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History of Blockchain

The blockchain is an emerging technology that is currently experiencing very rapid evolution. It's much more than just a technology it is also a culture and community that is passionate about creating a more equitable world through decentralization. It is a movement to disrupt the disruptors to redesign the internet in so doing shake up existing centralized incumbents.

The blockchain combines cryptography with distributed computing, both of which existed for a number of decades.

It's the genius of Satoshi Nakamoto to combine them in a new way to create a model where a network of computers collaborate towards maintaining a shared and secure database.

As such we can say that the blockchain is simply a distributed secure database. This database consists of a string of blocks each one has a record of data that has been encrypted and given a unique identifier called a hash.

Mining computers on the network validate transactions, add them to the block they are building and then broadcast the completed block to other node so they all have a copy of the database.

The blockchain relies on distributed consensus algorithm in other to make an entry onto the blockchain database. All the computers agree about its state so that no one computer can make an alteration without the consensus of others making the blockchain nearly immutable.

Once a block is completed it goes into the blockchain as a permanent record, a new one is generated

The blocks are all connected in a chain, in a linear chronological order. The blockchain are designed in such a way that transactions are immutable meaning they cannot be deleted, each block has a hash value that is depended upon the hash of the previous block so they are all linked together.

Meaning if one is changed then all the other block linked to it going forward will be altered, this works to make the data entered tamper proof. The blockchain can be understood as a new kind of database, what's different about this database is that it's distributed.

The blockchain uses a distributed network of computers to maintain a shared database. It's a set of protocols and cryptographic methods that enables a networks of computers to work together to securely record data within a shared open database

The blockchain is a continuously growing list of these blocks of data which are linked and secured using cryptography. This makes it a trusted database with this being maintained by open source computer code encryption instead of any single institution.

This is the working of the first generation of the blockchain which functions largely simply as a database, but the second generation already provided the capability to execute any computer code on the blockchain. The system is evolving to become a globally distributed computing infrastructure.

Before Bitcoin

In 1982 A university of California doctoral candidate called David Chaum first mentioned a blockchain database in his dissertation, "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups."

Though Chaum's suspicious and immutable networks weren't really designed to support digital currencies, there were a lot of similarities between it and modern blockchains.

Chaum later launched a company called DigiCash in 1989, the company created a cryptocurrency variously called digicash, eCash, and then Cyberbucks.

Anonymousity was the key promise of Chaum's work but it wasn't enough to convince banks to invest in his work so DigiCash failed.

In 1991 two research scientists, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta described the blockchain technology. They planned on introducing a computationally practical solution for time-stamping digital documents so as to prevent backdating or mutating data.

They incorporated the Merkle Trees into their work. The Merkle Trees were used to create a secured chain of blocks. It stored data records and every previous block was connected to the new ones. However this technology went Unused and patent lapsed in 2004.

In 2004, the Reusable Proof of Work (RPoW) was created by cryptographic activist and software developer Hal Finney. This was a major milestone in the history of cryptocurrencies.

The RPoW system worked by receiving a non-exchangeable or non-fungible Hashcash based proof of work token in return, creating an RSA-signed token that further could be transferred from person to person, a similar approach to today's mining and mining rewards.

RPoW brought a solution to the double-spending problem by keeping the ownership of tokens registered on a trusted server. This server allowed users throughout the world to verify transactions' integrity and proved immutable.

Bitcoin happens to be the first modern cryptocurrency and was created by the anonymous person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto…. The Bitcoin blockchain and cryptocurrency was launched in 2009.. but prior to that the blockchain already existed.

Satoshi Nakamoto is commonly credited with creating the blockchain architecture that makes modern cryptocurrency possible today, but the concept and structural function of what is known to be blockchains today were invented way before 2009.