If to think of blockchain, sometimes pop out in my mind about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Etherium. No doubt blockchain it is a technology that strives Bitcoin in becoming first successful cryptocurrencies implemented with blockchain.

Is it just that?

How about the back of the implementation which the blockchain technology itself?

The blockchain is a technology where the data collection stored in decentralizing storage/ node. What it means, instead of storing the data in the single node, the data will be stored in many nodes like the Peer-to-Peer network. Nodes are like your pc or any host that take part in the blockchain network. One of the closest examples is when you are using BitTorrent.

Example : if I want to download an mp3 file call Fight song by Rachel Platten, at my client side it will fetch a chunk of data from multiple nodes until I able to download all the file and got my mp3 song.

Essentially, you and your friend’s laptop or computer could be the node and these nodes will have a copy of the data/block in the same blockchain network! But wait, our data will be published publicly in blockchain network? what if some information needs privacy, for example, medical record or finance record. Well, don’t worry because the data store in blockchain will be a bunch of random alphanumerics.For your information Bitcoin is known as public distribution ledgers due to this concept.

Let’s continues,

Blockchain in fact a new technology, yet, the theory on how it works and operate have been introducing since 1991 in an article titled "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document". In the article Haber has introduced a concept of how digital document/information should be transferred over a network by ensuring the receiver notified it is a same digital document or has been modified.

There are two main components that driven this technology successfully :

1.Hash

All data in the blockchain itself are encrypted using hashing concept in Cryptography. The original data is converted into alphanumeric instead of storing in original format by using a specific algorithm and will always be unique.The ways its work is by performing a mathematical process (algorithm) to any data type like a single letter, a word, a sentence, or an entire paragraph and produces output will always be the same length or fixed. This concept what make blockchain technology more secure.

why?

That is because if someone is trying to modify the data, the receiver will be notified that the hash values is different from the original during sending the digital document and denied it. It is same as what Harbe said in his article. Technically, there are a few types of hash method which is SHA-1, MD5, and SHA-256.

Example of hash value before and after the hash:

Your String: Hello
Hash method : MD5
Your Hash: 8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7

Your String: hello123
Hash method : MD5
Your Hash: f30aa7a662c728b7407c54ae6bfd27d1

If you notice both examples are different sentence BUT the hash values however still same length or in another word it is fixed length.

2.Link

What is this link all about? In blockchain network data is called “Block”.

The block contains 3 main part :

Relevant data: Name, Email or transaction value.

Hash value: The hash value of relevant data.

Previous hash value: Hash value of a previous block or previous neighbor.

The block is linking to another block, a picture of a real situation like women’s necklace or your metal chain at home, but this is virtual. Each block has been tagged with previous block hash value, which means, every new block register in the network will know hash values of the previous neighbor data/block.

This makes blockchain even more cool technology! because theoretically, if every block knows one another and if any altered block was done by a hacker, the hash values will change and the other block will notice a will not be accepted in the blockchain network and to be considered invalid.

So it is impossible for anybody to tamper with the block and try to falsify it, because if they do! they have to tamper with all the block in the blockchain network.

Example: if a new block added to the chain, and then suddenly there a hacker trying to tamper with the data, this block will definitely change to the different hash value after the tamper (hashing concept). But, the hacker have issues where the hash value before the tamper already copy to another block, so they will have to change the neighbor block too and when they do, they also have to change the other neighbor block and this will keep going on in order to make the falsify data appear legit, which is almost impossible.

It is like when you neighbor notice someone suspicious try to impersonate YOU, of courses they will notice , because they already recognize and know how your face looks like. Right? So the imposter has to convince them that you are the new owner, then need to convince the rest of the neighbor until they all agree, which does not make any sense at all and ridiculous.

How about the first block or initial block in the blockchain network?

Well, this block they call it Genesis Block, remember I wrote before this, that each block has hash value of the previous block? Genesis does not relate to any block since it is the first of its kind in the network and usually the first block is hardcoded and logically nobody going to mess with it in the first place. Blockchain implemented based this two main concept and produce an incorruptible or immutable technology.

So how it this concept been implemented in Bitcoin or another blockchain application?

That will be my next article, stay tuned guys! Salute!

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