In 2008, an anonymous named Satoshi Nakamoto published a whitepaper, introducing layman- a novel approach of sending money between two parties. The whitepaper introduced the new concept, “Bitcoin”, where the sender can transact money to the receiver without the interplay of any financial intermediaries.
Since Bitcoin utilized some basic ideas of cryptography, it got placed under the category of cryptocurrency. Initially, the main motivation behind Bitcoin was for money related exchanges, however, specialists and researches understood the immense possibilities of the technology that it can bring in for several industrial platforms. They made note that foundational technology can be reaped to fabricate many robust and secure applications that can reform the manner in which current frameworks work.
Soon, the underlying technology got titled as Blockchain (named after its working protocol) and was put to action for seeking different solutions. Today, Blockchain Technology is far heading the speed of internet making themselves an undeniable application tool.
Blockchain — A Real World Analogy
For instance, let’s assume that we live in a city which comes with a parking ground with the capacity to leave 300 vehicles at one time. Imagine this parking ground has a gate which stays bolted and is possibly opened when a vehicle moves in or out. Let’s see this parking space from different perspectives now.
1) The rental cost of a single parking space will be definitely high as this parking ground is constructed and owned by a private body. As every maintenance and support cost of the parking ground is born by the proprietor organization, they are likely to charge a huge sum from the vehicle owner to lease the space.
2) One cannot guarantee the security of vehicles parked in the ground as it’s quite easy for the criminals to break the gateway and take away properties such as wheels or fuels. Vehicle security always remains uncertain here.
3) The limit is yet another breakpoint here. What if the number of cars in your city exceeds 300? Soon, the parking ground will be inefficient to occupy every vehicle. This will demand the interplay of another private organization to construct a new parking spot.
4) You have to trust the owner for the parking ground as you believe they are in charge of dealing with vehicle security. But, how far the owner is reliable, is a matter of concern.
5) We can simply say the parking ground as a centralized platform as every car come within a single boundary.
Now let’s take another instance.
Envision that there are 300 houses in your city and every 300 houses have two-car porch/garages each. To simply the concept, let’s assume that each house has only one vehicle, leaving one porch unused. Suppose the house owners choose to lease the car porch to any individual who needs parking in the city, the model makes it worth to park 300 vehicles or more (in case house owners move out of the city for a while), giving much ease to the inhabitants.
Now like the above, let’s dissect this situation as well.
1) The cost of renting extra garage space will be comparatively less compared to big parking ground. This is because, the house owners haven’t built the second car porch for leasing purposes, therefore the expense of upkeep them is close to nothing.
2) Unlike in the early situation, criminals cannot easily breakdown the gateway of each car porch or garage to gain admittance to cars. Each vehicle is securely placed in different garages, ensuring higher level security comparing to common parking ground.
3) With house owners moving in and out of the city, the limit of occupying the vehicle is also overruled here. Furthermore, as the number of houses increases in the city, eventually, the space to keep more vehicles will also continue expanding. In short, this situation behaves more scalar comparing to others.
4) Trustless: Since, no centralized body to oversee the circulated parking spots, we can assume that there will be surely a set of guidelines followed by the house owners while renting their parking space.
5) Decentralized as these parking spots are spread all through the city.
The above instance is how the Blockchain Technology characterizes. The Bitcoin’s foundation technology comes decentralized, scalar, transparent, reliant and lesser expensive. There is no interplay of middlemen or other additional charges, offering less expensive transactions. Secondly, as data and information are stored in different places(blocks), hampering the stored data becomes quite impossible and challenging. One cannot alter the data without breaking the high security (algorithm) encrypted in the block, also some are permissioned or private blockchains. Only the participants who have access to the private network can see and alter the data. This makes the Blockchain Technology highly reliant for industries such as Supply Chain and Logistics, Defense and Securities, Medical, Automobiles, and highly beneficial for services like Document Verification, Notarization and so on.
How Blockchain works are quite interesting. To simplify the concept, Blockchain is a chain of blocks. And these blocks within the blockchain is tied to the other via hashes. In case, if the information stored in one block gets altered, hashes should be recalculated for all the accompanying blocks. The estimation of hash is called mining.
Here are a few real examples of Blockchain Technology. The list is collected from different industry segments like blockchain in supplychain, entertainment, trade, health and so on. Have a look:
1. Spotify: Considered as biggest breakthroughs in the musical industry. Spotify provides a decentralized database to better connect artists and licensing agreements, simply changing the way ecosystem interacts.
2. Warranteer: A blockchain technology that offers a seamless experience to consumers via offering easy access to their product purchase data. The application also aids in getting the services for malfunctioning products.
3. Bitcar: A blockchain technology initiated platform, provisioning fractional ownership in the best performing asset class - say collectible exotic cars.
4. IBM Blockchain: A breakthrough to supply chain management. The Blockchain application upkeeps supply chain’s transparency over shared records of ownership, location of parts and products in real-time.
5. Blocktick: Envision in generating an immutable and independently verifiable record in Blockchain. The blockchain-anchored system instantly verifies every academic record important for your organization, ensuring complete authenticity and integrity of your digital documents.
6. Medicalchain: The first healthcare unit utilizing blockchain technology to leverage the usage of electronic health records so as to convey a total telemedicine experience.
With blockchain technology revolutionizing every industry, it becomes impossible to list every real example of blockchain. However, you can read them from different platforms online.