What is Blockchain?

Through Blockchain one can digitally establish ownership of currency, objects and data.  Like a regular transaction ledger, Blockchain is a digital record of a transaction. The transaction can include anything like a movement of money, purchase, movement of goods, service, data or anything that involves value. Information stored in a Blockchain is secure as it is difficult for anyone to add, delete or make changes once the transaction is initiated. Blockchain applications are totally decentralized and each of the transactions is time stamped.

The most well known is cryptocurrency like Bitcoins and Ethereum. Blockchain-based applications include any business transaction. For example; Business order tracking, Supply chain, Banking and Finance, E-learning, Healthcare, Online shopping portals, Insurance, Travel, Music, Renewable energy, Contract validation and so on.

How does Blockchain work?

When a new transaction or an edit to an existing transaction comes in to a blockchain, generally a majority of the nodes within a blockchain implementation must execute algorithms to evaluate and verify the history of the individual blockchain block that is proposed. If a majority of the nodes come to a consensus that the history and signature is valid, the new block of transactions is accepted into the ledger and a new block is added to the chain of transactions. If a majority does not concede to the addition or modification of the ledger entry, it is denied and not added to the chain. This distributed consensus model is what allows blockchain to run as a distributed ledger without the need for some central, unifying authority saying what transactions are valid and (perhaps more importantly) which ones are not.