Hey,
I've been programming for a while. I hosted my first web server with PHP/MySQL back when I was like 13, mostly for fun, and learning how ports/game servers and other things worked at the time.
Needless to say I've been pretty fast/efficient at actual jobs because of that.
But I've never bought into crypto technology or blockchain. I need help understanding that this is not just some hyped up terminology.
If you are a programmer since the beginning you might follow me here, otherwise I can try to explain it differently: Blockchain is basically like an online C style linked-list, each node is encrypted, and every transaction can be stored all in a file for example. Otherwise, an explaination is here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
So other people all sync up on this file/blockchain (usually it's not just loaded right into RAM, especially if it grows to be huge). But, it's the same as if they are downloading an encrypted copy of a table full of transaction data on a traditional data server (or other data for whichever blockchain), then have access to certain parts of it while data is stored on their computer.
So, I know for a fact it can be done in MySQL/SQLLite/SQL or any variant of SQL, off a traditional server that you can pay extra for speed/reliability for. You can still store the data and encrypt each transaction, then give each person like a key for each of their blocks, and just set it up so that it's super secure, with hash keys matching up to data, (even though that might not be so necessary).
In continuation, it would be centralized on a server, but when decentralized, it wastes file size on every computer it's copied to + serves absolutely no purpose. Server overhead would be minimal because people still have to store their 'hash' or 'keys' anyway. It's seems to only be some hype. I see all these websites like: blockchain, hosting blockchain 'networks' now (??), and blockchain as a technology, but as far as I know it's just some hyped data storage schematic gone mad. All the businesses are hyped to 'get it' but few know exactly what it does.
For an actual cryptocurrency, the ones using blockchains, the only value ever given to it is by people who think it has value, then you sell/exchange key to unlock part of the chain that has certain number of data, or bitcoins. But it's all hype: at some point you need a sucker to give real $ backed by a government to finance the whole operation; to give that useless encrypted bitcoin data 'value' that can be translated into money, backed by a real country that has a military, economy, gold, etc..
With all that in mind, I'm trying to wrap my head around something I've seen popping up (yes I'm not an old person, but it certainly feels that way to me). Without the hype and people believing in this tech, I see no real revolutionary value.
Can't you just achieve the same result in cheaper, more efficient ways than blockchain? (certainly yes, from how I understand it!) Downloading the entire blockchain and having 'clients' that download/sync it across other users is not a requirement of this, it's just like an inefficient way to transfer data and keep it encrypted. Makes sense?
Example: So why would I work for then a company that wants to do something like this (https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/fabric) ? i.e. they would want a blockchain network to log all transactions from their app (which they have already), but yet no idea why they can't do it in another way? why would it have to be a blockchain other than someone being tricked or hyped to use it? Also what is the sudden need to have this whole subset of 'blockchain networking' as if it's like some academic tool that cannot ever be fully understood (lmao)?
Blockchain = hype to me. Every definition I've seen for why it works tends to more marketing gimmicks rather than a concise idea of 'what it is' 'what it does' and 'why it's better' from like a backend memory & file perspective. Now I've seen some definitions pop up very recently that conclude similar to what I've concluded, it's just blocks of data locked by a key, all synced together. So why's that good? Why can't it be done from a cheap 12$/year hosting to accomplish the data being stored in 1 place? If really needed, paying for upgrades/high performance servers that are is also a rather cheap/competitive option; that way the same blockchain is stored in 'one' spot, not possibly millions. Also, why should I download some data heap for cryptocurrency onto my computer and use a client to update it/synchronize it, so that it wastes space on every computer it's downloaded onto, and is like 99% unusable data? lmao.. so download a copy of 'all' encrypted data onto each computer, makes sense, seems efficient right? no it's not.
Looking forward to an answer that makes sense from a programmer or experienced viewpoint.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/fwd12w/help_a_programmer_understand_blockchain/
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