Thank you for the article, may i ask a few things about the ledger I don't understand.
Doesn't it grow unwieldy the more its decentralized? You mentioned that we currently we have a regulatory body which handles our transactions, and this creates a S.P.o.F. (Single Point of Failure). Completely agree, but I'm unfamiliar with how the ledger stays synchronized between nodes. If I claim I paid you X, and you say No you didn't. Then we go to the ledger to prove it. I wonder how that dispute gets resolved, cause you can't create 'one ledger to rule them all' cause that is now a SPoF.
Over time as the decentralized ledger grows and grows due to transactions being added, how are those multiple ledgers stored? My limited knowledge imagines it would eventually eat all memory space.
It's great to know that you liked the article! I'll try my best to answer your questions:
The ledger grows as the blocks are added, the full ledger is stored in all the participating nodes. When a node joins/rejoins the network it looks for peers, these peers are then used by the new node to sync. the blockchain into it's memory. Transaction disputes are resolved using the ledger as you have understood, throughout the network there can be only one proper ledger or chain (even though at some instances there could be competing chains, but that's a little more advanced topic- all you need to know is that the network will eventually converge to a single consistent chain). Because there's always one consistent chain across all nodes the transactions can be easily verified to resolve disputes.
There are no "multiple" ledgers in the network, it is just one single ledger where we add in those new transactions. The ledger is synced throughout the network to maintain consistency. You are correct about the ledger or blockchain becoming too large in size, for reference the current Bitcoin chain is around 15-16GB. Nodes which participate in the network need to have enough processing power and memory.
Hope I could clear your doubts, if you still have any do comment.
Ok thank you for the response. Just to be clear, you only have one ledger per... umm.. application? Like bitcoin. Some other blockchain application would have its own ledger correct? no sense in mixing Bitcoin transactions with {Digital_Currency_X} transactions.
Thank you for the article, may i ask a few things about the ledger I don't understand.
Doesn't it grow unwieldy the more its decentralized? You mentioned that we currently we have a regulatory body which handles our transactions, and this creates a S.P.o.F. (Single Point of Failure). Completely agree, but I'm unfamiliar with how the ledger stays synchronized between nodes. If I claim I paid you X, and you say No you didn't. Then we go to the ledger to prove it. I wonder how that dispute gets resolved, cause you can't create 'one ledger to rule them all' cause that is now a SPoF.
Over time as the decentralized ledger grows and grows due to transactions being added, how are those multiple ledgers stored? My limited knowledge imagines it would eventually eat all memory space.
It's great to know that you liked the article! I'll try my best to answer your questions:
The ledger grows as the blocks are added, the full ledger is stored in all the participating nodes. When a node joins/rejoins the network it looks for peers, these peers are then used by the new node to sync. the blockchain into it's memory. Transaction disputes are resolved using the ledger as you have understood, throughout the network there can be only one proper ledger or chain (even though at some instances there could be competing chains, but that's a little more advanced topic- all you need to know is that the network will eventually converge to a single consistent chain). Because there's always one consistent chain across all nodes the transactions can be easily verified to resolve disputes.
There are no "multiple" ledgers in the network, it is just one single ledger where we add in those new transactions. The ledger is synced throughout the network to maintain consistency. You are correct about the ledger or blockchain becoming too large in size, for reference the current Bitcoin chain is around 15-16GB. Nodes which participate in the network need to have enough processing power and memory.
Hope I could clear your doubts, if you still have any do comment.
Ok thank you for the response. Just to be clear, you only have one ledger per... umm.. application? Like bitcoin. Some other blockchain application would have its own ledger correct? no sense in mixing Bitcoin transactions with {Digital_Currency_X} transactions.
Yup that's a correct way to think of it.