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What Is Blockchain Technology and How It’s Providing Organizations the Ease of Doing Business?

What is blockchain technology and how it’s providing organizations the ease of doing business?

What Is Blockchain Technology and How It’s Providing Organizations the Ease of Doing Business?

What is blockchain technology and how it’s providing organizations the ease of doing business?

“Blockchain Technology”, something that is on the minds of every technological geek today. But what is it? And why it has gained so much popularity over the years?

Here is a simple definition, “Blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology in which each transaction is digitally signed to ensure its authenticity and integrity”.

Over the years blockchain technology is popularly known for its utilization in the Cryptocurrency and other cryptocurrencies. But in recent years, this modern technology is grounding its roots in making distributed ledger work, especially in different sectors of the business.

History of Blockchain

The history of the technology dates back to 1979 when Ralph Merkle patented its structure. It was first designed to verify and handle data between computer systems. Since the validation of data was important in a peer-to-peer network of computers, the technology helped in ensuring that false data was not sent by any means. In short, the whole idea of blockchain technology is to maintain and prove the integrity of the information being shared within a network.

However, in the year 2008, things went one step ahead when Satoshi Nakamoto conceptualized the distributed blockchain. It was then when it became the backbone of cryptocurrency and all other cryptocurrencies. His idea was to develop a secure history of data exchange by utilizing a peer-to-peer network which could be verified and maintained without a central authority, unlike the conventional central banking system.

How Blockchain Technology Assisting Businesses Worldwide

The current time is no less than a milestone, as this exceptional technology has started to come out from the shadows of cryptocurrencies. Buyers and vendors are expecting to take advantage by adopting blockchain technology in their business practices. As the decentralized philosophy behind blockchain technology has gained attention in diverse business organizations.

Powered with secure decentralized protocols and a modern-day decentralized management attitude, blockchain has all it takes to rapidly be beneficial across every industry we know today.

Here are a few areas within different organizations that have benefitted the most from this cutting-edge technology.

Efficiency in Operations

Since blockchain works a distributed ledger, the basic and fundamental function of the technology is to ensure that data transfer within a network is transparent, simultaneously distributed, and in an immutable fashion. Such a function is exceptional in overcoming the inconsistencies in data transferred within different areas of an organization, mitigating lack of trust and increasing transparency of information within a department.

Another area at which blockchain technology works well for companies is self-executing contracts. Businesses around the world can now use smart contracts for sales, employment, lease and other types of contract. For instance, investors and small business owners can manage their equities through automated tools which previously took specialist professionals a lot of time, ultimately can help companies in saving huge amount of money over time.

Supply Chain

With the current blockchain technology, it has now become possible for companies to gain a real-time digital ledger of different transactions and movements for each of the participants in their supply chain network. This increasingly has helped them in procurement – giving more visibility and savings, data and analytics – collecting, storing and analyzing data in a better way, allowing digital contracts and payments, and encouraging smart contracts to end costly procure-to-pay gaps.

No wonder blockchain in revolutionizing supply chain management in different business organizations all over the world.

Sales and Marketing

The online presence of businesses carries all sorts of significance. While technology has already helped companies to create a strong business profile online, blockchain is now assisting them to gain higher revenues. Well-trained and knowledgeable sales team carrying adequate information related to the blockchain technology have the scope to explore new sales solutions.

After sales, service is important than ever before, and manufacturers have realized it as well. Blockchain could be used to improve after-sales services in small to large size organizations.

Marketing professionals, on the other hand, having a thorough understanding of the technology can help integrate blockchain into the content and pepper it with highly researched keywords. Ultimately helping the vendor organization to stand out in the chaotic online marketplace!

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing technology wasn’t a possibility before the blockchain. Remember the time when professionals had to keep all important data in bulky hard drive and travel from one place to another while carrying the same.

Blockchain has allowed tech designers to provide businesses with opportunities to save a massive amount of data online. All secured and easy access from any place around the world! As a result, businesses can connect with a cloud storage provider and store a massive amount of data, where the costs are based solely on supply and demand, instead of a centralized system with fixed high prices.

The opportunities blockchain technology is currently providing businesses is just the tip of the iceberg and has a long way ahead. All started with cryptocurrencies, the technology has now no limits to the benefits it can provide in carrying out different business operations in a more productive and efficient way.

All businesses require is get hold of the right technology and implement in the right way to get the most favorable results.

Published at Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:30:27 +0000

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The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. Is Half Full Node, Half Work of Art

The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. Is Half Full Node and Half Work of Art

bitcoin is a decentralized system of digital cash in which users don’t need to trust anyone else with their money; however, the full benefits of this technology are only seen when users operate a full node on the network. The vast majority of bitcoin users do not operate their own full nodes, but one man is trying to change that with a piece of hardware he calls the bitcoin Block Clock Jr.

