The Decentralized Technology for Gambling
Few years before two terms where the most trending in stock market and internet as well- Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. The most hyped Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) which has the potential to eliminate requirement of huge amount of record keeping, saving money and streamlining the supply chain disrupting the IT world since the arrival of internet. It has now emerged as the real-world tech option in 2016 and 2017 with more efficient way to share information and data between open and private business networks. Block chain has now become the bed rock for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin-the first decentralized cryptocurrency. The multiple attempts for creating the digital money in the past leading to failure has made the much hype for blockchain technology. “Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, are perhaps the best-known examples of blockchain technology in action. However, pretty much every industry has benefited from blockchain, from financial transactions and contracts to supply chain information and healthcare,” says Pete Zimmerman, North American Software Sales Manager at NY-based, ERP software company.
1983 was the start of electronic money when David Chaum, the pioneer of cryptography revealed the “ecash”. Digicash Inc. started by David implemented the anonymous cryptographic payments where the transactions was unique due to the cryptographic protocols. In 1998 the Digicash Inc. declared bankrupt and Wei Dai published the term “b-money” which was later described as bit gold. Later in the year 2009, First decentralized cryptocurrency “Bitcoin-A peer to peer electronic cash system” was introduced in the market by pseudonymous person Satoshi Nakamoto.
The blockchain is the undeniable ingenious invention which is a system of recording information in way which makes it difficult to change, hack or cheat the system. In blockchain the data is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems connect in the blockchain. Each block in the chain has the number of transactions and the new ones are recorded in the ledger making it manageable by multiple participants. The system is basically a digital ledger of transactions that is distributed with the entire network of computer systems and servers on the blockchain. Every block in the chain contains information of transactions made and every new transaction’s information is added to each participant’s ledger. In this way, the database is managed by multiple participants and is decentralized (there is no central agency managing the system). The system uses an immutable cryptographic signature called a hash to record every transaction and helps in linking every new block created to the previous block. The properties of DLT such as programmable, distributed, secure, immutable, anonymous, unanimous and time stamped helps to identify tampered blocks, if one block in one chain was changed. The blockchain technology enabled the bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin was spent preventing the double-spending.
In the year of 2010, when blockchain analysts has estimated Nakamoto has disappeared with about one million bitcoins where he handed over the control to Gavin Anderson. Anderson sought to decentralize the control of Bitcoin. Also, if Bitcoin was centralized system all the data will be easy spots for hackers and the entire system is halted to upgrade the software. The decentralization of Bitcoins has made them not to have a central authority where there is no central server and storage. In fact, the information is owned by network of participants. So the Bitcoin network has become peer-to-peer and the ledger is distributed among the public letting anybody to store in their computer. The decentralization has made the bitcoin network as a multiple administrative network maintained equally by any miners. Anybody can become a new miner where they can create and new bitcoin address without needing any approval and can send transaction to the network where they are rewarded with bitcoins for creating new block.
Originally devised for the digital currency bitcoin, the tech world has found the new potential for the use of blockchain in various other places. The blockchain technology can not only transferor store the money but also replace all the process and business models relying on the small transaction fees between two parties. The blockchain technology has the ability to cut out the music companies such as Spotify thereby increasing the profit of music artists making a cloud archive of the song. This makes the small subscription and streaming services irrelevant. The blockchain is found to be good for smart contracts, sharing economy, crowdfunding, governance, auditing, stock trading, file storage, IOT and much more.
