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Science and Technology Briefings– No Briefing ___ Understanding Blockchain s ___ April 4 2 0 1 8 How A Blockchain Works Summary The protocol that powers Bitcoin appeared 10 years ago as a combination of existing technologies. The blockchain enables decentralized and secure transactions without the need for a trusted third party. The potential applications are much broader than just cryptocurrencies and while they are extremely promising, today the technology is generally not yet mature enough for large scale solutions. Further research and innovation are needed to solve blockchain’s scalability limitations as well as its high energy consumption. Source : OPECST from Blockchain France Mrs Valéria Faure-Muntian and Mr Claude de Ganay, Members of the National Assembly, Mr Ronan Le Gleut, Senator Context This memo answers a request from the common fact- The invention of hashcash by Adam Back in 1997 was a finding mission on “Use cases of the blockchain and significant achievement in the idea of validating other data certification technologies” created by the transactions using cryptographic hashes, called “proof National Assembly. It will be followed by a more of work”(4). The goal of these technologies is to remove advanced memo. What we refer to as the blockchain the need for “trusted third parties”, by relying instead are the technologies for storing and transmitting on a distributed network of trust based on an data allowing the creation of distributed, immutable “digital ledger”. duplicated ledgers, without a centralized authority, The obstacle to overcome lies in the problem of secured through cryptography, and organized into double spending (the risk that the same asset could be linked blocks of information at regular intervals of spent twice) and, more generally, around network fault time. tolerance, whether accidental or intentional(5). In order to understand how these digital ledgers work, The answer to these difficulties arrived in 2008 in an utilising distributed peer-to-peer networks and article by Satoshi Nakamoto(6). The article explained forming the technological basis powering an unhackable protocol running on a peer-to-peer (1) “cryptocurrency”, a specific type of digital currencies , network, the blockchain, as the technological stack (2) it is necessary to understand its origins . behind a new digital currency, Bitcoin. Blockchain’s Origins How the blockchain works The emergence of cryptocurrencies is partially linked Bitcoin runs on a technology protocol that we now call to the open source software movement, created in blockchain. This refers to a chain of blocks as the the 1980’s by Richard Stallman, as well as the transactions occurring between users of a network are (3) “cypherpunk” movement , with the goal of leveraging grouped in “time-stamped blocks”(7). encryption technology to create a digital currency and Once a block has been validated, currently every guarantee anonymous transactions. The first attempts 10 minutes, the transaction becomes visible by – David Chaum in 1983 with e-cash then in 1990 with everyone who has downloaded a copy of the ledger, digicash, Wei Dai in 1998 with b-money and, especially, potentially all of the network’s users, who will update Nick Szabo with bitgold – all failed. their copy of the blockchain with the new block. Assemblée nationale - 101 rue de l’Université - Bât F. - 75355 Paris 07 SP – Tél : 01 40 63 26 81 – Mél : [email protected] Sénat - 15 rue de Vaugirard - 75291 Paris Cedex 06 – Tél : 01 42 34 25 58 – Mél : [email protected] Science and Technology Briefings– no. 4– Understanding blockchains – April 2018 P a g e 2 Each transaction uses asymmetrical cryptography, blockchains practically indestructible. A “consensus originally appearing in the Diffie-Hellman protocol in mechanism” decides who validates the next block to 1976, relying on a pair of keys, one private and the be added to the chain. In the case of Bitcoin, this is other public, linked together by an elliptical curve called “proof of work” because it is linked to a algorithm (ECDSA). The public key can be shared and complex cryptographic problem successfully resolved allows you to receive transactions, the private key must through “mining”, which is repeated on average every be kept secret. Protecting these private keys is the 10 minutes(12). singular way to securely keep control of your bitcoins. Mining starts by obtaining a hash, beginning with a Although it is possible to trace all of the transactions certain number of zeros, of the block that the miner linked to a public key, it is still an anonymous system wishes to solve. This operation, extremely resource as the owner of that public key is not necessarily intensive in terms of computer processing power, is known. The time and date information encoded in a motivated by the reward in Bitcoins for the winning block is referred to as its “timestamp”. miner. The validated block is then transmitted from Each block, besides the transaction