Yoooooooo anon….

Been a while, hope you checked out my last article on simplifying blockchain, remember I promised that we would continue the ride… so now that we are here, why don’t we get right into it. In this article, I will be discussing the benefits, features blockchain possesses that make it irresistible as I promised in the previous article.

Let’s dive a little deeper into these features of blockchain.

Data Integrity or non-repudiation (non-denial of actions on the blockchain)
Decentralization
Security
Transparency
Trustlessness

Data Integrity or non-repudiation i.e non-denial of action

Data integrity refers to the reliability and trustworthiness of data. Generally, modifying data stored on the blockchain is nearly impossible. Transactions that have been added to the chains cannot be modified or deleted. This immutable nature of the blockchain makes it a reliable source of truth, a secure ecosystem that can function in a trustless manner.

Non-repudiation is the assurance that someone cannot deny the validity of a transaction or action. It is important to note that every action or activity performed on the blockchain is considered a transaction. Each block contains a log of information on the previous actions performed. Non-repudiation is achieved through cryptography.

Cryptography is a mathematical concept used in Blockchain for encrypting data. It also affords participants the opportunity to have digital signatures for encrypting, verifying, and decrypting data through a concept known as asymmetric cryptography or public-key cryptography.

In asymmetric cryptography, the public key encrypts data to guarantee security and protect sensitive information. It represents the owner’s identity while the private key is a secret key mathematically related to the public key and is used for decrypting data encoded by the public key.

The public key ensures data integrity by creating a digital signature of the message using the sender’s private key. This is achieved by hashing the message and encrypting the hash value with the sender’s private key. Modifying the message, even slightly, will result in a different hash value completely unrelated to the previous hash.

Decentralization

This refers to the transfer of control and decision-making from a centralized entity (individual, organization) to a distributed network. A blockchain consists of numerous blocks of data. These blocks of data are stored on nodes that can be compared to small servers. On a blockchain, all the nodes are connected and they continuously synchronize the newest information on the blockchain across the nodes.

Blockchain provides a trustless environment; no one has to know anyone else for transactions to be conducted. For a blockchain transaction to be recognized, it must be added to the blockchain. An initiated transaction cannot be added to the blockchain until it has been validated. These validations are carried out by miners or validators. The security of blockchain networks depends largely on validation protocols known as consensus mechanisms. These protocols prevent malicious users or groups from validating fraudulent transactions. There are different kinds of mechanisms used to achieve validation of transactions and each of these mechanisms employs different principles. Common examples are proof of work (POW), proof of stake (POS), and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT).

Each node in the network has a copy of the same data in the form of a ledger. The data cannot be altered by any one person. This helps to establish an exact and transparent order of events. This way, no single node within the network can alter information held within it.

Security

One other way blockchain ensures security is through Hashing. With cryptographic hashing, an input of arbitrary length is passed into a hash function to give an output of fixed size. The output is known as Hash. Hashing is a one-way security protocol. This means that the encrypted output cannot be decrypted to get the original input. Blockchain records root hashes with each transaction securely coded within them. If someone tries to tamper with data from any part of the blockchain, the change will result in a completely different hash at the root hash. By comparing that root hash to the root hash on their computer, other users can see that the data is compromised.

Transparency

Because of the decentralized nature of blockchain, all transaction records can be accessed without restrictions through blockchain explorers. Blockchain explorers are platforms that allow anyone to see transactions occurring live. Examples of blockchain explorers are EtherScan,Polygonscan, BscScan.

Trustlessness

Trustlessness in the blockchain industry simply means you do not need to trust any stranger, institution, or third party for a network or payment system to function. Trustless systems work mainly through the smart contracts, asymmetric cryptography, and protocols of the blockchain network itself. A typical example of a trustless service that blockchain technology has created is peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, where participants can send and receive assets via systems that leverage smart contracts.

Conclusion

Putting this together, transactions stored on the blockchain cannot be modified or deleted. Non-repudiation provides proof of the origin, authenticity, and integrity of data. It assures the sender that its message was delivered, as well as proof of the sender’s identity to the recipient.

This way, neither party can deny that a message was sent, received, and processed.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Leave your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to also clap, follow and share🤗

Benefits of blockchain

Yoooooooo anon….