I Finally Understand What a Blockchain Is!!!! Watch This Video And You Will Too!
After 8 months of not fully understanding what a blockchain is.....
I finally understand it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is yuuuuuuge people! I've watched tons of different videos to answer the question, "What is a blockchain?" and even though these videos did a fair job of answering the question, none really showed me what doing hash functions and securing the blockchain looked like on a computer screen! That's what I've been trying to find but without much luck until yesterday. It's a new era, because now I get it. It's actually not that complicated, as far as I can tell...
If you've wondered what the following words mean but never really found a good answer, watch the videos below.
BLOCKCHAIN
HASHING
SHA-256 HASH
NONCE
I made another one of my crazy videos documenting my knowledge trip. In this one, I go through all the emotions of not understanding what a blockchain is, and practically break down at one point screaming:
WHAT THE HECK IS A BLOCKCHAIN ANYWAY?
If you'd prefer to skip my crazy video and just get straight to the video that shows you what a blockchain actually looks like, watch this. HERE IT IS. You'll never be confused about what a blockchain is after seeing this. It's the mother lode:
I'm really curious though, and this question is for anyone who has ever mined Steem: does this look like your mining? What does securing the Steem blockchain look like from a Witness perspective? Screenshots would be appreciated.
Thanks.
(I hope I am right about this. If not, I'll probably have another breakdown.)
Thanks @stellabelle... I did a shout out to you in my advertisement related blog yesterday. This is the type of stuff I was hoping you would do. I'm off to watch it fully.
cool. what advertisement? The blockchain words gets hyped so much, and I would be that maybe only 15% of the people really understand.........It's taken 8 months for me to "get it".
You're probably off by a factor of 100.
what i meant is that 15% of the people who use the word, 'blockchain' and claim to know what it is.....
Out of the general population, I would bet it's less than 1% who knows what it is....
I think he's saying that only 0.15% of people really understand what a blockchain is. And I bet that's more accurate, lol.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dwinblood/we-need-some-good-advertisements-i-have-some-starting-ideas
I wrote that post yesterday, you were one of the people I was hoping to see it. I also kind of did a follow up brainstorm to that.
i just commented on it....
This is by far the best explanation I've seen. Thanks for the find.
I'm only sorry it took me 8 months to find it......
I'm glad it helped you.
Did you, by any chance, saw this wonderful lecture by Andreas M. Antonopoulos?
Bitcoin and the coming “infrastructure inversion”
That guy has a crystal ball, can see the future, and knows how to explain it to the common people :)
Very interesting video, just finished watching, now I understand it a little bit more thanks for sharing!
yeah, I had not idea what the word, 'hash' meant until yesterday!
One of the many things that differentiates Steem from Bitcoin is that we don't mine the blocks. Steem does not require that block IDs start with any number of leading 0's. This allows us to create blocks quickly and have a more reactive blockchain that is needed for real time social interactions.
Check out the first block ever created on Steem and it will look pretty familiar to those shown in the video. https://steemd.com/b/1 (click 'show raw block data')
So then it's true that the Steem blockchain first was born on march 24, 2016 right?
Correct!
oh, very cool! thank you. I thought that people still mined Steem though?
They do, but it isn't directly for block production. It uses a similar technique of increasing a nonce to create a number with a certain number of leading 0s. However, instead of producing a block with the result of mining, it places you in a queue to produce a block at some point in the future.
That way we leverage the benefits of mining along with the shorter block interval that comes with scheduled block production.
and so the mining of steem is not related to the blocks that are produced by witnesses? They are on separate chains or something?
Mining is done as an operation on the Steem blockchain. The data section can contain whatever the developer wants it to. Steem has its own format of how people can take actions.
Let's say you want to transfer some STEEM to Ned.
There is a specific format of a message that essentially says, "stellabelle transfers 1.000 STEEM to ned". The result of the message is that 1 STEEM is removed from your balance and added to Ned's.
Likewise there is a message that says, "Alice mined block X with nonce Y". The result of this message is that Alice gets placed in the queue to produce a block.
Excellent! I really appreciate your efforts to "de-geek" a lot of this stuff. Even though I wrote my first bit of code in 1976 (aaaaaack!!!) and have been at it ever since, a lot of this stuff is waaaay over my graying head.
But if Steemit is going to gain any sort of traction outside a small core group of dedicated blockchainiacs... we need more of these plain language explanations. And more "real" applications using blockchain technology... imagine a decentralized eBay-style marketplace that's peer-to-peer rather than "Evil Empire."
Exchellent work...
Thank you for sharing :)
So with hardfork 17 getting rid of mining, does that mean this goes away? Or does HF17 just get rid of a certain kind of mining?
I'm not the right person to ask as I haven't mined Steem....one of the witnesses should be able to answer.
@onthewayout had an answer that I can understand, especially with the comments by @proskynneo. There is a lot to take in, for folks like me that are new to the cryptocurrency world, that's for sure! So nice work in providing some explanations in understandable terms!
It was new to me 8 months ago, and I finally figured out what a blockchain really is.
And then there's still more to figure out == specifically how the Steemit blockchain works, how that's different from other blockchain projects, and why the Steemit blockchain then should have more value over the long term than others. So much -- it's so cool.
What is being removed is the Proof of Work mining (POW). The majority of the blocks are produced via Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) by the Witnesses.
Currently 1 out of every 21 blocks is produced with POW. The other 20 are produced via DPOS.
Thanks. That actually helps me understand this, with the comments elsewhere here. So the witnesses get assigned a place line to create blocks. Will every block be produced by only one witness, then? If so, how do they ensure that the one witness produced the block correctly? In the video, being able to compare the hash for a block was an important part of ensuring that the chain has not been corrupted somehow. Thanks!
The way i understand it is that if a witness is unable to produce a valid block the next witness in line will do it.
Thanks. I do wonder how they are ensuring that each block is valid -- without relying on that one witness to say that it is. Maybe someone will post a nice video or graphic sometime. Learning about blockchain technology is one of the side-benefits of Steemit for me. A little at a time, lol! Thanks again! : )
Wow! This time you have outperformed yourself, @stellabelle.
I have also learnt, after seeing this post, what a blockchain really is.
Thank you
yeah, thanks for watching.
Very cool. Awesome video @stellabelle
Sooo simple but with huge potential!
THANK YOU > Thank You > thank you OMG T H A N K Y O U! > I can't tell you how much I appreciate making this a friendly community that's not just for geeks!!!!!
Ah yes! You're welcome! Thanks for making my day!