Blockchain: The future of Internet Technology

We all have heard the term “Bitcoin” or “Blockchain” from one source or the other. Does it makes you eager to know what it is? And why everyone is so interested about it? Well Bitcoins, as you may already know, is a cryptocurrency, based on Blockchain. So, this article deals with knowing the fundamentals and discovering the best resources which is present over the internet about Blockchain Technology.

source: Google images

Actually, Blockchain is a platform where one internet user can transfer assets, any digital property to any other user (familiar or unfamiliar) and the transfer is very safe, secure and legitimate as all the records of the transfer are maintained and these records(blocks) are decentralised (i.e. everyone has access to it and no single person owns it) but no-one can tamper with these records as they are highly encrypted. Every node(system) has the ability to update the record and the most popular record becomes the de-facto official record to become the master-copy. This is the best part as it eliminates the interference of the middle-man or the need of any trusted party to facilitate digital transactions.

A distributed network avoids the chances of centralised corruption or failure. The private key cryptography can ensure the authentication of the individual. And the authorisation is build from peer-to peer network which follows the blockchain protocol. In case of virtual money transaction, It avoids the chance of spending a currency twice and maintains the integrity of the currency.

You may now be curious about knowing the procedure and here you go: An internet user requests a transaction(it can involve contracts, sensitive records, cryptocurrency etc.); a broadcast of the request is done to a P2P network; the transaction and the user’s status is then validated by the other nodes using some algorithms; once verified the transaction is combined with other transactions to create a new block of data for the ledger, it is added to the existing blockchain in a way that is permanent and unalterable; done, the transaction is complete.

source: google images

The technologies lying at the base of blockchain are: Cryptography, Distributed computing and Mechanism design. You must expertise in them(even in one), to stay in long run. Cryptography involves encryption-decryption. Distributed computing involves the shared network to improve the efficiency to achieve a common goal. Mechanism design (Game theory) is about planning and comparing economic strategy.

Source for learning Cryptography: https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto

Mechanism Design: https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-theory-2/lecture/vUwi9/2-1-mechanism-design-taste

Distributed Computing Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/cloud-computing

Types of blockchains:
Public blockchain: Everyone has access to it and anyone can participate in the transaction or become a validator.

Private blockchain: It can be joined only by invitations, considered by those who doesn’t want to sacrifice autonomy and maintain privacy of the data.

Consortium blockchain: It is partially decentralised, a number of companies operate at each node on such a network.

Though it is famed by virtual currency transactions, most profoundly, bitcoins, but its not limited to keeping ledgers of money transactions. It has varied applications such as aiding the IoT technology, the insurance industry, Online voting, keeping medical records or any kind of data storage.

Etherium is a technology in which the data of the users won’t be centralised with the server operators. The users will be the soul decision-makers about their data and the cloud and servers would be replaced by thousands of nodes(systems) run by volunteers from around the world.

There are many ways to earn through blockchain:

Bitcoin miners solve some mathematical problem(Proof of Work, which involves hashing and  comparing blocks ) through some software,  thus secure the bitcoin network by approving transactions. This creates new bitcoins in each block and the generation of bitcoins depends on mining difficulty. When a block is discovered the miners get some reward which is from the fee the user pays for transaction.

For obtaining more knowledge in detail : https://www.bitcoinmining.com/

Or some invest money in bitcoins or any other digital currency.

Can come up with an altogether different blockchain , which may or may not be related to virtual currency .

Or have a look at this: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-make-money-with-blockchain-technology

Here are some learning resources for Blockchain Technology:

If you want to get familiar with every term in the Bockchain World, have a look at this glossary.

Source for learning Blockchain : https://www.coursera.org/learn/ibm-blockchain-essentials-for-developers

And here is a document by Satoshi Nakamuto who first came up with the idea of Blockchain and Bitcoins https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf * (It would make you familiar with how it all started nad the basics about blockchain)

Have a look at the learning resources at https://blockchainhub.net/ *

If you are interested in Bitcoins and want to get started into it : https://bitcoin.org/en/

https://coinmarketcap.com/ : A list of all the public Blockchains .You can have a visit to their website and have a read of their whitepapers.

Have a look at the classic papers like: Two general problems, Byzantines General Problem, FLP Impossibility Proof, Paxos etc.to learn how to coordinate a network of individual nodes that needs to reach consensus of some sort.

A perfect guide for the developers: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-ibm-blockchain-101-quick-start-guide-for-developers-bluemix-trs/index.html *

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/from-what-is-blockchain-to-building-a-blockchain-within-an-hour-4e738efc819d or https://hackernoon.com/learn-blockchains-by-building-one-117428612f46  : (Can have a read).

Solidity is a language that is used to generate Machine-level-Code and works on EVM. To get a full detail of solidity or to learn it, have a look at : https://blockgeeks.com/guides/solidity/

https://github.com/jashmenn/bitcoin-reading-list : (A deep dwelling into Bitcoin chapter)

All you want to know about sharding : https://github.com/ethereum/sharding/blob/develop/docs/doc.md

An example to explain Blockchain: https://www.igvita.com/2014/05/05/minimum-viable-block-chain/

A set of video lectures about Bitcoins: http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/

https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/3-free-resources-to-learn-blockchain-technology?locale=en

To know about the latest news: https://igniteoutsourcing.com/blog/

I know these appear too much to you in the beginning but once you will start diving deeper into it, you will love it. Please share your feedback in the comment section and Happy Learning!