Mini Crypto Program Part 3 || "Understanding of Blockchain" || by @gifty1

Hi there everyone,

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I am in the person of Gifty with the username @gifty1 and I am here to participate in the mini-crypto.
This is my first time and I am actually very excited to be joining the class by
@liasteem, I hope she will be satisfied with my input and the amount of effort I put into the assignment task she has provided us.

Without talking much I will now make my entry for this task.

What do you know about blockchain?

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A blockchain can be described as a technology that looks to function as a type of safehouse for storing information.
But on this type of storing device, the moment the information is entered into the blockchain it can no longer be edited or manipulated.
When I say it can no longer be manipulated I mean the information cannot be changed, deleted or even edited.
Once it is recorded in the database of the blockchain nothing can be done about it any longer.
It works like a decentralized system where the technology is open and information van be seen by other users.
Just like the steemit decentralized system, a users information can be seen by other users but it cannot be accessed or changed by other users.
This is how the blockchain technology functions

There are different type of blockchain and they are

• Public blockchain
• Private blockchain
• Hybrid blockchain
• Consortium blockchain

More will be talked about the type of blockchains in the next question.

Describe one type of blockchain!

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In this question I will talk about the private blockchain.

When we say something is private it means the amount of information you can actually get about that thing outside or somewhere else is very limited.
This brings us to the private blockchain technology.

In a private blockchain before a user can have access to an information regarding the blockchain he or she will need a special pass or access has to be granted to him or her.
Remember I said a blockchain is decentralized in the beginning of my work?
Well I very well feel like the private blockchain looks to deviate from that term as the private blockchain is not decentralized, which means unlike the public blockchain information is a private blockchain is only accessible by a few people or by the people who are involved in the blockchain.

On this type of blockchain it is only a few people who are allowed or who participate in this blockchain.
This makes it more efficient and faster than the
The direct opposite of decentralization is centralization, so this means once the blockchain is not decentralized then it is centralized.
So this means that information on a private blockchain is very much accessible and changeable by the people or person who is supposed to manage this type of blockchain.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the type of blockchain you choose!

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Advantages of private blockchain.

Transactions on this type of blockchain are faster
Because the amount of people who use this type of blockchain are few, it is easily managed and maintained making transactions very fast as compared to the public type of blockchain as it has a lot of people using their blockchain.
This generally means that the amount of transactions that are performed or carried out on these blockchain are limited thus there is no pressure on the blockchain thus everything runs smoothly and very fast.

The amount of energy used is small
The private blockchain as I explained earlier allows a few people onto their platform and thus they generally need little amount of energy to operate because they have a limited number of users.

It is private
I know that most people prefer that a blockchain is transparent and that information can be see but there are a few people who want to keep their things very private and thus this technology is for them

Disadvantages of private blockchain

It is not transparent
The private blockchain is a blockchain which is private which means if you not in their blockchain you cannot see what is happening or you cannot access their information.

It defeats the purpose of blockchain and decentralization

Blockchain was created with the purpose to facilitate decentralization, but once the private blockchain exists it means these type of blockchain is centralized and the purpose of transparency is not there.

It is easily prone to hacks

Since these type of blockchain is private, it means the information is not transparent and once information on a blockchain can be accessed to the extent of it being able to be modified or even deleted it means that bad people can easily hack or manipulate the system.

Visit Blockchain Demo, and what did you learn from that page? (screenshot required)

In this question I will be visiting the blockchain demo here and talking about some of it's features.

First of all to do that I opened the blockchain demo site on google here

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After opening the blockchain demo I realized that the colour of the page is green and but when the number of the block is changed on the first block the colour of some of the pages will change.

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After the change when you change it again the colors still remain the same.

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After opening the page I realized that the block numbers are all different as the all represent different blocks on the blockchain.

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When you click on hash; as indicated by the arrow it takes you to a different page where a user can search and find for hashes on the blockchain.

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When you click on tokens as indicated by the arrow you will be taken to a page where you shown some information about the block mined, the nonce and also for how much the token was mined from which user and to which user as you can see in the screenshot above.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using blockchain technology!

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The following are the advantages of blockchain**

A blockchain is decentralized

The reason blockchains were created in the first place was because of decentralization so that we will be able to manage our own affairs and the affairs of the user will not be placed in the hands of a central body.

A blockchain is transparent

Once information is input into a blockchain system, it is can be seen by all other users who are involved in the blockchain.
Because of this transparency each users can see what the other user has input into the blockchain but this information is totally safe on the blockchain

A blockchain is secure

I have stated that the blockchain system is transparent but still very secured from hackers.
I must agree that there are other types of blockchain which are nit too secure because they are private but on the ones that are not private and information cannot be changed once entered is very secure and nit vulnerable to attacks.

Transactions are cost effective on a blockchain

The blockchain system looks o connect users all over the world directly when they are making transactions on the blockchain, thus the fees are very low.
And we have to remember that there are no third parties involved so the fess are very affordable.

Disadvantages of blockchain

Once a wrong transaction is made it cannot be reversed

When a user makes a wrong transaction to a wrong address, it cannot be rectified.
Remember that we said any information any information entered into the blockchain cannot be changed so this means the funds will be lost.

Scalability

A blockchain allows new users into it's system at anytime so as a result the system is mostly very busy because most of the participants are busy mining.

Cost of mining is relatively expensive
Not all users on the blockchain can be miners as it is very expensive to buy the machines which are used to mine.
And there is a cost of the power which will be used as the machine are mining.

Conclusion

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This has been an interesting study for me as I have been able to learn a lot about the blockchain whilst doing some research whilst doing the task.
I have been able to learn that a blockchain is simply a technology that stores piece of information.
I have also learnt that there are 4 types of blockchain.

I have also learnt that mining on the blockchain comes at a very high cost thus a user needs to be prepared if he wants to mine on the blockchain.

I was also able to explore the blockchain demo and explored a few features on its homepage.

Thank you