Blockchain 101 Meetup: A Recap

The Basic Concepts and Introduction to Blockchain meet up was a huge success providing a platform to share knowledge and clarify some of the tech myths of this era.

Meetups and hackathons are a constant for Xians. However, after a small breathing space the Hackathons and Meetups initiative organized the first meet up for this year on Basic Concepts and Introduction to Blockchain. The event was a huge success it provided a platform to share knowledge and clarify some of the tech myths of this era.

S.Sharmilan (SSE) and S. Jajeththanan (SE) from 99x Technology were the speakers of the session. They did a tremendous job in sharing their knowledge and experience to fellow Xians while conducting the session in a very interactive manner.

The lineup of the session was properly laid out. The speakers started off by giving an idea about key concepts like hash function, Centralized ledger, distributed ledger so that anybody who hasn’t even heard about blockchain could easily understand the topic. Furthermore, all the concepts in basic blockchain introduction was demonstrated with the help of a story that even the industry novices could easily understand the content.

Apart from the basic introduction to what’s blockchain, how to build a chain, what’s merkle tree and how block distribution happens, we were also able to have a discussion on main concepts related to blockchain like trust, verification, transaction speed, downtime, hacking and date breach, ownership, third party involvements, security and anonymity.

The session was also enriched with the input of the experienced engineers who were present. Their insight and sharing of experience helped the newbies gain 1st hand guidelines and recommendations on how to face different situations. This was one key success point of this meet up.

Next in line was a discussion on blockchain mining and the main points were why we need mining in blockchain, how mining works and the evolution of miners. This part of the session was also very interactive and easy to understand because of the continuation of the story that speakers built at the inception. The speakers also gave an overall idea about mining pools, electricity consumption of mining and an overall idea about consensus algorithm by setting foot stones for a lot more topics for the next Colombo meetup events.

However, latter part of the session was so overwhelming when speakers described how those concepts and technologies were practically used by Estonia by building a digital society and undoubtedly how these can help build a better Sri Lanka. There were a lot of examples brought from sectors like finance, medical, media, education etc. and speakers even dug a little deep in to the practical usage on supply chain by elaborating on proof of continuity, proof of change of custody and how user accounts plug in to these concepts. The wrapping up part of the session was an overview on the shifting from Web 2.0 to web 3.0 , comparison on internet of blockchains to highlight the usage and importance of being confident in this area.

As always, this time also, Blockchain meet up was a huge success thanks to organizers, speakers and participants. Stay tuned for more meetups on trending and important topics.