TAKING A VIEW AT BLOCK CHAIN TECHNOLOGY series 3

FEATURES OF BLOCKCHAIN



As we mentioned in the previous series, blockchain is a distributed, digital ledger. It’s a peer-to-peer network that lies over top of the internet.

Decentralization;

One of the key features of this technology is that it’s a distributed database. It’s decentralized. The database exists in multiple copies across multiple computers. Each of these copies is identical. The computers – or nodes – all form a peer-to-per network, which means there’s no centralized database or server.

Today, organizations maintain centralized databases and servers where all their data is held. This makes these servers a lucrative target for hackers. Blockchain decentralizes data and makes it public but encrypted. Many people believe this makes it tamper-proof.

When a transaction occurs on the blockchain, data about that new transaction must be sent to all computers – nodes – on the network. This means the blockchain stays in sync as one “world wide ledger”. Instead of having multiple conflicting ledgers, there’s a single version of “the truth”.



Digital Signatures;

Another key feature of blockchain is that each transaction

on the blockchain is signed digitally, using public key cryptography. Public key cryptography involves the use of two keys – a public and private key. The public key is used to sign and encrypt the sent message, and anyone can see this key.

However, only the recipient has the private key, which means only the recipient can decrypt the transaction. Public keys are used for more than just encrypting messages: they’re also used to authenticate an identity.



Blocks Of Transactions;

The reason it’s called a blockchain is because it’s literally a chain of blocks.