Today I'll continue a review of the Linux Foundation's first Hyperledger blockchain class on edX, "Blockchain for Business - An Introduction to Hyperledger Technologies." Today's post will focus on distributed ledger technology.
Chapter One:
A lot of the course's first of eight chapters regards the blockchain in general, the different blockchains that exist, and how they are similar and different. By the end of the first chapter we begin to focus on the Hyperledger blockchain.
The course does a nice job of presenting its material in bite-sized portions in the form of either text or video. The slides that are all text rarely require scrolling on a laptop while the videos are rarely longer than four minutes in length.
A Key Takeaway From Chapter One
So what is the blockchain? The blockchain is a distributed ledger. OK, well, what's that? Traditionally, we have had to deal with ledgers that are centralized, not distributed. Examples of centralized ledgers includes banks that keep ledgers of accounts and governments that keep records of real estate property deeds. Unfortunately, because these ledgers are centralized and there is only one copy of the ledger everyone suffers if the bank or government agency is hacked or their records destroyed.
Decentralized or distributed ledgers, on the other hand, combat this problem by creating and sharing multiple copies of ledgers that are immutable: That is, the information on the blockchain cannot be changed. The most popular case is the Bitcoin blockchain. Traditionally, for two people to perform a monetary transaction, they have to go through a bank. With Bitcoin two individuals can transfer money directly, no intermediary necessary. If one party has a dispute with the transaction they can check the Bitcoin blockchain to see what all the other ledgers out there have in their records. The more records there are in the Bitcoin blockchain network the more difficult it is to pull a fast one.
In other words, if 99 people have copies of Reggie's Bitcoin transfer to Sonya and Sonya is the only person who says the amount of the transfer is different from what everyone else has, there's a good chance Sonya is incorrect or, worse, a malicious actor. That's the power of a distributed ledger.
Up Next: Permissioned and permissionless blockchains
The course does a nice job of presenting its material in bite-sized portions in the form of either text or video. The slides that are all text rarely require scrolling on a laptop while the videos are rarely longer than four minutes in length.
A Key Takeaway From Chapter One
So what is the blockchain? The blockchain is a distributed ledger. OK, well, what's that? Traditionally, we have had to deal with ledgers that are centralized, not distributed. Examples of centralized ledgers includes banks that keep ledgers of accounts and governments that keep records of real estate property deeds. Unfortunately, because these ledgers are centralized and there is only one copy of the ledger everyone suffers if the bank or government agency is hacked or their records destroyed.
Decentralized or distributed ledgers, on the other hand, combat this problem by creating and sharing multiple copies of ledgers that are immutable: That is, the information on the blockchain cannot be changed. The most popular case is the Bitcoin blockchain. Traditionally, for two people to perform a monetary transaction, they have to go through a bank. With Bitcoin two individuals can transfer money directly, no intermediary necessary. If one party has a dispute with the transaction they can check the Bitcoin blockchain to see what all the other ledgers out there have in their records. The more records there are in the Bitcoin blockchain network the more difficult it is to pull a fast one.
In other words, if 99 people have copies of Reggie's Bitcoin transfer to Sonya and Sonya is the only person who says the amount of the transfer is different from what everyone else has, there's a good chance Sonya is incorrect or, worse, a malicious actor. That's the power of a distributed ledger.
Up Next: Permissioned and permissionless blockchains
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