There are many good reasons for individual Bitcoiners to operate a full node. Full nodes are responsible for validating transactions and blocks on the bitcoin network. Only by running full nodes can users know with full certainty that they received a valid payment. Additionally, the more users that run full nodes, the more decentralized the bitcoin network is, making it harder to shut down or corrupt.

And as Sia Co-Founder David Vorick pointed out in a talk at this year’s MIT bitcoin Expo, those who do not operate their own full nodes do not get a say in the matter when hard forks are deployed on the network. “If you’re not running a full node … your opinion on whether or not you like a hard fork is less relevant because, ultimately, if you’re not validating the rules and someone gives you a transaction following a different rule set, you don’t have a way to detect that,” he explained.

Running a full node, however, has been a rather expensive proposition. As a result, larger, economically invested entities that are better able to support full nodes have had more of a say.

According to Vorick, users can be dragged along with miners and large businesses if the cost of running a full node is too high: “If full nodes are expensive to run, only people who are capable of running nodes really have any say in what happens in a contentious upgrade.”

Matthew Zipkin is the man behind the bitcoin Block Clock. A sound engineer by trade, he has been working in his spare time on creating full nodes that are both affordable and fun to use. During a recent discussion with bitcoin Magazine, Zipkin revealed his desire to create a piece of hardware for operating a low-cost bitcoin full node that isn’t boring.

A bitcoin Full Node That Isn’t Boring

When commenting on his reasoning for creating the bitcoin Block Clock, Zipkin pointed to the full node devices made by Bitnodes before they were acquired by 21.

“I always wanted one, but they disappeared when they got bought out, so I decided to build my own,” said Zipkin.

While there are other full node options out there, such as Bitseed, Zipkin wanted to make something that was more than a piece of computer hardware that would sit on the floor next to a router. Zipkin wanted to turn a bitcoin full node into a work of art, and that’s exactly what he did.

Zipkin built the first version of the Bitcoin Block Clock last year, and it was on display at the SF Bitcoin Meetup’s “Proof of Art” event in May of 2016. After receiving positive feedback at the event and on Reddit, Zipkin decided to make a smaller version of the full node hardware to sell.

The bitcoin Block Clock included a screen that displayed various live information about the bitcoin network. Zipkin put the original version of the bitcoin Block Clock for sale on OpenBazaar and Purse.io, but it hasn’t sold.

“I priced it pretty high because it’s art and I love it and kind of want to keep it,” explained Zipkin. “So of course it still has not sold.”

Creating the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. With Bcoin

In an effort to create a version of the bitcoin Block Clock that could be produced at a lower price, Zipkin turned to Raspberry Pi Zero and Bcoin, which is an implementation of the bitcoin protocol written in Node.js.

“I discovered Bcoin was super easy to install and use, and the codebase was easier for me to review because it’s in Javascript instead of C++, and was built from scratch by a small group of developers (basically just two guys), so everything is really well labeled and consistent,” explained Zipkin.

Of course, the problem with using SPV mode is that it’s not a full node and the device won’t receive all of the information related to a new bitcoin block as it’s mined on the network. Zipkin opted for the pruned full node option in Bcoin in an effort to lower the system resources required to operate the node on Raspberry Pi Zero.

“With pruning, I get all the fun block details I wanted to display,” said Zipkin. “I even submitted a pull request (which got merged!) to Bcoin to make my application work even easier.”

Zipkin described the LED displays on the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. as follows:

“The bitcoin Block Clock Jr. has two LED rings. The outer ring of 24 LEDs indicates recent blocks. Each LED represents 2 minutes, and they “tick” clockwise around the ring. The color of the LED is determined by the block’s version (BIP 9 version bits combined with keywords from the Coinbase scriptSig like “/EXTBLK” or “/EB1/AD6/”). The inner 16-LED ring indicates the progress of the current difficulty period (2,016 blocks, or about two weeks). It starts blue and gradually turns more and more red as the meter fills up. The tiny little display screen indicates some details about the latest block: height, size, version (and extra scriptSig version) and the adjustment period progress. I added a little web interface so I could turn the lights off at night without having to SSH into the Pi every time.”

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An Economical Way to Contribute to the Network

While Zipkin noted that the original bitcoin Block Clock displays much more information and also comes with full wallet functionality, he also pointed out that the latest model proves that bitcoin users only need about $20 to run their own full nodes (at least in pruned mode).

Having said that, Zipkin admitted that the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. can struggle to keep up with the network at times.

“Bcoin plus my Python script and all the GPIO display output just barely hangs in there on this tiny underpowered computer,” said Zipkin. “The Python script has a method to restart Bcoin when it crashes and monitor it as it catches up to the network.”

All of the technical details of the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. are open source and can be found on GitHub.

Zipkin has now placed the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. for sale on OpenBazaar and Purse.io.

The post The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. Is Half Full Node, Half Work of Art appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.