It is in human nature to record each and everything that we see and do. Data or information can be recorded in many ways. Earliest form of data recorded is rock painting. Then we slowly shifted towards wood, leather paper and many other things on which we could write and save the data for the future references. As it is a digital era, we store data in databases, that too in the form of table. Blockchain is also one kind of technology through which we can store data securely.
Blockchain is a decentralized way storing data in which it does not have any central administrator to control and manipulate the data. As the name describes itself, "Blockchain" simply means chain of blocks which are linked to each other. Each block in the chain is used to. The block also contains the hash value of the data stored in it, so stored data is secure in blockchains. In this post we will learn everything about blockchain. How it can be a leading technology for storing vast data?
How Blockchain technology works?
As we have came to know that, to store data securely, the blockchains are used. The concept of blockchain was first introduced in the year 1992. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta were the first individuals to describe the concept of Blockchain. In 2009, Japanese person by the name Satoshi Nakamoto was the first person to use Bitcoin and he created Bitcoin using blockchain.
Blockchain technology offers the special character which makes it very secure as compared to the databases. Blockchain is a distributed ledger which anyone can use. It is the decentralized system so we can say that it does not have any single administrator.
ALSO READ: How blockchains are different from database?
What does each block in blockchain consist of?
Each block in the chain consist three main components:-
The data.
Hash of the block.
Hash of the previous block.
The data that is stored inside the block depends upon what kind of blockchain it is. For example, the bitcoin blockchain has blocks that store the details of the sender and the receiver.
Why Blockchain is hard to tamper?
As we know that each block in the Blockchain contains the hash value of itself and the hash value of the previous block, so each block is linked to each other. A hash is just like fingerprint, it is unique and it identifies the block and its content. When the block is created, the hash value for that block is also created. If we change the content of the block then the hash of the block also changes.
The block also contains the hash of the previous block, so if we change the data of one block then the hash value of every blocks in the chain will also change. So tampering data in blockchain is quite difficult.
But modern computers are very fast and they can calculate the hash values of every block before they are changed, so to counter this problem the blockchain has one mechanism called proof-of-work. It is the mechanism which slows down the creation of new block. So the mechanism of hashing combined with proof-of-work makes blockchain technology very secure.
Another reason what makes blockchain very secure is that it is distributed. The blockchain is distributed among all the members of the network. Each one has the copy of blockchain, so if anyone tampers the blockchain then it will be sent to all the members. They then check whether the blocks are same or they have been changed.
Where can we use the Blockchain technology?
There are many fields in which we can use blockchain system:-
Election:- Casting vote through papers or EVM's is not that reliable. So we can use blockchain to collect citizens data securely and it will be hard to tamper the data recorded. It will also be very transparent and neat.
Banking:- Banks use papers and computers to store customers data. Important papers can be lost very easily and data from the computer can be changed too. Using blockchains we can record all the transactions of every customer properly.
Food Industry:- We can use blockchain to track food supply. When the food is exported to other countries it will hard to track the details of the food. With blockchain the details of the food can be tracked very easily.
Blockchain can be used to track of goods and shipping.
Insurance companies can also implement blockchain.
We can store our own data securely.
Blockchains are widely used to create cryptocurrencies. The most famous crypto Bitcoin was made using blockchain technology.
The future of Blockchain
The concept of blockchain has gained lot of popularity since it was first used to create bitcoin. Many big companies such as IBM are working intensively on Blockchain technology. Blockchain has also created high paying job for many people who know about blockchain. Traditional databases need to be replaced sometime in the future and It is believed that blockchain may be the better substitution for table based databases.