Topics Covered: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology.
Block Chain Technology
What to study?
For Prelims and Mains: Blockchain technology- what is it? How it operates? Concerns and potential.
Context: National Informatics Centre (NIC) has set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Blockchain Technology in Bengaluru, which will provide Blockchain as a service and allow stakeholders to benefit from shared learning, experiences and resources.
Functions:
- The Centre of Excellence will facilitate various government departments in building proof of concepts for use of Blockchain technology in different dimensions of governance, leading to large scale deployment of some such applications.
- With National Informatics Centre (NIC) providing a robust and an agile infrastructure, the CoE shall also provide Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) for efficient hosting of Blockchain network, says an official release.
What are Blockchains?
Blockchains are a new data structure that is secure, cryptography-based, and distributed across a network.
- The technology supports cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and the transfer of any data or digital asset.
- Spearheaded by Bitcoin, blockchains achieve consensus among distributed nodes, allowing the transfer of digital goods without the need for centralized authorisation of transactions.
How it operates?
- The technology allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure, peer-to-peer, instant and frictionless.
- It does this by distributing trust from powerful intermediaries to a large global network, which through mass collaboration, clever code and cryptography, enables a tamper-proof public ledger of every transaction that’s ever happened on the network.
- A block is the “current” part of a blockchain which records some or all of the recent transactions, and once completed, goes into the blockchain as permanent database.
- Each time a block gets completed, a new block is generated. Blocks are linked to each other (like a chain) in proper linear, chronological order with every block containing a hash of the previous block.
Benefits of blockchain technology:
- As a public ledger system, blockchain records and validate each and every transaction made, which makes it secure and reliable.
- All the transactions made are authorized by miners, which makes the transactions immutable and prevent it from the threat of hacking.
- Blockchain technology discards the need of any third-party or central authority for peer-to-peer transactions.
- It allows decentralization of the technology.
Sources: the Hindu.
