It is as though the cliché “written in stone" was made for blockchain technology because metaphorically that is exactly what happens on the blockchain. Inside every block is a complete history of everything that has ever happened on that chain, as well as the rules that all of the blocks follow. Any cryptocurrency’s blockchain is the master ledger that records and stores all prior transactions and activity, validating ownership of all units of the currency at any given point in time.
Too nerdy to understand?
Well then let's say you are a movie fanatic, and you want to recommend movies to friends and family, so you create a movie list. Every time you add a movie to that list, you are adding a new “block” to the chain. Then maybe your friends and family start adding movies to this same list, well they are creating different blocks in the chain as well. While all of these transactions are happening, tech geeks around the world build and use sophisticated computers a.k.a. mining rigs, to complete these transactions for people and receive a reward in the form of bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.
Since anyone can be a miner, this keeps things decentralized because blockchain isn’t owned by any one person or party, and nobody can control the actions that the network takes unless it is a code upgrade (hard fork) by a large amount of miners working together. Taking the control away from the government and large corporations is the main core value that decentralization provides, which if I'm not mistaken was the original idea behind the Internet.
We are currently facing net neutrality and restrictions by telecom companies and Internet companies.
By throttling your speed and giving you faster access to certain offerings where they can benefit financially, you don’t control the Internet that you are on currently. Now imagine posting all of your data on a decentralized network where nobody can hack your precious information? Well that’s currently operating right now.
Ironically the problem that blockchain solves goes back thousands of years to the Byzantine generals problem. If you’d like to learn more about this topic and others check out Crypto.IQ and use code "jsherm" to get a super discount. You can also watch an episode in our web series "Mastering Cryptocurrency" right here featuring Bitcoin Legend Charlie Shrem and Serial Entrepreneur Jason Sherman: