In recent years, the word "blockchain" has been heard more and more. Blockchain has merits such as difficulty in data falsification by outsiders and low cost, and it is expected that demand will increase in the future. Currently, this technology is mainly used in the financial industry, but it is a technology that can be applied to other industries, and if you are a system engineer, you definitely want to learn it.
Mechanism of blockchain
Blockchain is not a client-server method that manages all data on one server, but a mechanism called "peer-to-peer method" that manages information in a distributed manner on multiple computers. Therefore, even if some computers go down due to some kind of failure, the system can be used as long as other computers are running. In addition, the load on the server can be distributed, so the processing speed can be improved.
It is also excellent as a countermeasure against data tampering. The blockchain stores and manages past data as well. If the hash of the latest block and the hash of the previous block do not match, it is considered to be fraudulent, so the data of all blocks must be tampered with, and the data of other terminals must also be tampered with. It is said that tampering with data is virtually impossible.
In some cases, by incorporating blockchain, it is possible to provide the services that have been used in the past at low cost. By using the blockchain, individuals can communicate directly with each other without going through a central institution, so the fees that were previously required to receive the service may be free.
Blockchain is attracting public attention mainly because of these advantages.
Areas where blockchain is used
1. Smart contract
Blockchain development is used to implement this smart contract, which is a mechanism that automatically confirms and fulfills the terms of the contract. Since it is very difficult to tamper with, it is also excellent in terms of cost because it is possible to conclude a contract without human intervention.
2. E-commerce
For example, OpenBazaar, a service that allows anyone to list goods and services, has a mechanism that allows payment using the blockchain. As a result, there are no intermediaries such as card companies between the seller and the buyer, so we are able to offer the advantage of free commissions.
3. Sharing economy
Blockchain development has already been adopted in the sharing economy, which is already quite popular overseas. The sharing economy is a mechanism for sharing and exchanging goods and services with others, such as "Uber (general drivers provide taxi-like services in their own cars)" and "Airbnb (to others). We provide a service to rent a room) ”and so on. Blockchain is suitable for implementation because it is a service that exchanges things between individuals.
How to study blockchain
What should we study to be able to implement blockchain? Perhaps many people think that it would be good to catch up on one language that has a proven track record of implementing blockchain. However, it is better to understand how it works rather than the implementation language. There are many languages that can develop blockchain, most of the libraries are "JavaScript", virtual currency related systems are "C ++" and "C #", smart contracts are "Solidity", industrial system development "Java" is suitable for the blockchain in. In other words, there are many languages that can implement blockchain, and it is not usually the case that the programming language to be adopted is determined by whether or not to adopt the blockchain mechanism. Blockchain is a technology that can be applied to many industries and is expected to be in high demand in the future, and it is expected that the number of libraries for implementing blockchain in each language will increase. Even languages that have little track record of implementing blockchain will increase steadily in the future. Therefore, if you are studying, it is better to understand the mechanism first, not how to implement it in a certain language.
