Blockchain, web3, crypto. Terms that a lot of people use to refer to the same thing but they are quite different from each other while still being related.
I decided to start a series on web3, Blockchain on particular, I am so much interested in this field and I am still learning, I want to share the little I know, so we can grow together. Most of what I will be sharing are middle-level to high level stuff, I just want those interested to have an idea of the concepts, you can always go further to learn more, without further ado, let's get started, shall we?
Think of web3 as the decentralized internet, the same internet that your favorite websites and apps run on but with a twist. Rather than big tech companies running the show and "keeping" your data, you are in control.
The Blockchain on the other hand, is the technology that powers web3, it is a decentralized ledger of connected computers (nodes) that store information where each node as its own copy of the ledger. It is "decentralized", meaning there is no single node that serves as the single source of truth for the entire Blockchain, the source of truth is that a majority of the nodes on the network have the same updated ledger.
The ledger is a record that stores the state (fancy term for data) on the Blockchain, transactions can modify the state of the Blockchain. Anytime a transaction is sent, a node verifies that it is valid and adds it to its own copy of the Blockchain and then broadcasts it to other nodes on the network to add it to their respective copies, more on this in a future lesson.
This way, a Blockchain is decentralized, permissionless and transparent. We will cover these concepts in next issue. Anticipate.