Blockchain Technology: A Guide To The Blockchain Ecosystem

Before we jump into any other lectures within this course, I want to cover a key question with you. And that is, why are people so excited about the Blockchain? Without understanding the possibilities of the Blockchain, which is what makes people get excited about it in the first place, it would be far more difficult to grasp the concepts of it. So let me go over the two key aspects that get people so excited about the Blockchain, before jumping into all the lectures in this course.

The financial services sector is often cited as the main area the Blockchain will disrupt, Bitcoin for example as disrupted traditional currencies. Now as true as that may be, there are a whole host of other industries set for disruption by Blockchain technology.

Many people tend to think that the Blockchain is just one, and there aren’t different varieties of it. But they’d be wrong. Of course it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s simply the way the Blockchain is talked about and discussed. Generally it’s discussed as being this one Blockchain, but let me tell you right from the get go that there are many varieties of the Blockchain.

So what is the Blockchain? You’ve heard the term thrown around, but you’re still struggling to truly grasp the concept of this technology. Well fortunately for you, I’ll be breaking down the Blockchain in this lecture. So lets jump into it.

Many people are saying the Blockchain is the new internet, and comparing the disruptive nature of the Blockchain to that of when the internet came along. But is that so true? Lets take this a little further, and see if that could be the case.

You may remember that in first section of this course I touched on there being other Blockchains, i.e. private Blockchains. Well in this lecture I’m going to cover the three types of Blockchain’s.

So lets get more technical as to how the blockchain actually works now, over just throwing the term around and hoping it’ll stick. Lets now start getting a little more technical.

Now lets now move onto talking about how secure the Blockchain actually is. The Blockchain as a piece of technology is built to be long lasting, something which will really stand the test of time, much in the same way the internet is.

Lets talk a little more about nodes in this lecture, and how that makes the Blockchain more secure.

Here’s a fun little assignment for you to end this section. I want to understand how much of what we went through you actually absorbed.

I want to jump right into this section with you. So lets get started with what were here to learn, and understand. What are smart contracts?

Now as you should be aware this course isn’t a technical based course on the Blockchain, what I mean by that is I don’t show how to develop decentralised applications and so on. This course is more about helping you to understand the Blockchain, and all the technology that surrounds it. Because a large part of getting involved in this ecosystem is actually understanding the theoretical underlying aspects which is what this course is about

So in the previous section I mentioned the uses of the Blockchain in specific industries, and more specifically how the Blockchain will impact them. Now the technology behind most of what I’ve mentioned is Smart Contracts, but rather than repeating those companies that are using the Blockchain to move specific industries forward, I’m going to share some I haven’t mentioned yet.

So there are seven key reasons as to why smart contracts are so raved about, in this lecture I’m going to point them out for you. That way going forwards with your journey, you’ll know exactly why smart contracts will play such a pivotal role in certain industries.

From how we’ve been talking about smart contracts in this course, and in general how it’s discussed online you’d generally think it’s fool proof. So what I mean is, the way smart contracts are discussed about solving problems online you’d think there are no issues with it, but we’d be wrong if we thought that. Because as with any early stage technology it has its teething problems. So let me go over them for you in this lecture, hence by the end you’ll have more a complete all round understanding of the pro’s and con’s of smart contracts.

Now we’re at the end of this smart contract section. I do hope you gained a valuable insight into smart contracts here. So just before we do end, I’d like to let you the Blockchains on which you can actively process smart contracts on.

This short quiz will be testing you on what we've covered in this section. You'll be asked questions on smart contracts as a technology, as well as the ecosystem that surrounds it.