Block chain and the world : How software is emerging and changing the whole world
THE BEGINNINGS
In one of the most blossoming phases of its life cycle, software has reached the place where it was predicted by a few people by changing the inner mechanisations of people's lives across the globe. Whether to kill a rodent, whether to order food, whether to book a cab or whether to gift a loved one a birthday cake, software and most importantly internet has changed it all. Twenty years before, in 1998 when internet was being widely used to send emails from across the world, no one had imagined it would get bigger like this and it erupted like a ticking time bomb changing the functioning of the whole world. The whole corporate world changed. Letters, papers, spreadsheets all being replaced by a single entity called as a computer and by a piece of cable which connected everyone to the whole world. Literally all the components of a traditional desk merged into one. Now again, here in 2018, one other same thing is happening and happening very fast with similar signatures as of the internet, known as Block Chain Technology. Now there is a whole lot of mystery attached to it and this unraveling of it makes it much more interesting.
WHAT IS IT?
WHAT IS IT?
BRIEF HISTORY-GERM OF THE IDEA
Developed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, Block Chain was developed when efforts were being made to create cryptocurrencies and through the first block chain database creation, BitCoin was developed. Bitcoin is the first digital currency to be developed and first to be implemented by using Block Chain Technology. Now the very first question, why is it called Block Chain?The Answer, pretty simple. Basically, when a transaction has occurred, a block gets created. A block as in building blocks, the fundamental unit of a lego toy. So now, with a period of time many transactions occur. So many blocks are getting created and starting from 1st block to the last block created, they are attached to each other, just like a chain, that is why the naming is Block Chain. Every block contains the details of each of its transaction in an encrypted manner.
THE BOLD ATTITUDE
Now Block Chain speaks of a very bold idea in this era. In a place where the number of banks and financial institutions are more and they are mushrooming with time, Block Chain talks of removing this very particular third party which are major part and parcel of transactions which are happening at an exponential rate. Now in India, if you take any nationalized bank, like State Bank of India, Karnataka Bank, Axis Bank etc., when it comes to processing of payments and authority, all these banks come under the direct nose of Reserve Bank of India which monitors them. So we can say, all the power is centralized at one particular place. But Block Chain's idea is to decentralize this power and make it universal without any authority of any financial institution monitoring it. How it does it is even more interesting.INSIGHT TO THE CORE CONCEPT
Now whenever we go to banks for any of our work, we tend to give our passbooks so that all the updated transactions are printed on it. This particular document in financial terms can be termed as a Ledger, which keeps records of all the transactions. So roughly, we can say Block Chain is one big encrypted ledger where the transaction details keep on adding. Now whether a particular transaction is correct or not, valid or not, it is verified by the P2P(peer to peer) network. Now this network, lets assume consist of 5-6 people who are all connected by it. Now whenever a transaction is happening, it is verified by the nodes/people/system through a common consensus and only after approval a new block is created and transaction is done.THE FIRST CONCEPT
Now even after all these concepts, you may still be wondering what is the exact and most important benefit of using block chain?Well the answer lies in its impenetrable security which provides a very high degree of data containment, data leakage prevention and prevention of manipulation of previous data. In the age where your personal data, bank data, housing address, phone number is all over the internet, it is a high risk asset which can be passed to various forums and can be utilized in wrong ways as we have recently seen where various social networking websites passed personal information to other third parties. Now Block Chain implements itself in very encrypted/concealed manner. But remember, each encryption also has a decryption. Here is where block chain stands out yet again uniquely. It provides a one-way encryption, which makes it very difficult to decrypt it in reverse. Its a simple mathematics technique. For e.g, if i tell you sum of two numbers is 98. Tell me the two numbers. Now how many possibilities are there determining those two numbers?Many. So its difficult to tell which are those two numbers exactly. The same applies to one-way encryption. If you feed the algorithm with something, it spits out a combination of numbers and strings making it extremely difficult to deduce it.This is one feature of it.
