what is Blockchain (web3)?

- Concept for newbies with a relatable analogy.

what is Blockchain (web3)?

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Introduction

Hey, so my topic is, what is Blockchain? I guess all of you must've heard what Blockchain is, but my target is the very new audience who have zero ideas of what Blockchain is, and for that, I wouldn't be using complex words such as distributed database, Nodes, blocks, etc. In fact, I will explain to you guys what is Blockchain in a very fun way which you can all relate so stay with me.

Chinese whisper analogy

I guess all of us have played a game Chinese whisper when we were kids, if you forgot, what was it so I can make you remember. It was the chain of people in which the first person has a message which he transfers to the person next to him in his ear, and this process goes on for a while until the message comes to the last person, then the last person says the message out loud we then compare the message which was given to the first person with the message said by the final person. I've just gone through Wikipedia about this game Chinese whisper and I got to know that it is also called a transmission chain experiment game. The aim or goal of this game is to receive the same message at the end but as you all know when we played, we play with the intention of having a bit of fun, and also, we kind of change the message in between. I hope you remember all the fun we had playing this game.

chinese-whispers-1.png.webp

Web2 (not on the blockchain)

just to keep things in perspective, this is what web2 (centralised web) does with our info, data, searches, etc. Organisations mold and use our data according to their needs and we are unaware just like kids in Chinese whisper change the messages in between according to their thinking which is not okay for us.

Web3 (on the blockchain)

In order to explain blockchain clearly, we must let robots play this game so we have to eradicate the fun part of it and keep it simple which means the intention of this game is to output the same message which was given to the first person. This means if any one robot is corrupted and changes the message, it will break the chain and the process will stop. So, for this analogy, keep in mind that this game (Chinese whisper) is played by Robots, which means there is no change in the message and it's immutable and secure as well, and the message delivers to the last person without even a slight change. I'm hopeful now that you might grasp the concept of what blockchain basically gives to us and that's why it's in the limelight and big organisations like Samsung and Apple are adopting it.

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Technical definition(blockchain)

It is a big, shared, distributed, and permanent database/data structure. It records data as a chain of blocks, and each block contains a group of transactions. The first block is called the genesis block to give perspective with Chinese whisper the first person who gets the message is basically the genesis person. These blocks are chained together in a cryptographically verifiable way to be traced historically. A Blockchain network is managed automatically by a distributed network of computer nodes. When all nodes reach consensus, transactions proceed.

each node has 3 important things:

  1. data

  2. hash code

  3. hash code of the previous block (this chain goes till the genesis block)

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some traits of web3 (blockchain):

  1. verifiable

  2. trust-less

  3. self-governing

  • I hope you now have an idea of what a blockchain is with a good real-life and relatable analogy, and some of its technical parts also

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sources:

  1. learnweb3dao

  2. Wikipedia

  3. Moralis YouTube

  4. my knowledge/notes

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