History of Blockchain Technology

The first description of the cryptographically secured chain of blocks was in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. But the first real use of Blockchain Technology was in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is peer to peer Blockchain payment network, where users can exchange value (currency unit) between each other. Bitcoin was first described in 2008 and deployed to the internet in 2009 by the anonymous person called Satoshi Nakomoto. Satoshi described the entire technology of Bitcoin in his whitepaper. Bitcoin is completely based on the blockchain technology, secured by Proof of Work protocol.

As a result of growing popularity of Bitcoin, others started to research possible usage. Today, almost all cryptocurrencies work on Blockchain Technology. Blockchain Technology is probably most verified way, how you can run peer to peer networks. You can look on Coinmarketcap, where is the list of all currencies sorted by market capitalization. Alternatively, one project Called IOTA started using the Tangle technology in their network, which is completely different Technology from Bitcoin.

Thanks to the growing popularity of Bitcoin, it has increased the amount of electricity consumption. Verification of blocks in Bitcoin is based on Proof of Work. You can look at Bitcoin electricity index, where you can see growing electricity consumption in the network. Bitcoin electricity consumption is comparable to some states. As a result of this situation, the community has started work on the solution called Proof of Stake, where transactions being verified are verifying without electrical consumption.