THE SECOND CONCEPT
Now the second important feature is there within the blocks. Now the concept is similar to finding out a treasure using a map. If you are having a map which gives directions to another map and that another map leads to another. You keep doing this till the very end until you finally find the treasure. Each map is containing clues to the next map and each map is irrevocably interlinked to its previous map. So imagine if somebody doesn't want you to find the map. So what he/she can do is try to destroy the map, change something about it, mislead you to a wrong path and you never find the treasure. But what if a system is there which doesn't allow this to happen?Exactly. Block Chain does it again. It provides a system where all the blocks are interlinked to each other and every block contains the unique number of its previous block. So if someone tries to change it illegally(which is again an impossible task), destroy a block, manipulate it, he/she has to change the information on every block till the very beginning so even if a slight miscalculation happens, any one block which doesn't contain data of previous block, the thief can be caught immediately and sanctity of the blocks remain intact.
Now the third and most important feature is the impossible difficult level of hijacking a block chain platform. Now when there is a network of systems connected to a block chain platform, if any node/system tries to create a transaction, its verified and legalized by other peers in the network, but what if someone wants to tamper the data, install a illegal transaction, manipulate data on blocks(which is quite impossible to do), in that case first and foremost is he needs to bypass all the nodes in the network. For doing that, he needs to have more than 50% of the control of the entire network, which in turn needs lot of computational abilities, infrastructure and power, which in turn again makes it impossible. So from wherever thread a potential hacker tries to breach the system, he ends up facing another knot of thread impossible to unknot. This capability can be easily termed as deadlock of the block chain system where it is impossible to penetrate and hack the system. This is why Block Chain has been trending for providing the strongest security cover on a software platform.This is why the world needs Block Chain. The 21st century is a digital vault and if we dont have the right lock for it, it is vulnerable and at risk, for the fear of being stolen and being manipulated for all the wrong reasons.
GROUND REALITIES AND THE METHODOLOGIES ADOPTED
Coming to ground reality, we will have to see where it can be implemented because the scope of block chain is enormous. Banks for example are opening up to the idea of it, as it helps in creating new products, reduces the time for processing, reducing their costs, processing fees, isolating settlement clauses and providing better swift transactions in a very fast and reliable manner which in contrast to conventional method of transfer is way better. Now how it connects the ground levels is a very big challenge. In a country like India, where lot of people who are receiving financial benefits from the government in form of subsidy, education and scholarships tend to get a little less finance from what they are entitled to. Because of middlemen and corruption, some portion of the money is chopped off and mainly because its not on a digital platform, it maybe on the papers like a cheque, demand draft, etc. where it can be manipulated and tampered. Now if block chain platform is introduced to this system, imagine the benefits from it. Every single Rupee goes to the right legitimate owner and the government can even keep an eye on that particular transaction and if any wrongdoings can be caught quickly and action can be taken. Its a highly ambitious project but worth a shot. Similarly, in sectors like national security, classified documents can be kept in block chain, where any change or tampering is impossible, and on each document you can see the timestamp and the digital fingerprint.
In medical sector, where there are lot of manufacture of fake drugs, if kept an eye through this technology on the inventory, then lot of dilution of drugs which are done can be avoided because everything leads to a thread, and if the thread doesn't open properly, something is fishy. Medical records can also be kept on this platform, where no one can manipulate anything on a patient history, illness, reports, claims, prescribed drugs etc.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR US
To make a conclusion of all this, Block Chain can transform everything, from end to end, powering the economy, bringing more clarity, steering the governance, effective implementation of various schemes, check on counterfeit things and more and more. However, Block Chain is still infant, just like the internet was 20 years ago. It has the potential to become something big and change things like never before. It is still a debate on how it can be implemented and because of crypto currrency, data mining and other things many fear of what a decentralized network can do working without authority. But since the technology takes authority from itself, judges itself and then takes a call itself is a miracle. Hence, its idea, transformation and implementation should be discussed properly. The initiative as already started by various tech companies, discuss and debate the various pros and cons of it inviting people from all sectors.This will help building a better, safe and organised world where we rejoice the benefits from it and have the power to prospect, analyse and sow seeds which in turn will lead to a beautiful spring.
Copyright © 2018 Shivashish Panda All Rights Reserved
It's a very good concept analysys I think the bank people or those who are involved in financial matters can learn a lot.good keep it up.
ReplyDeleteHi thanks very much. 😊😊😊
DeleteYes banks and financial institutions can gain more insight into it through this.thanks again.
DeleteVery nicely explained..Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much. :)
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