What Is Block-chain Technology

Silas Andrew Spencer

What Is Blockchain Technology?

Recently and suddenly, an enormous demand for blockchain engineers has presented itself. Software engineers at Google are leaving their jobs to chase their new blockchain dreams. According to a job report earlier this year conducted by Hired, there has been a "517% increase in demand" for software engineers possessing blockchain development skills. Additionally, Hired found "blockchain development skills ranked in the top three job openings in almost every global region". Muhel Patel, the chief executive officer of Hired even said the growth in demand for blockchain skills has gone "through the roof" and "tops anything he's ever seen". Therefore, blockchain engineering has recently dominated the computer technology market...But what exactly is blockchain technology?

At its most basic level, blockchain is well, a chain of blocks... However not in the traditional sense that me or you would think. Blocks, in this context, refer to the digital storage which is in a public database, or the chain. To actually understand what this means, we must confabulate about how blockchain and these blocks work. As stated earlier, blocks are digital pieces of information located on the blockchain. They have three parts:

1. Blocks will store digital information about the transaction someone has made. For example, If I were to buy something from Target's online website, say the date, time, and dollar amount of whatever I purchased would be noted.
2. Blocks will note who is participating in these transactions. If what I purchased from Target was an inflatable bouncy house, then Target Inc, as well as my "digital signature", albeit a transparent one, would be recorded.
3. Blocks contain a unique code in the base of their existence called a "hash". With this code, blocks are able to distinguish themselves form other blocks just like people are able to be identified respectively by their names. Say for example I wanted to buy another bouncy house - although my transaction would be exactly the same, the code behind the block, or the hash, would be completely different. 

by design, blockchains serve a function to provide unique and safe transactions to online customers.

Blockchain technology accounts for "the issues of security and trust in several ways". First of all, new blocks are "always stored linearly and chronologically". This means that they are always added to the “end” of the blockchain. If you take a look at Bitcoin’s blockchain, you will see that each block has a position on the chain, called a “height.” As of February 2019, the block’s height "had topped 562,000". After a block has already been added, it is almost impossible to get rid of it. That’s because each block contains its own hash, along with the hash of the block before it. This evidently has produced the rise in online currency in companies such as Bitcoin, consequently making blockchain developmental skills significantly more valuable.