How Blockchain uses Hashing to secure data

Welcome to me my daily blog. First off, anything I blog here is not a financial advice in any form. Today I will be discussing about blockchains and how they manage to be highly secured. Have you ever wondered or imagined how data on any blockchain is kept away from hackers and spammers? If your answer is yes, hold on tight you about to find out.

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The blockchain we know it is a series of blocks of data that are linked together hence the idea of ‘block’ which represents the data and the ‘chain’ which also represents the medium they through which they are connected. Let’s not go deep into what it entails. Maybe I will save that for later.

Data in the blocks of a blockchain are protected through the process of Hashing. Hashing is a cryptographic method of converting a data or information into fixed length of Alphanumeric characters. Say the data contained in a block of data is ‘hello world’ when you hash this data, the output of this data is going to be a fixed length of alphanumeric character depending on the type of hash you use. If it were a SHA-256 hashing technique, the fixed length is going to be 256 bits long.

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So basically how this works is like data enters it gets hashed/converted from readable language to unreadable language and is then stored in the hash form. Hashing is a one way street meaning once it has been hashed, there is no way you can reverse it so this makes the blockchain data very secured.

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Hackers who would attempt to use computers to try to hack the hash would not be successfully because it could take up to about a decade to be able to crack a hash function. I mean who has that amount of time on their hands? So it’s basically impossible to crack.

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SHA-256 hash function is resistant to collision meaning when you hash the data ‘hello’ the function you would get would not correspond to any other data apart from the work ‘hello’. Remember that ‘Hello’ and ‘hello’ would produce different hash because hashing is case sensitive and the slightest change of a character can affect the output of the hash.

In summary, Hashing in blockchains are very important as they help secure the data in the blocks from all external attacks. It can take up to 10 years for the most powerful super computer to break a SHA-256 hash function. This should tell you how strong and secure hashing can be. Thank you for stopping by and see on the next on.