How To Get Into Blockchain Technology- Startup Reference

The blockchain technology that underpins digital currency such as bitcoin is being perceived as the next-big-thing since the internet. Leading global banks and tech companies are entering the blockchain space and making huge investments to explore its potential. They believe the technology is truly disruptive and will transform how markets operate.

Blockchain is nothing but a decentralized public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It has potential applications much beyond the digital currency – it can track the exchange of anything that carries value such as stocks, bonds, securities and much more.

Barclays explains that there are two main types of Blockchain Technology – unpermissioned and Permissioned (sometimes ‘distributed ledgers’ or ‘replicated shared ledger’).

“An Unpermissioned blockchain is an open, decentralised ledger which records the transfer of value. Every transaction is cryptographically chained to the previous transaction. The result is a permanent, immutable and verifiable record of truth that everyone can see. This is useful when no central entity is available to verify a transaction” explains Barclays.

On the other hand, a Permissioned blockchain technology is often far more appealing to enterprise and financial services. It could replace certain paper-based processes with processes which are genuinely different, said Barclays. The trick is in something called “consensus”. Like consensus in a room full of people, computers use algorithms to reach consensus about the truth.

For startups looking to enter the blockchain space, it is advisable to go through Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper on bitcoin titled, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. The paper explains in detail the basic functioning of the blockchain including hashing of transactions, timestamping server, proof of work.

The next most important paper is by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s creator, titled “A Next Generation Smart Contract & Decentralized Application Platform”. Startup Management says that Vitalik Buterin set the bar higher on what cryptography can do to computer science and decentralized applications in this seminal paper.

Here are some sources which can help you getting started on the blockchain:

Multichain

It is an open platform for building blockchains. It allows organizations to rapidly design, deploy and operate distributed ledgers. The website explains in detail how to create a new blockchain, to connect to an existing blockchain and much more.

Github

In an online post on Stack Exchange, a user going by the name “supertaco” found a C program written to generate a genesis block on Github and added that the original code was pulled from a discussion on the bitcoin developer forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187888

Blockchain

An online post on the website, “Quick Bit: Creating new Bitcoin addresses”, explains generating new addresses. Users can search a block height, address, block hash, transaction hash, hash160, or ipv4 address on Blockchain.info.