This is the 1260th issue of the vernacular blockchain sharing
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produced by Owen | vernacular blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
In the previous " Science | What is Bitcoin?" "In the article, we learned what Bitcoin is and how it works. " Science | Why can blockchain be anti-counterfeiting and tamper-proof? "In this article, I invite five emperors to help you understand why the underlying technology of Bitcoin, the blockchain, is anti-counterfeiting and anti-tampering.
Today, we continue the previous topic and talk about how the blockchain's accounting method makes it a trust-making machine?
01Traditional
accounting method
Keeping accounts is something that everyone is familiar with. Especially now, you don’t need to bring cash when you go out. How much money you have is equivalent to the balance of various income and expenditure calculations in your bank account, Alipay or WeChat wallet.
So what is accounting? for example:
Xiao Zhang’s monthly salary is 10,000 yuan. During the process of salary payment, the bank will record: the company account will be deducted 10,000 yuan, and Xiao Zhang’s account will be increased by 10,000 yuan. After the salary was paid, Xiao Zhang took advantage of the double 11 WeChat payment to buy a piece of clothing, which cost 500 yuan. At this time, WeChat will record: Xiao Zhang’s account will be reduced by 500 yuan, and the merchant’s account will be increased by 500 yuan.
We recognize this method of bookkeeping based on trust in the bookkeepers (banks, WeChat Pay and other third-party institutions). However, they are centralized accounting systems, and it is difficult to avoid accounting failures and distortions caused by system failures, company bankruptcies or other reasons.
If you can have a single account book, everyone participates in the bookkeeping, and the account book is synchronized in real time, the account book will become more open, transparent, and more reliable. In this way, any problem on either side will not affect the safe operation of accounting. This is obviously a better way of bookkeeping than the accounting by individual institutions, which is actually the way of bookkeeping on the blockchain.
02Blockchain
accounting method
In the blockchain system, according to a set of competition rules, the bookkeeper is selected, and those who participate in the competition have a chance to win and become the bookkeeper. We assume that this rule is a Rubik's Cube competition. Whoever finishes the Rubik's Cube first gets the right to bookkeeping. This reflects a feature of blockchain accounting: decentralized accounting. The bookkeeper is randomly generated by playing the Rubik's Cube game to ensure that the bookkeeper is no longer a centralized organization.
In each Rubik's Cube competition, there is only one winner, who is responsible for accounting, and the accounting information is packaged to generate a data packet, which is called a block (that is, a new block is dug out). After other players have verified that they are correct, copy (download and synchronize) this new block to the blockchain that they maintain, which ensures that although all players are distributed accounting, the ledger data of everyone is consistent (blockchain The above information is the same). This reflects the second major feature of blockchain accounting. All nodes (players participating in the game) maintain the same ledger, which is very convenient for reconciliation.
So how to ensure that the bookkeeper will not cheat and keep false accounts?
This is achieved through verification and reward mechanisms. All players will verify the authenticity of the winning player's account. If the account is false, other players will not approve the account, and the winning player will waste an opportunity to account. Moreover, every time you obtain the right to bookkeeping means a generous reward, and keeping false accounts is equivalent to automatically giving up the reward. Therefore, the winning player will not keep false accounts for the sake of interest.
Even if he is a saboteur who deliberately makes trouble, he will ultimately fail the verification of other players, because only correct accounting will be recognized by all players. This ensures the correctness of the accounting data.
Once the accounting is completed, a new block is dug out. The block information is fixed. It has its own unique data fingerprint (that is, the hash value. By hashing the block, the block’s information is generated) Hash value, any change in the block will cause a huge change in the hash value of the block).
In the next round of the game, the new winning player records a new page of bills (mining a new block), and the head of the new bill (block header) needs to record the data fingerprint of the previous page of bills (the hash of the previous block) Value), which ensures that the previous bill and the current bill are closely related in a clear order.
If the bill data on the previous page is modified, its data fingerprint (hash value) will change, and it cannot correspond to the hash value recorded in the bill on the next page. All players can recognize that this is an invalid chain that has been tampered with and discard it.
The header of the previous block also records the hash value of the previous block, so that the entire block chain is interlocked and has a strict sequence, and as long as the data of a certain block is tampered with, all subsequent blocks The accounting data of the block will change, which can be described as "a move that affects the whole body". This is the third major feature of blockchain accounting: all blocks on the chain are interlocked, and algorithms are used to ensure that the entire chain of information cannot be tampered with.
03
summary
The blockchain generates bookkeeping rights through a competition mechanism to ensure the decentralization of bookkeeping nodes and the consistency of the book data of all bookkeeping nodes. The new block references the hash value of the previous block to ensure that the entire chain data has a strict sequence and cannot be tampered with. Through the above methods, it is ensured that the transaction information on the blockchain is credible, so the blockchain is a machine that creates trust.
END
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"Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent point of view, and does not represent the vernacular blockchain position. This content is only for the popular science learning and exchanges of encryption enthusiasts, and does not constitute investment opinions or suggestions. Please take a rational view, establish a correct concept, and increase risk awareness. The copyright of the article and the final interpretation right belong to the vernacular blockchain. 』
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