What is blockchain and Ethereum? Where is it used?

Question

I just got chance to work on Ethereum, block-chain based platform. But I don't have a clear idea in which scenarios this is used, any real life use of this.Could anybody help me understand blockchain based platform and its real life uses?

Answer 1

Welcome to blockchain world.Don't get demotivated, Blockchain area is relatively new & hard to find good tutorials.I also started learning blockchain related technologies a month ago & I would like to share some ideas about Blockchain & Ethereum.Since your question is not directly related to Nodejs & Javascript,I would like to suggest you modify the question first.

We all start as noobs, but we can choose to end as noobs or as professionals.

Original cartoon can be found at http://ericsammons.com/what-is-the-blockchain/

Blockchain, a secure distributed ledger (data structure or database) that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records, called “blocks.”Please watch this youtube video - Blockchain 101 - A Visual Demo to understand the basics of Blockchain. That is a very basic visual introduction to the concepts behind a blockchain. He introduces the idea of an immutable ledger using an interactive web demo. If you are interested in playing with this on your own, it is available online at:https://github.com/anders94/blockchain-demo

Blockchain was originally developed as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. A vast, globally distributed ledger running on millions of devices, it is capable of recording anything of value. Money, equities, bonds, titles, deeds, contracts, and virtually all other kinds of assets can be moved and stored securely, privately, and from peer to peer, because trust is established not by powerful intermediaries like banks and governments, but by network consensus, cryptography, collaboration, and clever code.You can learn more about Blockchain use cases from this TED talk.

Ethereum, a type of blockchain that can be used to develop decentralized applications & several banks have already adapted Ethereum to develop and test blockchain trading applications. The Ethereum blockchain was developed by a Canadian named Vitalik Buterin and this blockchain has some extraordinary capabilities. One of them is that you can build smart contracts. It's kind of what it sounds like. It's a contract that self-executes, and the contract handles the enforcement, the management, performance and payment — the contract kind of has a bank account, too, in a sense — of agreements between people.Also, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Microsoft, Intel, and more than two dozen other companies have teamed up to develop standards and technology to make it easier for enterprises to Ethereum.

Since you are using NodeJs, use Truffle to connect your Ethereum blockchain network.Truffle is a development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline for Ethereum, aiming to make life as an Ethereum developer easier. With Truffle, you get:

• Built-in smart contract compilation, linking, deployment and binary management.
• Automated contract testing with Mocha and Chai.
• Configurable build pipeline with support for custom build processes.
• Scriptable deployment & migrations framework.
• Network management for deploying to many public & private networks.
• Interactive console for direct contract communication.
• Instant rebuilding of assets during development.
• External script runner that executes scripts within a Truffle environment.

You can find a great sample project here:https://github.com/tomw1808/truffle_eth_class1

You can find really good courses on Building A Decentralised Blockchain Application in Udemy.Please message me,if you need any further information.

Answer 2

a blockchain is an immutable, sequential chain of records called Blocks. They can contain transactions, files or any data you like, really. But the important thing is that they’re chained together using hashes.