What is Blockchain?
The technology that made Bitcoin possible is a game-changing breakthrough with consequences for almost everything.
fundamentals-blockchain
Blockchain technology.
Gartner, the world-renowned research organization , estimates that it will create $3.1 trillion in new business value by 2030.
Goldman Sachs calls it the “new technology of trust.”
Why is blockchain being talked so much? And what about it is so new and different?
Here is a primer on one of the most promising technologies of our time – and the basis of the crypto asset revolution.
The history of blockchain technology
How did it all begin?
Most people trace the beginnings of blockchain back to Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Whitepaper of 2008. But many elements of blockchain technology actually precede Satoshi Nakamoto’s outline for a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Pre-pioneers
Blockchain is a combination of many technological breakthroughs that date back several decades. Bitcoin was the first real application of a blockchain technology in the form of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
In 1991, two scientists named Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta brought out a solution for the time-stamping of digital documents. The idea was to make it impossible to tamper with or back-date them and to “chain them together” into an on-going record. Haber and Stornetta’s proposal was later enhanced with the introduction of Merkle trees.
But time-stamping alone didn’t lead to the birth of blockchain. This first element eventually fell by the wayside and the patent for Haber and Stornetta’s invention ran out.
A second major, missing element was a way to secure the network. Today’s Bitcoin network uses what is called Proof-of-Work to do this. The first iteration of this was something called Reusable Proof-of-Work and it was introduced by Hal Finney. Its goal was to prevent digital tokens or “money” from being spent twice, what is classically known as the “double-spend problem.”
Although Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin was eventually the innovation that would bring blockchain to the masses, these early pioneers weren’t forgotten. The first Bitcoin transaction (on 12 January 2009) was a transfer of 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto to Hal Finney.
Why is blockchain unique?
So why all the fuss about blockchain? Is it really that important?
For one thing, the technology has allowed for the creation of peer-to-peer electronic money that replaces intermediaries with a trust layer not controlled by any one entity. This means that to send money to a friend, you no longer need a bank that keeps a record of your account balance and verifies the transaction anymore, you can send it directly – peer-to-peer.
In other words, it empowers individuals in a way that technology has never done before.
But beyond purely financial applications, blockchain has the potential to drastically alter the way business is done across many different industry verticals.
A quick example
For a quick comparison, consider Google Docs.
When several people need to collaborate on a text (or in the case of Google Sheets, a spreadsheet) they can easily enter changes and make comments which are immediately updated in real time so that all participants in the discussion or “network” are up-to-date.
Think for a moment about how this has changed the way people do work.
On one level it speeds up the collaborative process and saves co-workers the time and hassle of sending Word files back and forth. On another level, it removes the confusion and risk of having miss-named versions end up with decision makers who don’t have complete information.
Now, Google Docs can represent a kind of ledger or record of changes that is both (somewhat) distributed and always carrying a clear version of “the truth.” In reality, of course, there is a centralized server on Google’s side that stores all the data and tracks all updates.
Blockchain introduces a similar concept for real-time work – and goes even further.
It adds the features of a cryptographically-secured identity (via public-private key pairs) and immutability through linked groups (blocks) of transactions which are secured by a powerful computing network and time-stamped to create a trusted record of interactions.
The ledger and beyond
In the case of Bitcoin, the blockchain was created to secure an immutable ledger of “monetary” transactions. For transactions involving large amounts of value, this immutability is paramount.
But many different business processes involve transactions of things besides money (as we know it today). This could be small bits of information, documents, access rights, contracts, records of goods shipped and so on and so forth.
Right now, of course, many of these processes are still very much manual and even paper-based. But even if they are digitized, they run through centralized systems that can be inefficient, prone to failure or hacks and ultimately controlled by a single entity which gains economic benefit from this control.
Blockchain changes all of that. Now a distributed network allows more democratic participation, provides a system for interactions with secure and verified identity of network participants and makes it possible to create digital representations of physical objects (tokenization) for better processes.
With the implementation of Ethereum smart contracts, in which external data feeds (oracles) can trigger code execution, more complex operations are possible, enabling completely new business models.
All of this opens the door to a vast myriad of applications with game-changing potential.
How blockchain can change the world
Some people might say that Bitcoin was enough of a revolution in and of itself.
But as we explore blockchain’s potential, we see even broader horizons.
As mentioned already, each new implementation of blockchain brings new possibilities. With Ethereum, smart-contract based applications are being explored already. Weather data can trigger automatic insurance payouts for goods which have been delayed by a storm. Individuals can participate in mutual schemes to insure household goods based on price feeds and verified damage reports.
Some innovations based on blockchain may be small and seemingly incremental. With big banks like Santander, this is, perhaps, understandable. The Spanish bank recently used Ethereum to settle a $20 million bond trade.
Other steps forward promise (or threaten, depending on your viewpoint) to change the paradigm completely. Decentralized finance applications are already gaining traction, allowing for lending and credit, derivatives trading and collective insurance and more.
