What is a Blockchain?
A decentralized computation and information sharing platform enables multiple authoritative domains, who do not trust each other, cooperate, coordinate, and collaborate in a rational decision-making process.
Important keywords
- Decentralized
- Computation and Information sharing platform
- Multiple Authoritative Domains
- Cooperate, Coordinate and Collaborate
- Rational Decision-making Process
The important aspect of Blockchain is that we can combine multiple authoritative domains that do not trust each other. They can come to a common platform to cooperate, coordinate and collaborate in the application development process at the business intelligence process.
Format definition of Blockchain
A blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.
An explanation of individual keywords:
- Open (accessible to all)
- Distributed or Decentralized (no single party control)
- Efficient (fast and scalable)
- Verifiable (everyone can check the validity of information)
- Permanent (the information is persistent)
A detailed explanation of individual keywords:
- Open: Whatever information we are putting inside the Blockchain should be accessible to all. So, everyone will be able to observe and validate that particular information.
- Distributed ledger: Keeping a copy of the public ledger to every individual party in the platform and communicating with each other.
- Efficiently: We need to ensure the efficiency of the information and the protocol’s efficiency, so the protocol needs to be fast and scalable. It should scale up with the number of client requests and the number of participants in the network.
- Verifiable: Everyone in the network should be able to check the validity of the information.
- Permanent: The information that we are entering inside the Blockchain is persistent or sometimes calls it tamper-proof. Once we have inserted information inside a Blockchain, we will not change that information or update it in the future time. If we want to update that transaction, we have to insert a new transaction saying that the old transaction is invalid and this is the new transaction. But whatever has been already committed that committed transactions will never be able to roll back, or someone will not be able to change that particular transaction.
References:
- NPTEL lecture series on Blockchains Architecture, Design and Use Cases by Prof. Sandip Chakraborty, IITK.
- https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-blockchain
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
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