A blockchain is a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed. It is constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks are added to it with a new set of recordings. The blocks are added to the blockchain in linear, chronological order through cryptography, ensuring they remain beyond the power of manipulators. The blockchain serves as an open-source distributed ledger that can efficiently record transactions between two parties, however, its prospects extend much further than this. Because cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin run on their own custom-made blockchains (to suit their individual purposes), the technology’s decentralised nature allows for it to be applied to virtually any kind of transaction or storage of information that could be imagined by someone – whether that’s medical records, voting ballots, energy grids/smart cities, money transfers, cryptocurrency wallets, or proof of ownership documents like tickets and signatures. Extending past that, the blockchain has even been touted as having the potential to run entire decentralised autonomous organisations (DAO).You can check Bitcoin System.
The first-ever block on the Bitcoin Blockchain is known as the ‘genesis block. The genesis block was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, who published a paper about Bitcoin in 2008. It all started with this one single transaction on January 3rd, 2009 – initiated by Satoshi himself! Except for some minor changes regarding some technical details/metadata that is included in the coinbase parameter of that first bitcoin transaction, every other bitcoin transaction that has happened since then has been validated against exactly, matching what’s taking place on the Bitcoin Network. This is possible because the Bitcoin network has a copy of the blockchain, which is continually updated by anyone running the Bitcoin Core Client.
The Bitcoin Blockchain is viewed as especially secure not only because it utilises cryptographic technology for transaction verification/storage, but also because a lot of computing power is currently being contributed towards its upkeep. This massive amount of computing power makes changing historical blocks (or any block in general) practically unfeasible unless someone or some group controls more than 50% of Bitcoin’s total computational power. The protocol was designed this way so that transactions can be added to the blockchain with little effort and take about ten minutes to be fully verified by miners. In fact, there are actually people who have dedicated their entire computer process towards maintaining the Bitcoin Network’s blockchain. They are a volunteer workforce known as ‘miners’ and they use mining software to perform complex calculations that ultimately result in a block being added to the blockchain after a number of transactions have been validated. At this point, miners compete against each other by putting their machines to work for solving complicated cryptographic puzzles that add new blocks into the chain. The first miner whose computer solves this puzzle adds his or her block to the chain and receives an award for it in Bitcoins (the reward is currently 12.5 BTC, but it will decrease exponentially with time). All past transactions made during a specific timeframe are estimated to be finalised within about 10 minutes via a process called ‘consensus.’
Cryptographic Keys
A private key can refer to two different types of cryptographic keys. A public key is the Bitcoin address you give out to receive payments, while a private one is for spending funds. You can compare them with the username of your email account and its corresponding password. Bitcoin transactions are actually really simple – all that’s needed is inputting two pieces of information: an address (public key) and a specific amount of Bitcoins to send/spend. Bitcoin wallets save your private keys by generating them locally whenever you need one for receiving payment or making a transaction on the Bitcoin network. This generation happens either randomly or through the use of something called Elliptic Curve DSA (ECDSA), which utilises maths problems to produce these keys. Like passwords must be kept secret so they aren’t leaked out to others, the same goes for your private keys.
Conclusion
The Bitcoin Blockchain has been running in an uninterrupted fashion since January 3, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto opened a new era by mining the genesis block which triggered the start of this revolution. All 648,245 blocks that have been mined since then are still publicly accessible today via viewing an online blockchain explorer. Yes, each and every one of those blocks is available for anyone to verify transactions at any given time. This means it can’t be altered or changed without someone noticing because everyone else has the exact same copy on their computer/device! So far there have been about 80 million Bitcoin transactions performed between users so far.
