What is Blockchain?

Before going into the territory of blockchain first I will make you understand a practical scenario where blockchain is a solution.

Think about a time when you want to buy land from someone you need a lawyer to make sure that land belongs to that land sellar and after you buying he should need to update the new landowner as you. In this scenario, you both need a third trusted party to handle your transaction. And it was only a record change in a ledger which was not own or mange by you or your sellar.

This is the problem with the current solution. Now you will ask a question from me, Why we cannot have a database which controls by both of you. The problem in that kind of database solution is how we are going to ensure the trust between the parties in the transaction. That is why the new technology era is moving from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value which is so-called blockchain technology.

It is a method to maintain that record by ourselves instead of trusting someone else to do it for us. Now, let's look at how the blockchain is organized and how does it works.

In the simplest term, it is a timestamped series of immutable records that is managed by a set of computers that are not owned by any single entity and it is a distributed tamperproof database because of its structure. Each of these blocks of data (i.e. block) is secured and bound to each other using cryptographic principles (i.e. chain).

So, what is so special about it and why are we saying that it has industry-disrupting capabilities?

The blockchain network has no central authority — it is the very definition of a democratized system. Since it is a shared and immutable ledger, the information in it is open for anyone and everyone to see. Hence, anything that is built on the blockchain is by its very nature transparent and everyone involved is accountable for their actions.

The three main properties of blockchain are:

decentralization : the information is not stored by one single entity and owned by everyone in the network.

Transparency: the all the transaction are public to all node in the network.

Immutability: Records that entered in to the blockchain cannot tamered.

When we look into the structure of a block is like this. It has three parts.

1. Header

2. Block Data

3. Block Metadata

Block Header:

It contains block number, current block hash, and previous block hash. Block number is an integer starting from 0(the genesis block), and increased by 1 for every new block appended to the blockchain. Current block hash is the hash of all the transactions contained in the current block. previous block hash is a copy of the hash in the previous block.

Block Data:

This section contains a list of transactions arranged in order. It is written when the block is created. These transactions have a rich but straightforward structure.

Block Metadata:

This section contains the time when the block was creation as well as the certificate,public-key, and signature of the creator. Block committer also add the flag of valid/invalid indicator for every transaction.

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