Understanding Blockchain : the Right Approach

Disclaimer : This post is not about explaining how Blockchain works, but about the approach one should take to understand Blockchain.
Blockchain has taken the world by storm and tops the list of 2017's hot trends. It's the current buzz word in IT sector and if you go by the words of IT analysts, this technology is going to be as revolutionary as Internet had been.

Now a curious guy would very much like to know what the buzz is all about and hit the Google search in order to find some answer. Problem Solved. Not so fast however. This time around you will end up being more baffled than ever. You will have loads of data but wont know how to read them sequentially in order to make some sense. Its like having all the pieces of Jigsaw puzzle and not knowing how to piece them together since you don't know what the picture actually looks like.

Blockchain is baffling - if you don't have the right approach.
As happens with most of the new technologies, plenty has been written about Blockchain but not much will make sense if you are not a techie. The problem here lies in the approach that one takes for understanding Blockchain.

In order to understand Blockchain, it is imperative that one must first understand the various underlying concepts and technologies of Blockchain. Once you are through that, the literature and blogs on Blockchain will start making more sense and all the pieces of the puzzle will start falling into place.

I am narrowly outlining some of the key concepts one should know before tackling the concept of Blockchain itself:

-Smart Contract
-Hashing
-Digital Signature
-Blockchain Consensus Protocols

These are just a few concepts which will have significant impact on your understanding of the entire mechanism of Blockchain.

Below are some reference links which will further help in tackling Blockchain from a beginners perspective:

Smart Contract - https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/
Hashing - http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/definition/hashing
Digital Signature - https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/electronic-signature/digital-signature/digital-signature-faq
Blockchain Consensus Protocols - (Proof-of-Work, Proof-of-Stake, PBFT)
Blockchain for dummies - an eBook by Manav Gupta https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=XIM12354USEN
Khan Academy - A video series on Bitcoins -https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money- and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it