Good morning peeps I hope you're all having a fantastic start to the week, if you're on the Eastern part of the globe it's Tuesday morning and things are really heating up. China and Australia are about to go head to head with Australian politicians trolling the powerhouse.
Uncle Sam is just sitting in the middle with a few air craft carriers and Indonesia us undertaking joint military ops with China. In return China helped rescue a crashed submarine that kills 53 people in Indonesian waters. My condolences to their families and friends.
Geopolitics is heating up and we may have survived COVID pandemic but we aren't out of the woods yet with a possible WW3 on the cusp.
What is a blockchain?
Anyway, back to the point of today's post, there are alot of us on Hive/Leo and other tribes which is great. But through reading a few blogs and questions I think alot of confusion still remains in regards to what a blockchain is. With the majority of people on our wonderful community platform it's not a bad thing that people don't know and as each day goes on more people join cryptocurrancy and utilise multiple block chains.
The main draw card of Hive other than its awesome community is of course the ability to earn with 0 investment. It's a wonderful implementation of Web 3 which is currently a head of the game which is reflected in the tokens price. Hive token for an infinite supply is massive when compared to other block chains.
So what is a block chain more broadly? A block chain is a list of transactions similar to what you see in your bank account. Except instead of being processed by a bank they are publicly viewed and verified by people who operate nodes. The people that operate these nodes are referred to as miners and verification is referred to as mining.
The process of mining or approving transactions removes the need for middlemen which normal circumstances would utilise a bank service.
The more nodes or miners a block chain has the more secure the network is as to validate transactions multiple miners need to approve them. This process ensures two people who don't know each other can make payments to each other securely.
What's the difference with me just sending the token instead of using a blockchain?
Security of course! Block Chains enable people to send currency or tokens to each other safely. Once a transaction is submitted it is publicly listed and awaits approval. The receiver can access the block chain through the transaction ID to confirm payment has been made.
Furthermore, unlike a bank no identifying information is included in the transaction. Everytime you make a purchase with your eftpos card your identity is also shared with the transaction and strict privacy laws have had to constantly keep up with the evolving technology as hackers have on many occasions hacked transactions from banks and accessed people's personal information which can than be used to open accounts, borrow money and undertake identity theft.
Block chain removes this risk by completely removing the risk as a whole.
Glob benefits
Furthermore blockchain is universal and global unlike traditional banking that deals with your native currency and international purchases can get quite confusing and costly as a bank will charge extra fees to transfer fiat to other countries. Certain countries taxes and exchange rates differ creating a complex mechanism compounding hardship in making payments.
Block chain is token price, heavily matched to the US dollar which in turn is matched to Bitcoin or satoushi it is universally accepted.
That means when you see something cost say 1 Bitcoin it will be 1 Bitcoin for everyone. This increases ease of use and creates a better global economy.
After all nations have been debating and trying for years to implement a universal currency but many have rejected the thought. Money or fiat is a complex thing it is as much psychological as it is accepted tender.
The emergence of Bitcoin changed all this with many accepting to the universal currency and many more pushing to have it accepted as legal tender.
Blockchain tech outside of currency
There are an abundance of use cases in development and trial but personally I see it'd strength in the finance sector and not so much outside of financial services. But I could be wrong as we are seeing trials with medical research and supply chains.
I'm not too sure what it would entail in regards to medical research as whatever is being transferred through an online database can be done quicker and more efficiently off the block chain. That doesn't mean there isn't a use case, it might not have been found yet.
In regards to distribution and supply that is another odd one. Perhaps blockchain can be used to make purchases of supply chain and then the distribution automated at a cheaper price.
A large benefit of blockchains is that they are open and transparent, just because there isn't identifying information doesn't mean people can't be tracked, we saw this with Silk Road however, it was a lot harder and required engagement and not all the money has been recovered.
But all transactions are publicly listed and can be scrutinised, where the identity of the sender and receiver isn't public the activity is so people can investigate if accounts are upto no good and engaging in actions that are detrimental.
Having them publicly listed also ensures that the chains can not be manipulated ensuring that when for example 1 Bitcoin is sent 1 Bitcoin will be received. There is no in-between. Unless someone holds 51% of the miners than transactions can be unapproved or reversed. But as block chain tech advances there have been lots of changes to disable this.
Furthermore, all codes are open sourced for anyone to inspect and read so you can see what your buying into if a scam or not. At the moment this is limited to the knowledge of coders. I'm unaware of any programs that you can put in a contracts token and it will located source code of concerns. I have seen devs on reddit paste code of cryptocurrancy projects which have turned out to be scams and they have stated that they had bad codes. (I've fallen for a honey trap scam) honey trap scams are when you can put money in but are unable to sell only the token creator can. This traps wealth and allows them to dump and profit and run away.
I hope this post has helped you understand a little more about block chain tech and please if I've left anything out or gotten anything wrong let me know in the comments section below.
Have a great week everyone and see you in the Leo market talk chat!
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