The general trend

The concept of "blockchain" is not directly mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper, but its solution to make transaction records authentic and tamper-proof can be seen as the prototype of a blockchain system: the client initiates a transaction and broadcasts it to the whole network waiting for confirmation, the nodes in the system pack a number of transactions to be confirmed and the hash value of the previous block into a block and examine the authenticity of the block to form an alternative block. The nodes in the system pack a number of transactions to be confirmed and the hash value of the previous block into a block and examine the authenticity of the transactions in the block to form an alternative block; then they try to find a random number so that the hash value of the alternative block is less than a specific value, once the number is found, the system decides that the block is legitimate and the node broadcasts it to the whole network, and other nodes verify the block and recognize it as legitimate. The block will be added to the chain, and all transactions in the block will naturally be judged as valid. Subsequent transactions are chained after the block by analogy, thus forming a chain of ledgers with a continuous stack of historical transaction records. Any change to a block in the chain will result in a change in the hash value of the block, which in turn will result in a change in the hash value of subsequent blocks that cannot be reconciled with the original ledger, making tampering extremely difficult.

Bitcoin is based on the above scheme and has been running 24/7 for nearly 10 years with thousands of distributed nodes without major vulnerabilities. There is a growing realization that the blockchain technology behind the operation of Bitcoin could be extremely promising and that it should not and will not be limited to the use of electronic money transfers.

If we count from the birth of Bitcoin, blockchain technology has nearly 10 years of development history. The current development direction of blockchain can be mainly divided into public chain and alliance chain: the former is represented by Bitcoin and Ether, anyone can join it at any time, and the chain records are open to all; the latter is an alliance formed by the participating members of the designated blockchain, and the information of business transactions between members is recorded in the blockchain, limiting the scale of use and authority.