Crypto Academy Season 3 Beginners' course - Homework Post for Task 2: Blockchain, Decentralization, Block explorer

Hello people, welcome to my blog, I hope you're all good as I'm good. Well today I'll be writing about the Blockchain, Decentralization and Block explorer as part of my assignment. Having gone through the Wonderful lecture given by @yousafharoonkhan, I've been really enlightened and now I'm here to answer the set questions from the lecture received.

What is *Blockchain?* This was one of the first few words i came across as a newbie to the crytoverse. I heard someone say the words and i was like, this doesn't make any sense at all how can a block have a chain, i actually thought he was talking about building blocks, well I had thought wrong.

When you write out the word b-l-o-c-k-c-h-a-i-n and then try to define the word from barely looking you'll be close to the meaning of this word. Literally, it means block and chain which connect the block. But thus block is not the normal building block or any other block you know of, its a computerized type of block. It's a block of information, gathered information, that are connected by a chain, in the sense that these blocks are related to one another. When one block is filled up, the system creates another block, linking the old and new block. The Blockchain serves as an online ledger, which can store numerous pieces of information and can be accessed by different people all over the world in the same way it was made. All these pieces of information are stored in the Blockchain which is decentralized.

Well as far as I know, for everything good, there are always some who'll like to exploit the good deeds for their selfish desires but there are always measures taken to restrict the actions of the so called selfish ones. The same applies to the Blockchain, there are hackers trying to manipulate the systems but there are some set down measures to prevent this from happening.

The single most important step taken towards preventing the actions of hackers can be enveloped in one word *Decentralized*. Looking at the word, you'll easily find out that it's made up of two key component: De and centralize. One can easily say it's simply to remove a thing from the center and this is quite close to the dictionary definition;

Thats just the simple, yet all-inclusive definition. In the crytoverse, all information stored there are decentralized in the sense that there are many computers acting as servers, also known as nodes which all contains pieces of information spread across each of them, thus preventing a single computer from having too much power/information there by reducing the actions of hackers. There's also the fact that each individual gets to have a say on the matters of the Blockchain. Everyone has equal power on the Blockchain and can perform actions independently of another person, every user is connected to one another but there's no center making sure that each individual is independent of the other.

Data is a major component of the Blockchain, otherwise why was it called a 'Blockchain' in the first place. Blockchain contain data, but what kind of data is stored on the Blockchain; well it's simply transaction details that occured on the Blockchain, from personal info, to the details of the sender of an asset and the recipient of the asset and also the time and size of the asset.

Everything needs identification or has to be identified. We can simply say that *Hash* consists of a unique string of numbers and letters used to identify a particular block. This hash is specific to a block as like our fingerprints are specific to a particular person. This helps to easily identify the blocks and also to keep them orderly. This is also another component of the Block.

This can be called the *chain* of the 'blockchain' how? I'll explain. You know when a block is filled, a new one has to be created by the system so as to continue storage process. After a new one is created, you'll have to wonder, how does get to be connected to the previous ones well it's through this *previous hash*. When a block is created z a specific hash is given to it, now when it gets filled up, a new one is created with it's own hash, but has an added stuff, the hash of the previous block. This now makes the old block connected to the new one and the process continues when another block is created thereby creating a chain of blocks, in a decentralized manner of course.