What is a blockchain?
Extremely generally-speaking, a blockchain is a tamper-proof way to store and track data. A "decentralized database" of sorts, Blockchain can store any type of data, but payments were the first use-case.
Bitcoin / $BTC was the first widely-adopted blockchain & cryptocurrency ever created and went live on January 1st 2009. $BTC is an excellent example of a blockchain, but use-cases go beyond just facilitating secure, digital payments on the web.
I encourage you to read the 2008 official whitepaper.
A whitepaper is an official report and technical guide about said blockchain or software. For an easier to follow summary about blockchain & $BTC, see the blockchain Wikipedia page.
There you can read about blockchain history and Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious figure or team of figures that created Bitcoin. This person(s) has not come forward yet and revealed himself, and could have even passed away since!
Bitcoin is digital money
Currently, most of the world relies on 3rd parties to process electronic payments. Which include banks, credit card companies, etc. Just before Bitcoin�s creation, banks were being accused of mishandling borrowers� money, charging too high of fees and generally �rigging the system�.
We all place a lot of trust in these 3rd parties that they will run our transactions with honesty, without error and with minimal fees. Banks control the entire process, can reverse transactions and errors occur that require mediation between parties in the payment transaction.
Users also put trust on banks that the payment and any needed mediation process will happen without error. AND trust that your account and funds will not be hacked and compromised. We also pay for this mediation process via fees on each transaction, even if you yourself have never actually needed mediation.
We should not have to pay any 3rd party additional money in the form of fees when we can make payments directly ourselves. The problem is that there needs to be 100% trust between the payer and the payee. Lets make payment transactions transparent and avoid corruption and fees by cutting out the middleman!
Decentralization
With Bitcoin, this reliance on a 3rd party is removed from the equation, and parties can transact directly with each other in a peer-to-peer trustless environment. No reliance on other institutions (government or banks). Bitcoin achieves this �built-in� trust via an electronic payment system that is based on cryptographic proof instead of blind human trust.
Trust is replaced with verification. (Read the BTC whitepaper above for more technical details). 100% trustless Peer to Peer payment transactions that are forever stored on the public blockchain ledger. A �chain� of digital signatures. Think of Bitcoin as electronic cash.
A blockchain is a growing list of records (blocks) that are linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.
From this point on it gets technical explaining how you can trust this network of nodes, I will soon be adding more pages and information, but a very brief summary here.
There is no central authority or intermediaries (like a bank) that control the network, but instead decentralization and a public, distributed ledger powers the Bitcoin network. This blockchain ledger is
Each �node� or basically computer on the Bitcoin network stores the entire chain and all records that have happened previously. This way the ledger data is not stored centrally in one location, but distributed throughout the world.
If one computer / node goes down, there are plenty more that are storing the same data throughout the world. Each node processes these payments (via the cryptographic processes above) and stores the results into this chain of data.
All public, verifiable and stamped with the date/time it happened. The list/chain is forever growing throughout this peer-to-peer network. The data in any given block cannot be reversed or altered without alteration of all subsequent blocks,
since they are linked/chained together with info from previous blocks. Consensus from the majority of the network is needed to make altering changes like this, which happens infrequently.
No single 3rd party, country or company is in control of the Bitcoin network, & anyone can join!
Other than that, you should know that DeFi, decentralized finance, Bitcoin and payments are not the only use-case of blockchain. As you have probably heard there are MANY cryptocurrencies and tokens out there.
Each one is basically a different type of software that interacts with a blockchain and solves a certain problem.
Other use-cases are:
Entertainment, retail, supply chain and logistics (tracking status and sources throughout the lifecycle of a product, to verify that a product is what it says it is and comes from where they say it comes from!), insurance, healthcare, and real estate.
Basically almost any industry can benefit from blockchain. Future sources on this website will delve into each industry and use-cases in more detail.
I want some Cryptocurrency!
Another cool thing about Bitcoin is that inflation is impossible, there is a finite amount of coins. The USA Federal Reserve can print as much $USD fiat as they want! Deflating the value of said currency. Bitcoin will always and forever only have a max of 21 million $BTC coins! Don't worry, it is not like a stock where you need to purchase an entire share / $BTC you can buy fractions of Bitcoin or Satoshis. So how do you get your hands on some!?
OK, to get started, check out the summary How to Buy Cryptocurrency.
The purpose of DecentApps is to spread knowledge about Bitcoin and blockchain in general. And to help individuals get involved with blockchain, answer questions, etc. But we also plan on creating blockchain mass adoption by making it easier to use!
By developing and releasing several Decent Apps (decentralized applications) that will help the world utilize the power of blockchain! Stay tuned in this regard as well!
If you have any questions or have topics you want us to discuss, let us know