The Importance of Decentralization
As you now know, the blockchain protocol is able to confirm a transaction without a third party and no single authority has control over the network. This is why it is decentralized. But why is this important?
Firstly, decentralization is very secure. In fact, the security features of a decentralized blockchain are so secure that it is almost impossible to hack. Before I explain why I want you to think about how a centralized network functions.
Let’s take a look at an organization like Yahoo. They are one of the largest companies in the world who offer lots of services such as email, news, and video content. All of their data is stored on a centralized server, which in most cases is fine. But what happens if the centralized server fails?
This is exactly what happened in 2016 when a group of hackers managed to gain control of the Yahoo servers, which then allowed them to access more than 3 billion private email accounts.
This isn’t a one-time incident either. Whether its social media, banks, internet service providers or the U.S. election, centralized servers are hacked all the time. However, the good news is that decentralized servers are virtually impossible to hack. Here’s why!
Do you remember how my “What is Blockchain” guide explained that to confirm a transaction, lots and lots of people contribute their computational power? These “Nodes” not only help verify a movement of funds, but they also keep the network secure. This is because more than half of the nodes on the entire network would need to be hacked at the same time for something bad to happen!
Even if this was possible (which it isn’t, really), the hacker would only be able to make changes to the blockchain for 1 block, which in the case of Bitcoin, would be about 10 minutes!
Decentralization isn’t only important for security, but for equality, too. Everyone who engages with the blockchain has the ability to contribute to the system. Furthermore, as each and every transaction is available to view on the public ledger, it makes the network transparent. No corruption, no fraud, and no inequality!
Now that you know why decentralization is important, the next part of my What is Blockchain tutorial is going to look at how anonymous the blockchain is!
How Anonymous is the Blockchain?
When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in 2009, he not only wanted to create a fair, secure and transparent payment system, but he also wanted to allow people to send and receive funds anonymously.
Think about how you spend your money in everyday life. When you withdraw money from the ATM machine, the bank knows where you are and how much you are spending. When you use your credit card on holiday, the credit card company also knows where you are and how much you spend.
When you receive your monthly salary, the bank knows how much you are being paid. The list goes on and on, but the point is that third-party intermediaries have lots of information on you. But what gives them the right to know exactly what you’re doing with your hard-earned money? Nothing does! They shouldn’t know.
This is where blockchain technology is different. When you obtain a cryptocurrency, you store it in a digital wallet. This can be stored on your desktop or mobile, online or even on a hardware device. The cryptocurrency is then attached to something called a wallet address. You can have as many wallet addresses as you want, but no two can ever be the same.
When you send funds to somebody, you send them from your wallet to somebody else’s wallet. Here is what a blockchain Bitcoin transaction would look like.
Wallet “1Jv11eRMNPwRc1jK1A1Pye5cH2kc5urtLP”
Sent “2 BTC” to
Wallet “1Jv11eRMNPwRc1jK1A1Pye5cH2kc5urtLP”
On Friday 18th May 2018 at 15.37.
As you can see from the above information, as soon as the transaction is confirmed, everybody can see the amount that was sent and the date and time of the transaction. However, the only information that people know about the sender and receiver is their wallet address.
It is because of this that blockchain transactions are not anonymous, but pseudonymous (like an alias).
However, this is just like spending cash in the physical world. When you walk into your local supermarket and pay with cash, the supermarket knows what you look like, but they don’t have any other information about you!
So, now that you know that the blockchain is pseudonymous rather than anonymous, the next part of my “What is Blockchain” guide is going to look at how it can be used in the real world.
Digital information can be reproduced relatively easily, so with Bitcoin and other digital currencies, there is a risk that a spender can make a copy of their bitcoin and send it to another party while still holding onto the original.1