Birth of a Super Hero*

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

-Book Of Genesis

Jan 3 2009:

New York: This had to be precise. A man sitting in a basement, looking at his watch is waiting for the perfect alignment of stars and sky. This had to be the accurate to the second. The time seems to have stopped. Its a busy street full of noise on a sunny afternoon and all he can hear is his own heartbeat. This was the longest hour of his life.

He closes his eyes and sees a replay of the events which led to destruction of his entire life for no fault of his. The betrayal, the sorrow, the struggle that were the last 2 years of his life. It was not something he was doing for himself alone. It was for everyone who had to go through what he did. It was to deliver everyone from the evil that had engulfed the entire world. This was an emotional moment.

Through the teary eyes, he glanced the watch again and knew it was the time he wanted, on the date he planned for, and in the place of his choice he pressed the button on the keyboard of his computer that was to lead to birth of a super hero. It was a moment of genesis, it was the culmination of 2 years of his and his best friends efforts. It was when he created the first of the kind, the world was to call as:

“Block Chain”- The Super hero.

Did this sound too dramatic? Too Hollywood?

Well… This isn’t entirely fiction, this is story of an individual/group of individuals who did the unthinkable, wrote one of the most important pieces of software and declared it open source. This is their story, this is the story of Block Chain, this is the story of bit coin

Financial Crash of 2008 had wiped the hopes and future of thousands of innocent common men, who barely understood what had happened. How their life worth of savings had disappeared into nothing. There was anguish, there was devastation but there was no relief and certainly no justice.

The financial industry which had caused all of that had become bigger than ever. The very people who had created the whole bubble and crash had become even more powerful and poor and helpless had nowhere to.

In this backdrop, Satashi Nakamoto created Block Chain and Bit coin. This was an effort to take control and power of finance away from the selected few and give it to the common people. Everyone who had the brains for it, could contribute and be rewarded for common good.

The first block of information created by the Satashi Nakamoto is what is known as Genesis block. Here is how it works, and here is why Satashi Nakamoto is a genius.

Step1: A random group of Transaction or information is grouped under a block, and it is available for encryption for anyone to encrypt and pass on.

Step2: Everyone competes to encrypt this block using an algorithm and key more complex than the one before, and links the encrypted block to the Chain of blocks: the “Block Chain”.

Step3: For this effort, whoever encrypts the data, is rewarded a BitCoin.

The backbone of the process is, the massively distributed network of related blocks of information which are encrypted like chain links. A hacker can hack a block, but to get information out, he would need to hack the previous block and the one before and so on.

This is the central idea behind Block Chain. The possibilities were endless.

Powers and uses of this super hero to be explored in next blog.

–to be continued