Blockchain Technology Simplified

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."- Michelangelo

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It truly is likely that only about 1-2% of the world’s population uses CryptoCurrency. Sometimes users of CryptoCurrency try to act “all smart” as if we are trying to tell the world that we have outsmarted them in this life game of chess. Heck, I probably have done it before and I don’t even like chess. But guess what…. it got me absolutely no where in my pursuit to help the adoption of CyrptoCurrency. Let’s get straight to it. If CryptoCurrency isn’t dumbed down on how it truly works, we may have a real issue with people adopting its legitimacy, quickly. I’m a simpleton. I come from a small town of 214 people. I can relate. We don’t need complicated. We just want simple and to the point. I am going to try to take on (and conquer) the “I just don’t get how it works” statement when I try to describe how blockchain technology works and its true genius that makes it… well… perfect.

Let’s start by talking about Blockchain Technology. To keep things simple, the only thing you need to know is Blockchain Technology was created by a very creative and smart human being that brought the Blockchain to life. Kind of like how someone designed the High School you use to go to and then had it built.

Here is the thing, in a building there are a lot of walls, ceilings, nuts and bolts used to create that school. There are directions as to where each wall should be placed and its complicated to make the building a reality. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The building is standing and it’s working the way it is suppose to be. The insides of how blockchain technology works honestly doesn’t matter. Thanks to the developers, we only have to figure out how to use it to our advantage.

The best way to do this is by using analogies. So imagine you are back in your High School or College days. You are identified by your Student ID Number. Nobody knows who is behind that number unless you give it to them. We never wanted to give that number to anyone for various reasons….. but we will get back to that in a minute.

Times have changed since I’ve been in school, but a lot of kids these days, when assigned homework get to take it home on their Ipad. Think of your CryptoCurrency Wallet like your Ipad. You have a password to unlock the Ipad. You store a lot of private things such as your homework on your Ipad. You have only one password to unlock the Ipad and you don’t give that password to anyone so they can’t look at your answers. In the CryptoCurrency world the password can be related to your “Private Key“. The relationship between your password and your Ipad is determining if you will lock or unlock the information in the Ipad so information can leave or come into your Ipad.

So let’s broaden this story a little more. Let’s say you were assigned homework by your teacher and it was due the next day, and you had to show the teacher it was done on your Ipad the next day. But wow, its math, and you are not good at math.

Let’s talk through the process how you would get that homework done and then relate it to the blockchain.

So, you go home and on your Ipad you work on your homework and you think you finished it all perfectly. However, you want to get a good grade so you would like others to check it over for you. So you take your ipad, open it up with its password and you send it to the people that you trust the most in the world who also have Ipads. The Ipads of your trusted colleagues who check your work are similar to what we call in the CryptoCurrency world as “Nodes.” The key to these Nodes is checking the work that you sent to them and confirm the work is perfect. Once your trusted individuals verify your work is perfect, they know it’s good to send to your teacher.

The following morning you turn in your work to the teacher. The teacher will then grade your homework. Your grade will be posted with all the other grades with their unique Student ID Number. Do you see why you would never want someone to find out your number? Hey look, you got an A!

Let’s review:

1. You have homeworkYour Homework is held in your Ipad

2. Your Password is needed to open your Ipad and complete a function.

3. You send the homework to your friends to check that your homework is done correctly.

4. Your friends verify your homework is done correctly.Your teacher collects the homework from you.

5. You can check to see how everyone did on their homework but only they know what their Student ID Number is, as you only know what your ID is.

This is pretty much how the Blockchain works.

This is the simplified version as to how the Blockchain works using CryptoCurrency terms:

1. You have a wallet.Your wallet holds your CryptoCurrency.

2. You want to send your CryptoCurrency to your friend to pay them for a pair of shoes they bought for you.

3. You tell your private key to open your wallet to send your friend the CryptoCurrency.

4. Before your friend receives the CryptoCurrency payment, the Nodes, which are held by random people all over the world, automatically verifies that what you are sending to your friend is 100% real (this all occurs in internet space).

5. Once the Nodes verify what you are sending is real, it will put the Cryptocurrency into your friend’s wallet.

6. This transaction can be publicly traced on the ledger with a unique Public Key for anybody to review.

But What About Masternodes, Rather than Regular Nodes?

So let’s go back to the part where you sent your trusted colleague to check your work (Nodes). Instead, running a Masternode would be like paying a tutor to check your work for you. It costs money to hire a tutor. Individuals who run Masternodes collect a portion of the transaction or rewards that you are sending to a friend.

If you run a Masternode, you will be rewarded with a commission that verifies the “Transaction” is real.

Pretty cool.

How Would You Simplify Blockchain Technology? Comment Below. Maybe even share this article!