Blockchain workflow and challenges

Moving on in the blockchain, let's take a deeper dive in the blockchain domain and understand how does blockchain work and what are some of the challenges while working with blockchains.

First, let's see a basic blockchain

So as discussed in the previous blog, this is how the linked list gets connected, the next element in the blockchain consists of the Hash value of the previous element in the blockchain and so on.

Blockchain lexicon update
  • Decentralized Ledger - The ledger for cryptocurrencies is maintained in a decentralized manner, wherein the same ledger is given to all the compute nodes thus there is no centralized node that manages everything thus the risk - wherein one node goes down, leading to the closure of the entire bank - is dislodged.

Now let's see something that's there in the blockchain and is very much important but is not talked about i.e. Double Spend Attack
As the name is self-explanatory, a Double Spend Attack (SDA) is something wherein a user who has 1 bitcoin, transfers 1 bitcoin to 2 different users and as the registry is decentralized there is a possibility that both transactions get approved.  
Let's assume Sophie had 1 bitcoin, she transferred 1 bitcoin to Geoff(transaction A) and 1 to Mike(transaction B). Ideally, one transaction will fail but as the whole system is decentralized, transaction A went to Machine X and transaction B went Machine Y for processing. What happens next is as the ledger is also decentralized both the transactions might get approved, which is definitely an issue.

Then how is this issue solved? 
By Randomness - Pick a note at random and then approve the transaction handled by that node, declining the other one. Once that is done, the address pointer of the linked list element for which the transaction was declined point to null.
This is how the list continues, thus solving the Double Spend Attack.

Now let's talk about something interesting - Bitcoin mining, so what basically is the mining of a cryptocurrency?
Bitcoin mining is a resource-intensive activity that results in the discovery of new coins. All you have to do is to solve The Hash Puzzle.
  • Nodes compete to have a chance to propose the next block
  • They succeed if they are the first to solve a hash puzzle
  • The only way to solve the cryptographic puzzle is through trial and error 
FunFact: The total number of bitcoins will converge to 21 million.

That's all for this blog. Now, who wants to learn to code and create a blockchain of their own? If you do, comment below, I'll write a blog about how to create your own blockchain. Maybe you can be the founder of the next big cryptocurrency, who knows!!

Till then,
Happy Blogging

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Brief about RDMA, RoCE v1 vs RoCE v2 vs iWARP

Hello folks, Today we'll see what RDMA is and how different kind of network solutions work over Ethernet. For those who are wondering what these words are, this is a post about Networking and an overview can be, how to increase your network speed without adding new servers or IB over your network, wherein IB stands for InfiniBand which is basically a networking communication standard majorly used in HPC  that features very high  throughput  and very low  latency , for what HPC is, refer to my previous blog. This is how a Mellanox IB cable looks like In order, not to use IB, increasing the speed for Ethernet-based solutions is a better and cost-effective solution in many cases which is implemented using RDMA, thus saving cost and technology shift overhead for every admin out there. So let's see what RDMA is, RDMA stands for Remote Direct Memory Access  is a  direct memory access  from the  memory  of one computer into that of another without involving either one'
Read more

Cryptocurrency & Blockchain

Today we have a look at what is a cryptocurrency, what blockchain is, how does it link to a cryptocurrency! So let's dive straight into cryptocurrency and see what it is! Very well defined at Wikipedia " A  cryptocurrency  is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses strong cryptography to secure financial transactions, control the creation of additional units, and verify the transfer of assets.", but is it actually is in even simpler language "A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is created and managed through the use of advanced encryption techniques." A few keywords that you might need to know when talking about cryptocurrency are as follows:  Wallet - a place to store your cryptocurrency credentials: namely your private key  Private key - a 256-bit number, expressed as a hexadecimal  Eg: 9873D79C6D87DC0FB6A5778633389F4453213303DA61F20BD67FC233AA3326  When people say that they have lost their cryptocurrency(say Bi
Read more

Repairing your Ubuntu or Linux Dist. manually

If you are a regular user of any Linux based operating System then it is for sure that you have faced the error of "Broken Packages". When you are installing something new to your OS, it says Package cannot be installed because Package A depends on Package B, but Package B cannot be installed because of broken packages and this issue might occur while updating your system using Software Updater. If you have faced this error then trust me, you have a really good hand in that Linux Based OS because you have worked enough to corrupt it once. Now making this post a little brief lets jump directly to the solution!! There are more then one solution for it and different in OS using different packaging system, if your system is using dpkg , thus implying you'll be using apt to keep everything in tandem. So here is a list of solutions you can try for Ubuntu and few Others: This is the most easy solution if you hate CLI, but is not recommended at all. Use Synaptic Package
Read more