and timestamp, has peer-to-peer to each node which adds it to its copy of a unique identifier (Block 90 with a black background the blockchain. in the graphic below) composed of a “hash” If two blocks are validated at the exact same moment, (8) connecting blocks to each other . Technically, miners use either one and two parallel chains are “hashing” converts a specific group of data into a hash, created. The protocol expects that rapidly only the meaning a short digital signature unique to itself. The longest chain will survive, practically meaning the encryption algorithm used is called a “cryptographic blockchain that the majority of nodes have adopted. hash function”. The hash of a set of data can be Mining revenue is complemented by fees taken for considered a digital fingerprint, smaller and less each transaction that they add to the blockchain. The complex than the original data, but identifying it amount is theoretically determined freely by the users, uniquely and precisely. but miners prioritize the highest fees, which vary as a Hashing is considered to be “one-way”: it is designed function of the number of transactions in the queue. so that once a hash is created, meaning a fixed-length The organisation of miners into “pools”(13) creates a digital fingerprint created from an input of variable risk that an organised majority controls the validation length data, it is impossible to reverse engineer the of new blocks. User trust in the system is a shared goal (9) original data . The hashing algorithm used by bitcoin among miners, intending to guarantee respect of the is one of the most common: the Secure Hash rules, along with the idea of an invisible hand Algorithm-256 (SHA-256), so-named because it protecting private interests. It is important to highlight produces 256 bit hashes. however that four pools, 3 of which are Chinese, rely on massive mining farms control more than 60 % of Blockchain Structure the necessary processing power required for Bitcoin’s blockchain and can use this dominant position against the interests of other users. Bitcoin mining pools Others Source : Blockchain France Network nodes, « miners » and consensus Each block is validated by users known as “miners” (a reference to gold miners), and is then communicated Source : Blockchain.info (5-9 april 2018) to network nodes, users that possess copies of the entire ledger, who continuously update it. This Consensus methods other than “proof of work” exist validation of blocks prevents the risk of malicious (14) (10) and are often more centralised : the main alternative, attacks . There is no centralized authority of trust as (15) which presents a greater risk of malicious use , is users observe and manage one other. This security, a “proof of stake”, based on ownership of the specific source of trust, is one of the cornerstone ideas of the cryptocurrencies, which is divided into several methods blockchain(11). That fact that hundreds of copies of the such as “proof of hold”, based on the time you’ve held ledger are simultaneously and regularly updated the token, “proof of use” based on the quantity of through a cryptographic competition, renders Science and Technology Briefings– no. 4– Understanding blockchains – April 2018 P a g e 3 transactions, and “proof of importance” based on technological solution. Ethereum provides an reputation. infrastructure adapted to these tools in the form of Two other methods, that are less used but should be smart contracts written into the blockchain that mentioned, are: “proof of space” based on the execute autonomously, decentralized applications (16) amount of storage space available and “proof of called “dapps” as well as Decentralized Autonomous (17) burn”, regarding the destruction of cryptoassets, in Organizations or “DAO” . order to obtain the trust of the network. Programming the blockchain : smart contracts Reforming the blockchain : hard and soft forks Smart Contracts are programs written into the It is possible to modify the rules governing a blockchain. In reality, it is possible to add blockchain, which we refer to as a fork. This means that programming code in the same way as transaction a modification of the programming code must be data. These are not contracts in the legal sense, but updated by the entire network. Any individual can programming code that verify or execute a contract propose modifications but they generally originate during its negotiation or application. Compared to from few developers (a group of around 40 in the case typical programs, smart contracts have the advantages of Bitcoin). There are two types of evolutions: “soft specific to the blockchain. Also, their execution is forks”, when blocks produced by the new version can irreparable and their code is freely verifiable by the be added to nodes functioning under the old version, different network nodes. Notably, this allows the and “hard forks”, where no backwards compatibility is verifiability of escrow funds.
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