
You’ve probably encountered a definition like this: “blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger.” It’s easier to understand than it sounds!
Blockchain is literally just a chain of blocks. When we say the words “block” and “chain” in this context, we are actually talking about digital information (the “block”) stored in a public database (the “chain”).
“Blocks” on the blockchain are made up of digital pieces of information. Specifically, they have three parts:
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Blocks store information about transactions, say the date, time, and dollar amount of your most recent transaction with IBM.
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Blocks store information about who is participating in transactions. A block for your IT purchase from IBM would record your name along with IBM.com. Instead of using your actual name, your purchase is recorded without any identifying information using a unique “digital signature,” sort of like a username.
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Blocks store information that distinguishes them from other blocks. Much like you and I have names to distinguish us from one another, each block stores a unique code called a “hash” that allows us to tell it apart from every other block. Let’s say you made your IT purchase on IBM.com, but while it’s in transit, you decide you just can’t resist and need a second one. Even though the details of your new transaction would look nearly identical to your earlier purchase, we can still tell the blocks apart because of their unique codes.
While the block in the example above is being used to store a single purchase, for IBM, the reality is a little different. A single block on the blockchain can actually store up to 1 MB of data. Depending on the size of the transactions, that means a single block can house a few thousand transactions in one datagram.
Thanks for sharing this! What’s your opinion of the best career in computer science where blockchain could be utilized? Authoring algorithms? I’m interested in blockchain as well as computer science and want to make sure I’m looking at all career options as I learn more. I’m currently thinking of web and mobile app programming but not sure that’s what I want to do long term but figure you have to know how to code to do anything in computer science so might as well start there!
Thanks!
Computer science is ideal. Blockchain is a subset of CS. The hot job right now is a Data Scientist.