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Given that Markethive coin MHV is about to be launched onto the new Cardano Blockchain I thought this article from Coin Sutra would be of interest to many of yu with enquring minds.
By this time, you must have heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
You must have also heard about “blockchain”- the technology underlying these cryptocurrencies.
Though this term has been used for decades, it’s now becoming very popular with the recent crypto boom.
Many big corporations and venture capitalists are betting billions of dollars on “the blockchain”.
This may look like something that only tech-savvy bankers and IT professionals can understand, but I would like to break protocol and give you a simpler explanation of “blockchain” than any other explanation I’ve ever heard before…
Note: This article is part of our Blockchain series. Do scroll to the bottom for more articles in this series.
Let’s try to understand this with a simple example:
Consider a special Google spreadsheet which is shared by every computer in the world and is connected to the internet. Every time a transaction happens, it gets recorded onto a row of this spreadsheet.
Anyone with a mobile device or computer can connect via the internet and can access the spreadsheet. Anyone can view and add a transaction to this spreadsheet, but the spreadsheet doesn’t allow anyone to edit the information which is already there.
This is basically a blockchain.
Isn’t it simple?
The same way that this spreadsheet has “rows”, a blockchain has “blocks”.
A block is a collection of data. And each piece of data is added to the blockchain by connecting one block after another in a chronological way, much in the same way a row of a spreadsheet follows another row.
And this series of connected blocks one after another makes it a chain of blocks (i.e. a blockchain).
So here’s the summary: A blockchain is a global online database which anyone anywhere with an internet connection can use. Because it exists on the internet, it is “decentralized”, meaning the blockchain ledger is shared among all computers around the world, not in one central location.
And this is why Bitcoin is unique.
Blockchain’s very first and most famous application is Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer digital currency for the modern, digital age.
Bitcoin is created and held on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
Unlike traditional money, you can send Bitcoin money to anyone and anywhere without seeking permission from banks or governments.
Bitcoin’s blockchain doesn’t care whether you are a human or a machine. Thousands of Bitcoin nodes on the blockchain are equally able to verify the legitimacy of payments. That’s why there is no need for any third party intermediaries like banks.
