BlockChain

Blockchain is the technology that backs bitcoin and other crypto currencies allowing for a peer to peer financial system. ok so it works for money but what else would you like to be able to make a peer 2 peer system for? blockchain technology can be used and adapted to help solve many problems.

Problem

In a centralised system the server is the trusted third party, so when you send money to another person the server stores the record of how much money you have. We trust that server to let you know how much you have and make sure others don't abuse the system. So we don't need to trust every one that uses the system just the server.

In a peer to peer system we know that any node we connect to could be untrustworthy, but somehow we have to validate what is true or not within a system where multiple nodes could be trying to abuse the system.

Solution

The solution has several parts

• Group updates together into blocks, with each block having a single parent.
• Make every node validate every update (block) based on the systems rules.
• Make it random (ish) which node creates the next block.
• Make it difficult to produce a block so that people cannot rewrite history.

Block
Each set of updates or transactions is grouped together into a block, with each block referencing the block that came before it, This way with the latest block you can trace back the history of any updates.

Making it difficult
To make it difficult to create a block we introduce a problem that will need to be solved before a block can be produced, we make the problem hard to solve and easy to verify, like opening a combination lock without knowing the key, spinning each dial to all possible positions until the lock opens takes much time, but is easy for someone else to confirm that you solved it correctly. To do this we take the data of the block and generate a SHA-1 Hash of it, we then see if it matches some criteria, I.E. it starts with 0000, if it doesn't we increment a number inside of the block and try again, This is essentially what bitcoin miners are doing, solving millions hash calculations.

Making it Random (ish)
Because of the nature of hash calculations some people's potential blocks will solve much faster than other peoples, this means that even if you control much of the processing power of the network, you should still get beat some times.

Handling network Lag
Sometimes different parts of the network can create different blocks at the same time, this can cause there to be 2 valid but differing histories, we consolidate these histories by allowing nodes creating new blocks to work on creating new blocks on top of the block they saw first, after time it is unlikely that the differing blocks will have more blocks piled on at exactly the same time. So we can solve the difference by saying the truth is the block with the longest history, or if they histories are the same length assume it to be the one you saw first temporarily.

Basic Networking
Each nodes connects to other nodes via TCP, and broadcasts anything it would like to add to the network (Completed Blocks, transactions), it also validates and re broadcasts any data that it receives. Thus most nodes will know about a transaction before it is validated. Transactions are often considered valid after a certain number of conformations (block length after transaction added). Because the longer the chain after it the more unlikely a duplicate block will overtake it as the leader.