If you are familiar with cryptocurrency, you must also be familiar with the name Blockchain. Blockchain is the underlying technology that ensures transactions are immutable, accurate and transparent.
All this time, there’s been a lot of confusion about Blockchain and database. Even you must have that that they are the same, haven’t you?
Well, you’re not alone in this confusion. A majority of people don’t know that they are the two different things.
Sure, blockchain is a form of database, but there’s quite a difference in both the terms.
So what exactly are the differences and similarities between the two. Let’s find out!
Blockchain Explained
Table of Contents
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that was brought into existence by Satoshi Nakamoto when he first introduced Bitcoin back in 2009. Bitcoin India rate today is trading @ $18,354.45, at the time of writing this post.
This is because recording a transaction on blockchain requires a lot of work to be done.
Take Bitcoin blockchain for example, where blocks are created and added to the chain in about every 10 minutes by the miners who timestamps the block along with cryptographic proofs.
Here’s the catch. This process makes a blockchain very slow.
For example, you went to buy an ice-cream for your girl, and paid for it with your Bitcoin. By the time, the transaction takes place while going through the process till it gets recorded on the blockchain, your ice-cream would have melted, making your girl angry at the end.
Apart from this, this entire process makes sure that no one can edit the data without putting in some work and you have a valid proof for your transaction that can’t be tampered with.
Not only this, adding transactions with a timestamp to the Blockchain is something that creates an immutable history that anyone can verify, whereby the provenance of digital records becomes transparent through Blockchain.
One can easily see the ownership of the records with timestamps, the time when it was created, and its current status.
This is a kind of database or distributed ledger that can be very helpful to build trust between different parties so that they can do fair and non-centralized transactions with each other.
There’s a popular saying –
“Every blockchain may be considered as a database, but every database cannot be considered as a blockchain.”
Database Explained
A database is such a central ledger where you confide in the manager to oversee it well. In fact, the database administrator offers rights whether to read or write, not the same as blockchain where anybody can do as such by doing some critical work in the right manner.
Yet, like Blockchain, the central databases can store history just as various versions of data with the assistance of an entity that is centralization-focused.
What’s more, in light of the fact that a database is centralized in nature, its maintenance is very easy with high output. However, this brings the drawbacks of trusting in a centralized entity which can compromise the entire information and can even change the ownership for records, once tampered.
Not just this, there is no compelling reason to keep all the past versions of the ledger since we all trust the centralized authority. They should act reasonably, which is far from the truth in reality.
In such a framework, it turns out to be easy to tamper the digital records and subsequently can’t tackle the issues like double-spending.
Conclusion
What is the Blockchain Database?
The answer to this question is quite simple. It is an innovative idea that combines the focal points and familiar user experience of a traditional database framework with a blockchain backend to make a safer structure that guarantees data security, availability, integrity and transparency while you are transacting with your Best Bitcoin Wallet in India.