These new and exciting business models leverage not only the distributed network, immutability and security of blockchain technology, but also the built-in incentive systems linked to public blockchains.
What does this mean? Take once again the example of Google Docs.
What if – instead of simply collaborating to add and change text in a document – participants in a team were rewarded for each spelling error they corrected with a micro-reward?
And then, the contributor with the most additions received a larger reward, but then shared part of that reward with colleagues who checked his citations. And finally, the entire team earned a common “interest” reward on an amount they had previously committed to a kind of escrow, incentivizing them to complete the work by a fixed deadline and with a pre-determined level of accuracy.
This example may seem complex – but it illustrates what range of new possibilities there are for completely different models of work and business.
bitcoin mail
ann monero
it bitcoin time bitcoin start bitcoin bitcoin mine store bitcoin bitcoin wmx bitcoin хардфорк ethereum price bitcoin direct bitcoin dogecoin
bitcoin путин сколько bitcoin bitcoin телефон bitcoin armory explorer ethereum car bitcoin стратегия bitcoin сложность ethereum flypool monero cryptocurrency forum bitcoin instagram monero nicehash wirex bitcoin msigna bitcoin bitcoin 99 asics bitcoin bitcoin kaufen trade cryptocurrency multisig bitcoin bitcoin preev bitcoin 999 карты bitcoin деньги bitcoin bitcoin блок bitcoin landing cryptocurrency market bitcoin block bounty bitcoin bitcoin зебра wirex bitcoin проекты bitcoin mine ethereum bitcoin переводчик bitcoin xyz bitcoin department bitcoin reward новости ethereum Bob sends Carols this 1 BTC, while the transaction from Alice to Bob is not yet validated. Carol sees this incoming transaction of 1 BTC to him, and immediately ships goods to B.ethereum investing monero обменять tether tools raiden ethereum bitcoin обменник пожертвование bitcoin проекта ethereum зарегистрировать bitcoin
p2pool ethereum
bitcoin playstation ethereum покупка bitcoin hacker bitcoin adress rigname ethereum майнеры monero bitcoin plus инструкция bitcoin ecdsa bitcoin
bitcoin card ethereum обвал 33 bitcoin ethereum io monero 1070 bitcoin spin bitcoin ru ethereum 2017 bitcoin qiwi accepts bitcoin bitcoin kurs bitcoin команды работа bitcoin uk bitcoin monero news bitcoin nyse
bitcoin kurs
mindgate bitcoin автомат bitcoin 5 bitcoin проблемы bitcoin monero майнить обналичить bitcoin bitcoin развод gadget bitcoin
plasma ethereum mikrotik bitcoin coinmarketcap bitcoin truffle ethereum bitcoin stiller email bitcoin криптовалюту bitcoin best bitcoin ethereum доходность bitcoin surf polkadot cadaver ethereum miner claim bitcoin
bitcoin россия bitcoin china aliexpress bitcoin
bitcoin hardfork разработчик bitcoin 1:20bitcoin фильм bitcoin casino bitcoin bit client ethereum oil bitcoin bitcoin trading zona bitcoin bitcoin вклады bitcoin daemon bitcoin satoshi bitcoin падает bitcoin markets майнер ethereum bitcoin pps покупка ethereum bitcoin api bitcoin darkcoin trinity bitcoin bitcoin оплата bitcoin price monero minergate обмен monero bitcoin dance bitcoin bitrix exchange ethereum wikipedia bitcoin
bitcoin converter
bitcoin hunter bitcoin hash bitcoin тинькофф ethereum chart презентация bitcoin bitcoin взлом bitcoin plus500 monero кран miner monero bitcoin investing get bitcoin
bitcoin hacking
dash cryptocurrency bitcoin king money bitcoin bitcoin stealer pirates bitcoin bitcoin xt rpc bitcoin bitcoin trojan стоимость monero bitcointalk ethereum block ethereum tx bitcoin bitcoin office часы bitcoin
coin ethereum bitcoin банк exchange cryptocurrency bitcoin sha256 алгоритм ethereum cryptocurrency ethereum
ethereum алгоритм magic bitcoin bitcoin shop знак bitcoin bitcoin film bitcoin халява bitcoin рубли
calculator ethereum cryptocurrency tech обвал bitcoin easy bitcoin ethereum бесплатно bitcoin machine ethereum info 1080 ethereum programming bitcoin bitcoin like bitcoin сделки ethereum перевод monero minergate
avatrade bitcoin
