Building on the Blockchain by Nyesigye

Its 2018, the word Block-chain is everywhere and yet few understand how it works or can be able to use or build upon it. Even Google, Facebook are just trying to learn what it is, while Amazon, Microsoft and IBM have tried to make their own use cases , but still require so much to be able to understand it, as for Apple it just seems blank.

Block-chain is the underlying technology powering the famous bitcoin, ethereum and other Cryptocurrency . But today am not doing education on what it is, i just want to help a developer just beginning or a business to enable them go from step zero to step one at-least.

So Block-chain technology is primarily about immutability , the ability of data to stay for as long as accessible without the ability to delete, thus building the underlying principle of "Trust". For example understand a world, where people can lie or tell the truth, but there's a record on everything thus truth is not 99% but rather 100%. Although this changes as companies and organisations start to centralize block-chains, thats why we should remain on public block-chains and best if open source as well.


But since the world is not built to be open in its DNA, now the cover on top of that "Trust" and immutability is anonymity. The number one thing hatred by Governments . So now , as still we know truth is 100% , we dont know who said what, all we know its a truth with no name. The catch of this, is that you can only reveal yourself to the people you what to know its you, thats the beauty.

From an Engineering perceptive, You can build an App, where the user can register and be paid in or rewarded in cypto and the world will always know someone has been paid this amount, only you and the app user will ever know that. He/She can share their reward and you can check on that transaction but you have no control of how or who has received the sold reward or payment.

This looks so financial or Game like , but its the core of cypto as you saw with the number one cypto Bitcoin. So while more companies and developers are trying to build storage on it, we believe storage is still way effective and cheaper on the current storage systems , but financials are still the key things with which improvement can help us greatly. So we can have all our records stored immutably.

I guess its better to store your loan payment to avoid , repaying something you completed rather than keeping you notes forever, because no one is going to steal them anyway, well unless your notes are about the latest Spacex Designs hahaha.

Bottom line is that their so many ways you can utilize this technology. And with this need for more use-cases came the creation of the token system. Woooow something new "TOKENS".

So Tokens, are just the units used on the block-chain to transfer and store value across the chain. With the first Bitcoin block-chain being un-programmable, Ethereum developed a programmable Block-chain that enabled developers to build different applications on the platform. Thus Tokens were born, that enabled each application to have its own fuel or small time cypto that it can use to function based, as this based on the ethereum.

With this we had two great public block-chains, Bitcoin and Ethereum Block chains, so popularity grew and you know what comes after a spike in usage, "Slaggggissshhhhhhhneeessss" , Yes, the platforms became slow, bitcoin transactions take up to 50 mins to be completed and on ethereum over 10 mins, now thats time we can wait for, can we?  No....

There came Stellar , that built a new block chain with a different technology that removed the Mining component. Dammmmmnnnnn, a new term "Mining" , this is where the tokens that run the block-chain are developed as its being used.  Think of it as the big reward from the system for enabling it remain alive , in a very lay mans way for bitcoin and ethereum, its reward for keeping the its chain alive and immutable. So generally mining is the process of keeping these chains immutable. So each miner is paid with a certain value of tokens as a thank you.  The downside is that mining is a very computationally intensive activity, so it uses alot of Computing power, thus alot of electricity and consumes alot of time, since not all miners have super computers.

So with this new block-chain, Stellar, it decided to make tokens pre-mined and just ready for distribution, so now you can use the block-chain without having to worry about mining stress. So now we have a block-chain with all tokens already available and available for purchase or use to fuel activities on the chain. But of-course our old Chains of Bitcoin and Ethereum are also working on solutions to be stellar like without pre-mining like shading for ethereum and Lightening network for Bitcoin, so the future is bright. This innovation in the speed of Block-chains makes life much better and easier as a dveloper and user of a block-chain technology.

Guess we can go back to developers now, so as mentioned earlier, the keep principles are record immutability and value transfer with ability to store. so think of any application with in those parameters, with which if you look today ,the world is built on top of Money platform, thus we can recreate a world built on a Cypto Platform running block-chains instead of banks and governments.


ITS A WHOLE NEW WORLD ,SO THINK AND START DEVELOPING BLOCK-CHAIN TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS.

Disclaimer, I am Nyesigye Amon, a Block-chain Developer, and very excited about this industry and would live to know what your doing on the block-chain, I will also be willing to consult on the projects or even offer some free help where possible. Shoot me an Email at amonxnye@gmail.com or tweet me at @amon_nyesigye . Can't wait to hear from you.