We live in a society where someone takes care of everything that we do or rather accounts for everything that we do…
Let’s take an example: I want to transfer 1000 rupees to my friend by net banking… the accounting of the transaction is done by the bank for both of us …The bank debits my account for the said Rs1000, closes both the accounts, credits the account of Mahesh for the said Rs1000, completes the transactions and then opens both the accounts. The same is also entered in each of our ledgers or passbooks…So here the bank takes care of the said transaction between me and Mahesh and the account for the said transaction is always maintained by the bank…
We follow the same procedure for almost everything in our lives; whether we want to sell a flat or a piece of land or register a birth-it’s the same-it’s just the authority who maintains the ledger and the transaction that changes… So, in every activity in our lives and in our society, we have someone else who maintains account of the various transactions
What if we could have a technology or an option which would do away with this someone else maintaining account of the various transactions in our life …Would be interesting and much easier right?
Block chain technology made famous by its usage as the technology for the various digital currencies most popular of which is the bitcoin (which I discussed in my previous article # has this functionality …
So, what is this Block chain?
Using the same earlier example let me now transfer Rs1000 to my friend this time through block chain
Here since me and my friend happen to be within blockchain the transfer happens directly without any intermediary like the bank in the earlier case. Imagine a spreadsheet or a ledger that is maintained on every computer of every user who is connected in the blockchain network. In the above example when I transfer the Rs1000 to my friend the spreadsheet that is maintained is each of the users gets automatically updated which can include the bank or anyone else also on the network.
This is how Block chain technology works…
The block chain database is a shared data base across all the users in the network which is continuously updated and reconciled
It just does away with all the people who account the transactions for all of us and then reverify, reconcile and then audit the same transactions just to ensure that they are fool proof…
Let’s take a second example:
As mandated by the Indian government we must link our Aadhar card to all our bank accounts. So, what do we do now…we go and give our Aadhar card to HDFC bank or SBI or Indian bank or wherever we have opened bank accounts.
If we were to do this with blockchain and if your Aadhar is linked to you, all the members which can include all the banks will automatically also have the same update…
Saves a lot of time and headache doesn’t it!
Let’s take a third example:
If I want to take a taxi from my house to the airport today… what do I do I book a cab using one of the taxi sharing apps like Uber and Ola which allocates a vehicle for me depending on their availability in my vicinity and if they are registered on Uber or Ola and I travel to the airport and my transaction is completed through the Uber or Ola app.
With block chain the database which is available for everyone will show which cabs are available in my area and similarly the cab driver will also get to see the customers who are requesting and will just do away with aggregators like an Uber or an Ola.
Just think of it…It will alter the way we do everything in our lives like the internet has…
The internet has over the last 25 years changed the way we do most of the things in our life
The blockchain will be the next which will be equally or more disruptive and revolutionary! and our lives will be a lot easier.
Hope this article makes you more aware and ready for this change!