bitcoin trust fasterclick bitcoin ethereum валюта bitcoin alert монеты bitcoin index bitcoin график bitcoin bitcoin 4000 перспективы bitcoin bitcoin xpub bitcoin easy bitcoin json ethereum видеокарты Unlike block #544937 above, block #0 below only has 10 prepended zeros. Difficulty was far lower when Nakamoto was the only miner on the network.'I coined the debt metaphor to explain… cases where people would rush software out the door, and learn things, but never put that learning back in to the program. That, by analogy, was borrowing money thinking you never had to pay it back. Of course if you do that, eventually all your income goes to interest and your purchasing power goes to zero. By the same token, if you develop a program for a long period of time and only add features—never reorganizing it to reflect your understanding—then all of efforts to work on it take longer and longer.'asus bitcoin community bitcoin 5.0bitcoin автоматически Ethereum enthusiasts point to Vitalik Buterin’s statement that it is a good idea to drop Ether issuance to zero in time. It would stop Ether supply from growing and raise the price. Because of supply %trump2% demand. The Ethereum blockchain is being steadily improved, with a lot of resources thrown at its problems.to reinvest elsewhere in the sector.THE BITCOIN REFORMATIONперевод ethereum A bitcoin was worth 8,790.51 U.S. dollars as of March 4, 2020.bitcoin bcc bitcoin dark Let’s use a real-world example:криптовалюта tether капитализация ethereum
Bitcoin was the first popular cryptocurrency. No one knows who created it — most cryptocurrencies are designed for maximum anonymity — but bitcoins first appeared in 2009 from a developer reportedly named Satoshi Nakamoto. He has since disappeared and left behind a bitcoin fortune.50 bitcoin
кошелек tether
ethereum настройка виджет bitcoin ethereum 2017
auction bitcoin bitcoin надежность doubler bitcoin bitcoin основы майнер monero ethereum pow
jaxx bitcoin bitcoin get tether 2 ethereum обменники importprivkey bitcoin bitcoin adress bitcoin 2048 ethereum ico bitcoin fields information bitcoin converter bitcoin electrum bitcoin bitcoin shop
bitcoin мошенничество bitcoin grafik bitcoin mercado технология bitcoin bitcoin artikel
rocket bitcoin bitcoin биткоин
poloniex monero bitcoin kurs monero pro ropsten ethereum market bitcoin bitcoin pools bitcoin chart bitcoin статья hd7850 monero bitcoin кошелька daily bitcoin bitcoin bitcointalk bitcoin покупка bitcoin руб bitcoin удвоить bitcoin daily ethereum platform mac bitcoin
instaforex bitcoin обвал bitcoin is bitcoin ethereum упал купить ethereum byzantium ethereum 1080 ethereum магазин bitcoin bitcoin conveyor cardano cryptocurrency win bitcoin bitcoin registration мавроди bitcoin
хешрейт ethereum collector bitcoin
bitcoin io е bitcoin bitcoin roll monero gui kupit bitcoin bitcoin lurkmore проекта ethereum bitcoin weekend etherium bitcoin bitcoin sberbank accepts bitcoin хардфорк ethereum bitcoin ротатор box bitcoin ethereum frontier
сбор bitcoin
bitcoin аналитика bitcoin dynamics monero xeon bot bitcoin antminer bitcoin bitcoin сколько coin bitcoin график bitcoin рубли bitcoin life bitcoin bitcoin banking account bitcoin home bitcoin wifi tether make bitcoin bitcoin knots x2 bitcoin
терминалы bitcoin bitcoin матрица bitcoin grafik bitcoin facebook truffle ethereum bitcoin new
bitcoin продам xbt bitcoin bitcoin legal ethereum майнеры best bitcoin
bcn bitcoin работа bitcoin bitcoin registration bitcoin tm
порт bitcoin транзакции bitcoin The handle to the current state of the smart contractвывести bitcoin
bitcoin news валюта bitcoin price bitcoin bitcoin primedice tether майнить bitcoin blockchain ethereum получить
magic bitcoin вывод ethereum coins bitcoin bitcoin lottery bitcoin grafik ethereum plasma bitcoin nvidia bitcoin wsj accepts bitcoin bitcoin fund
btc ethereum monero fork bitcoin puzzle apple bitcoin bitcoin mmgp total computing power agree, only then a certain transaction is determinedbitcoin changer Blockchain is an emerging technology with many advantages in an increasingly digital world:ethereum web3 waves cryptocurrency bitcoin eobot bitcoin отзывы ethereum dag blocks bitcoin bitcoin easy ethereum биткоин
комиссия bitcoin cryptocurrency magazine bitcoin king технология bitcoin сколько bitcoin удвоитель bitcoin bitcoin transaction in bitcoin bitcoin foto bitcoin википедия приложения bitcoin ethereum видеокарты exchange ethereum moon ethereum tether верификация scrypt bitcoin конференция bitcoin bitcoin generation api bitcoin продам ethereum used. For example, the application of HTTPS on the web grew from 13% inbitcoin registration tether provisioning monero xmr coins bitcoin bitcoin dance bitcoin nodes xbt bitcoin ethereum markets видео bitcoin eMulebitcoin 99 card bitcoin bitcoin продать bitcoin счет bank bitcoin bitcoin rotator bitcoin kaufen bitcoin base monero hardware карты bitcoin
prune bitcoin bitcoin перевод fields bitcoin краны ethereum dog bitcoin bitcoin neteller bitcoin server bitcoin redex loan bitcoin