What is the Bitcoin Blockchain?
The "Bitcoin Blockchain" acts as a globally distributed ledger that records all Bitcoin transactions in blocks of data that are linked to create a chain (thus, creating a blockchain).
A blockchain is a transaction database shared by all mining nodes participating in a system based on the Bitcoin protocol. A full copy of a currency's blockchain contains every transaction ever executed in the Bitcoin network. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address at any point in history.
The Bitcoin Blockchain is distributed and kept among many mining nodes, so participants in the network do not need to trust just one person or company to have the accurate copy of the ledger.
Every block contains a hash of the previous block. This has the effect of creating a chain of blocks from the genesis block to the current block. Each block is guaranteed to come after the previous block chronologically because the previous block's hash would otherwise not be known. Each block is also computationally impractical to modify once it has been in the chain for a while because every block after it would also have to be regenerated. These properties are what make bitcoins transactions irreversible. The block chain is the main innovation of Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Blockchain was designed to massively scale with big blocks which can hold high volumes of payment transactions and other forms of data to support enterprise applications.
A new block is added to the blockchain, on average, every 10 minutes.
What is a blockchain and how do they work?
I'll explain why blockchains are so special in simple and plain English!
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