The rise of NFTs and other concepts like DeFi coupled with the recent surge in the price of Bitcoin has caused almost everyone to know about the crypto world. More than ever, more people have joined the growing cryptocurrency community, and more are expected to join in the coming days.

Several giant organizations such as Facebook, Twitter, the NBA, MLS, and banks in the world have been associated with cryptocurrency in the last six months leading to a spike in people’s interest. In Africa alone, more numbers are joining the crypto space on a daily basis. At the same time, Asia currently ranks as one of the most fertile places where cryptocurrency is thriving, as most people have it as their primary source of income. Newbies need to understand certain basics about the crypto world to get the best out of it.

Cryptocurrencies are built on Blockchain technology. People seem to be more aware of the term cryptocurrency than blockchain making blockchain definition and blockchain learning a vital aspect of anyone’s crypto journey.

The blockchain is the distributed ledger that all cryptocurrencies run on. Without the blockchain, the cryptocurrency market would not exist.

Also, read – Explanation of Cryptocurrency Volatility

The Origin

Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous figure, is credited with creating the blockchain. The blockchain is Satoshi’s invention that underpins cryptocurrencies. It’s a global transaction ledger that’s stored on computers all around the world. Every transaction is automatically updated in the ledger, which anybody can access at any time. In essence, the entire network comes to an agreement on each transaction, preventing fake transactions from being recorded in the ledger. The process of verifying and adding transactions to the blockchain ledger is carried out by specialized computer hardware known as miners.

A recent inspiring answer from Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto to a question “I actually really like to understand things so whenever I get involved with something I have this sort of insane obsession where I have to go into annoying details and find out everything about it” pic.twitter.com/oOVEYXgYaT

— 🦚🐯TIMECHAIN 🦚🐯 (@Antmantime) May 7, 2020

Blockchain technology is progressing at a breakneck pace that shows no signs of slowing down. Many things that looked impossible in the previous few decades were revealed to be wrong, such as excessive transaction fees, double spending, net fraud, recovering lost data, and so on. But, thanks to Blockchain Technology, all of this may now be avoided.

Why it is Important

The blockchain has been dubbed the most significant technological advancement since the internet. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in projects that are developing blockchain technology.

For several reasons, blockchain development seems to be increasing, and it is becoming hugely important to our world today. For a start, blockchain technology offers security that the internet might not offer, such as preventing information theft. Due to its encryption feature, blockchain is always secure. 

Also, blockchain eliminates the need for a third party or intermediaries since it is a decentralized technology. This decentralization feature can engage trust between people and several organizations, including the government, as citizens can now hold the government accountable by having access to data and verifying it. This would foster transparency in leadership. 

It is anticipated that blockchain would revolutionize industries such as banking, cyber security, healthcare, government, sports, and support chain management. It is safe to say the blockchain will change the world.

Data benefits with Blockchain

Blockchain provides benefits like data recovery, security, availability, and automation all in one. The serverless technology of public blockchain makes them assuring proofs of how they can deliver on enterprise-grade reliability of business databases. It is also cost-effective, and its ability to quickly replicate even allows one to safely get away with the same dismissal compared to traditional databases. The biggest advantage would be how blockchain protects you from changes that could compromise data and stability.

In simple words, a blockchain is a server that doesn’t make you worry about it crashing (because it is highly unlikely) and the database cannot be corrupted –which makes it a whole package.

To be clear though, blockchain isn’t perfectly suited to solve certain particular data problems, the same way emails are not equivalent to instant messaging. Big data analytics are immensely expensive to duplicate, and unless one is monetizing the data, it is not worth it to convert blockchain into an analytical workload.