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. Actually, 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, that is copied umpteen number of times across some type of computer network. Now, imagine worldoftechnicalanalysis.com was created so smartly that it regularly updates the spreadsheet alone. This is a broad overview 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 permit the database to be stored at any single location. The records inside it possess genuine public attribute and may be verified very easily. As there’s no centralised version of the records, unauthorised users haven’t any methods to manipulate with and corrupt the data. The Blockchain distributed database is simultaneously hosted by millions 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 a good idea to discuss 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 take their sweet time to go through it, before they send back the revised copy. In this approach, one needs to wait till receiving the return copy to start to see the changes made to the document. This happens because the sender is locked out from making corrections till the recipient is done with the editing and sends the document back. Contemporary databases don’t allow two owners access exactly the same record as well. This is how banks maintain balances of their clients or account-holders.
In contrast to the set practice, Google docs allow both the parties to access exactly the same document at the same time. Moreover, it also allows to view an individual version of the document to both of these simultaneously. As being a shared ledger, the Google Docs also acts as a shared document. The distributed part only becomes relevant when the sharing involves multiple users. The Blockchain technology is, in ways, an extension of this concept. However, you should point out here that the Blockchain isn’t designed to share documents. Rather, it is just an analogy, which will help to have clear-cut idea concerning this cutting-edge technology.
Salient Blockchain features
Blockchain stores blocks of information across the network, which are identical. By virtue of the feature:
The data or information can’t be controlled by any single, particular entity.
There can’t be no single failure point either.
The data is hold in a public network, which ensures absolute transparency in the overall procedure.
The data stored inside it cannot be corrupted.
Demand for Blockchain developers
As mentioned earlier, Blockchain technology has a very high application in the world of finance and banking. Based on 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 such monetary transactions. It was the invention of the GUI (Graphical INTERFACE), which facilitated the common man to gain access to computers in type of desktops. Similarly, the wallet application is the most common GUI for the Blockchain technology. Users utilize the wallet to buy things they need using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.