No single point of failure

Low transaction fees

Universally acceptable

Instantaneous Settlements

Prevents Identity Theft

Today, there are more than 6000 cryptocurrencies being traded in

the market and most of them use the concept of decentralization in

one way or the other. All thanks goes to Satoshi and his concept of

decentralized architecture in Blockchain, which is the essence

behind the growth of cryptocurrencies.

1.5 Key Concepts

Unlike popular belief, Blockchain is not a new technology; rather it’s

an amalgamation of many existing technologies along with a few

new. Hence, let’s explore the basic elements and key concepts of

Blockchain before diving deeper into the next chapters.

1.5.1 Cryptography, Encryption, and Decryption

Cryptography is the backbone of every Blockchain, and hence, it’s

expected that we should have sound knowledge of its basic

principles first.

Cryptography is the science of secure communication where two

people can send and receive information openly using some sort of

algorithm, so that the others cannot interpret the message even if

they have access to it. The concept of Cryptography is nothing new.

One of the earliest mention can be found as early as around 100 BC

when the Roman general Julius Caesar used such techniques to

send messages to his generals. Over the years, though many new

cryptographic algorithms have been developed, but so have their

hacking methodologies.

Every algorithm in Cryptography is divided into two different phases,

which are as follows: