Even if you’re hiding under a rock, I am sure you’d have heard of:
• Blockchain
• Bitcoins
• Web 3.0
• NFTs
• DAOs, and all that jazz before right?
So many buzzwords. It’s time to break them down.
Blockchain 101: where it all begins
- What is Blockchain Technology?
The easiest way to explain it is by saying that:
Blockchain is a database that is not managed by a single company.
Instead, it’s managed by multiple people, making it a peer-to-peer database and thereby, making it decentralized.
1. But why do we need something this complex?
To build trust. Let’s see the following eg.: Imagine some friend of yours, traveling around the world, asks you $10. You say yes and …
- The best Use Case
You jump to your Bank’s account, and make the transfer.
You text your friend saying that you wired him the money and that he’ll get it soon.
But, have you seen what happened behind the scenes?
- Behind the scenes
What happened was that you relied on your bank as the mediator of that transaction.
The moment you click “OK”, the Bank registers the Amount and Date and places it in their internal register stating:
“You transferred X amount to Y person the day Z”
- The problem
Wiring money from Person X to Person Y has a cost.
What does this cost cover?
The mediator’s infrastructure costs.
Because: anytime you wire money to someone, the Bank has to keep paying for their servers power, human power, money costs, etc
Wait a sec…
- Understanding the problem
“But, if I handle $5 to my friend, it costs me nothing.
Why can’t I replicate the same online?
Why can’t I send it directly to my friend?”
Because: most of the time we don’t wire money just to our friends.
We buy things too from random people…
- Trust issues
And that’s why you need Banks and other middle entities: to build trust in every transaction we make and mediate each one of those transactions.
Whatever if it is to buy stuff from the internet or make life insurance.
And this is where Blockchain gets in …
- The solution
Blockchain was built to serve as a mediator in every transaction we make: to build trust.
And how?
By keeping a record of every transaction organized in “blocks” and all the “blocks” in a “chain”.
But is it just about wiring money?
Not really …
- New Use Cases
So what can we do with Blockchain other than wiring money?
Some new use cases are:
• NFT marketplaces
• Personal identity security
• Secure sharing of medical data
• Supply chain and logistics monitoring
• Anti-money laundering tracking system
Wrap up
- Wrapping up
As mentioned before, the Blockchain isn’t a server running by one single company, instead, it runs on multiple PCs of multiple people.
People spread across the world.
It keeps a record of every transaction, making it possible to track every transaction …
And how do we know every transaction is real?
By keeping every “block” in a “chain” of blocks that are processed and verified.
But who runs the verification? How can we trust it?
And that, that’s the topic for our next thread….