Topic: Pleased to meet you all Help with blockchain understanding (Read 172 times)

You should also look up how tiny specks of information are stored in blockchain transactions and creating of footprints of information to compress the date and not to overload the blockchain. I have a limited understanding myself, but it seems as a vital part.

Congrats on taking initiative in regards to learning about the cryptospace! As others have said, you have a solid fundamental understanding. You mentioned at the end that blockchain has wider implications of business in general-that is true, and arguably it's the most important aspect of the technology overall. We expand on blockchain-as-a-service in our blog, feel free to check it out: http://bit.ly/ArdorandBlockchain

If you'd like an additional resource regarding blockchain tech, we have a comprehensive blockchain guide as well: http://bit.ly/GuidetoBlockchain

Hope these resources help you.

Cheers!

Great to hear you are so enthusiastic about getting to know more about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. If you start off reading the information we provided I guaranteed you will have a great basic knowledge on the blockchain and its technology. If you have any more in-depth questions on the topic feel free to DM us.

RE: IBM *FREE* Course Modules

Again,
Thankyou.

It's so enthusing me to get the old grey matter working again (always top sets at school ( and, after a period of downtime. (Health, now fine)
Friends and family have noticed the change.

I can't thank you enough for this steer. I've worked as an educator, ran a 30 plus PC suite and Library in a secondary school, 'Learning Resource Manager' and knowledge is the most valuable thing to give. Far more than cash. Disseminisation of knowledge should be free. IMO.

From: One very enthused newbie.

Spitfire.

 

To: Replies/Memeber Replies
From: Spitfireabc
RE: Replies to my post


Many Thanks.

I find this so very interesting, come what may, I'm going to follow your pointers (much appreciated) and continue my education. When I did my E-commerce module in my degree in 2004 (!) the E-Commerce landscape is unrecognisable. So very dynamic. That's part of what enthuses me. To engage myself in something I enjoy.

I'll take the due dilligence time to absorb the links and resources you have given me. Then in a week or 2 repost, from my improved perspective.

Best Regards,
Spitfire ABC.

Hello spitfireabc,

We see you are already pretty far understanding the basic principles behind the theory of bitcoin. However all the details you are describing are referring to a Bitcoin block, not for all blockchains in general. So the data, hashing time and other data you described are only true for Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies have different specifics then the ones you previously described and differ from coin to coin. The same goes for the three basic principles you described: decentralization, immutability and transparency. These are true for Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency but do not necessarily hold true for the blockchain in general. You can see the *Bitcoin* blockchain as a timestamping machine which permanently validates a certain amount of transactions and saves them in a block.

The difference between bitcoin and a business application of the blockchain is that a standard company would have centralized systems, because not every section of the business would have the need to see everything going on on the blockchain. The same goes for transaparency, not all parts of the business would have the need to see all transactions on the blockchain. Even though the blockchain and bitcoin started from the same theory, the blockchain when applied to businesses does not necessarily need to follow the rules suggested in the bitcoin whitepaper. The immutability however, is what makes the blockchain such a powerful tool.

We suggest you gain understanding of the mechanics behind bitcoin before you get into more complicated topics. As always we recommend starting with Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper which can be found here.

To get more understanding on the topic we also suggested some books to read in the following thread here.

One of the best ways to gain understanding of the potential use cases and future of the blockchain is to make use of this interactive course offered by IBM which you can find here here

With kind regards,
The Anycoin Direct team

I'm not sure what you understand from the points made above. The blockchain is not simply a ledger. It's a publicably accessible, immutable ledger(except for 51% attack) which is not controlled by a central authority.

Publicably accessible, for instance, is not necessarily equal to transparent.
Decentralization does not mean - not controlled by a central authority, nor does it mean non-editable or non-reversible.
 
We can, when looking at the blockchain see that wallet A made a transaction of amount X with wallet B on a particular date/time. 
If Wallet A is a charity -- we can clearly see how much it received, where they spent their funds and how much they have in reserve. If the charity decides to reveal it's wallets and transactions we can then say that there is transparency. But, without, the charity revealing this information there isn't much transparency.

DNS is decentralized but there is a central authority governing its actions.

New blocks are mined within 10 minutes, hence the 10 minute interval between blocks. These blocks are mined by a decentralized network of computers (mostly ASIC miners) that solve cryptographic hashes in return for the block reward. This block reward halves every 4 years, whilst the block difficulty increases periodically. A transaction is considered valid if more than 50% of the miners reach a consensus that it is so, corrupted blocks or invalid transactions are not written into the final event ledger. Blockchain has more potential than just storing transaction data, as it can also store code that can run in a decentralized manner across the blockchain, thus allowing decentralized applications to be built.

Hi all,

Re: Blockchain and learning


Hey,
I'm Spitfire, been on the site for about 3 months now. Business management degree from Lancaster UK (top 5 of all business unis in UK) 40 yro, gone from a BBC acorn electron, Spectrum 48k, all the way to the dawn of PC's built all my own (I know its not hard) was a major Warcraft tank nerd (:


My current understanding of the blockchain: (BTC)

3 elements

- data - sender, receiver and amount
Hashes - previous and current eg 1h3h1j234j31h43j

Decentralisaion

A modern take on the old ledger

transparency

50% of about 4000 PC's around the worl, update transfers every 10 minutes, if the transfer meets that
criteria (legit) - it goes through.

Has wider implications for business in general.

- What am I missing/ wrong on please pps?

Best Regards,
Spitfire.