What are Blockchain and Smart Contracts?
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 6:59 am
Blockchain is the new technology for the treatment of data that everyone speaks about, but what is blockchain?
Blockchain is a chain of blocks in which we have stored information, and where to connect the blocks, we use a hash (the hash is an output of a fixed size, which normally works through a text string and gives the same result with the same input, in ethereum is generated with the function KECCAK-256) that we generate and that allows us to connect them to each other.
In this way if someone wanted to maliciously modify a block, they should modify the entire text string from that point, with a computational cost so high that prevents any attack.
Therefore blockchain serves to store information, which cannot be bulk sms ireland manipulated and does not need to be validated by a central entity, if not by the network members themselves.
Blockchain diagram. Source
(Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System)
Before we continue, it's interesting to talk a little about the history of blockchain to understand where we stand. Blockchain has several important milestones in its history:
In 1991 Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta publish the first document about the blockchain concept (How to time-stamp a digital document).
Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 publishes his Bitcoin document that comes out in October of that year. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
And in 2009 version 0.1 of Bitcoin is published in Sourceforge.
As we can see, conceptually blockchain comes from the 90s, but the first implementation has less than 10 years.
Smart Contract
On the other hand we have the Smart Contract, which is the second element that has given all the potential to blockchain.
Smart Contract, a name used used by Nick Szabo for the first time in 1996 through the publication of his article ‘Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets’, is a computer program, which executes an agreement between two parties in a system not controlled by either party.
Blockchain is a chain of blocks in which we have stored information, and where to connect the blocks, we use a hash (the hash is an output of a fixed size, which normally works through a text string and gives the same result with the same input, in ethereum is generated with the function KECCAK-256) that we generate and that allows us to connect them to each other.
In this way if someone wanted to maliciously modify a block, they should modify the entire text string from that point, with a computational cost so high that prevents any attack.
Therefore blockchain serves to store information, which cannot be bulk sms ireland manipulated and does not need to be validated by a central entity, if not by the network members themselves.
Blockchain diagram. Source
(Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System)
Before we continue, it's interesting to talk a little about the history of blockchain to understand where we stand. Blockchain has several important milestones in its history:
In 1991 Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta publish the first document about the blockchain concept (How to time-stamp a digital document).
Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 publishes his Bitcoin document that comes out in October of that year. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
And in 2009 version 0.1 of Bitcoin is published in Sourceforge.
As we can see, conceptually blockchain comes from the 90s, but the first implementation has less than 10 years.
Smart Contract
On the other hand we have the Smart Contract, which is the second element that has given all the potential to blockchain.
Smart Contract, a name used used by Nick Szabo for the first time in 1996 through the publication of his article ‘Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets’, is a computer program, which executes an agreement between two parties in a system not controlled by either party.