5 Things You Want to Know About Block-Chain Technology

According to Alex Tapscott & Don, authors of Block chain Revolution (2016), block chain technology is a digital ledger of economic business that is incorruptible. It can planned to record financial business as well as virtually anything of importance. The technology is alike the internet due to the fact it has a built-in strength. It stores blocks of information that are equal in its system.

Block chains have no single point of failure and cannot be controlled by a single entity.

The network lives in a state of consensus which means it checks in with itself automatically every ten minutes. The block chain network reconciles every transaction that occurs in ten-minute intervals. Making it a kind of self-auditing ecosystem in a digital platform. The term ‘block’ used to refer to a group of every transaction. To understand it better, there are five things you should know about block chain technology:

 1. Block Chains Do Not Use Third Parties

The computers used to make up a block chain system guarantee its integrity and contribute to the content of the ledger. As a result, there is no need for a trusted third-party agency or middleman to maintain the database. This is an attribute that has attracted trading exchanges and banks to the technology. A good example of a trading exchange that uses block chain is Bit coin.

2. Block Chains Are Great For Mobile Banking

Various major players in the mobile banking industry have shown a lot of interest in block chain with some starting to roll out systems for consumers. For instance, Humaniq uses block chain technology. It is a secure and simple 4th generation mobile bank. By dissolving all the barriers associated with archaic banks such as protecting data with complex, hard-to-remember passwords, dealing with buggy, hard-to-use mobile apps, doing endless paperwork and the need to go to a branch, Humaniq has been able to develop a completely new banking experience.

The company said they have created a strong, safe financial tool, specifically designed for people who don’t possess identification or undereducated. Majority of such people live in third world countries or regions with emerging economies on less than $2 a day. Humaniq believes their platform can help change that.

3. Block Chains Are Run By The Participants Through Consensus

In a block chain system there is no central authority. Computers exchange transactions to included in the ledger they share using a peer-to-peer network. Every node in the chain has a copy of the ledger. It will not trust other copies of the same because of the signature they have. The latest transactions are periodically wrapped in a new block of data which is to be added to the chain. Each block, alongside the transaction data, contains a computational hash’ of the previous block in the chain and one of itself. Digests, another name for hashes, are short digital representations of larger data chunks.

Faking or modifying a transaction in a previous block would change its hash. This means that the hashes embedded in the said previous block and other subsequent blocks will have to be recalculated if the change is to be hidden. That would be almost impossible to do before all honest participants add legitimate, new transactions to the end of the chain.

4. Block Chains Could Work With Biometrics

Secure biometric authentication offered the perfect match by block chain technology. Privacy, security and convenience enhanced. HYPR is a solution that uses block chain technology in biometrics. Block chain provides a decentralized and distributed method of maintaining user data without the need for an individual entity to process or store it. Information can’t corrupted or changed. To enable a truly decentralized authentication, HYPR combines block chain with the convenience of biometrics.

5. Block Chains Could Utilize Programmable Money

An interesting use of block chains is keeping a record of what should happen in the future, instead of what happened in the past. Block chain used to process and store “smart contracts’ by organizations such as the Ethereum Foundation. It executed by computers in network on a pay-as-you-go basis as long as they participate in the block chain. They are able to respond to transactions by transmitting, storing or gathering information, or transferring any digital currency the block chain deals in. The block chain they stored guarantees the immutability of the contracts.

Bottom Line

Block chain technology has a plethora of applications. It used in different industries and platforms including financial inclusion. Block chain, as revolutionary as it sounds, uses a mechanism that brings everyone to the highest degree of honesty and accountability. No more machine errors or human error, missed transactions, or even an exchange done without the consent of all parties involved.