My September Newsletter

Hi everybody! I’m Sohum, a 13-year-old Innovator at The Knowledge Society. This past month has been crazy, so let me show you what I did!

What Have I Been Doing?

Over the summer, I created the back-end for a blockchain with JavaScript that allows people to add blocks to the chain, mine blocks, and generate rewards for miners! I created this by following a tutorial by Simply Explained. One of my goals for this month is to create the front-end for the blockchain so that everyone — not just myself — can access it and all its features! For the people who have no idea what a blockchain is, the next section is for you.

The Blockchain

A blockchain consists of blocks that link to one another, forming a chain. Let me explain.

Say you wanted to send some money to your friend. The problem with traditional banking systems is that the money goes through the bank first, then to the desired recipient. But why is this a problem?

Suppose this bank you use gets hacked. You wouldn’t be able to send money, and your account credentials might get leaked.

It’s because of the bank’s central authority. It controls all the occurring transactions.

The blockchain is the result of a decentralized approach. There are several, independent computers (or nodes) that keep the blockchain up and running.

Every node on the blockchain gets a digital copy of all the transactions to have ever occurred on the chain. This is even more secure than traditional banking systems, and here’s why.

First, you’re probably wondering why this is so secure if everybody can see each transaction. There is something we can use here called hashing.

The algorithm most blockchains use for hashing is SHA-256. With this algorithm, it’s easy to get the encrypted message from the decrypted message, but close to impossible to get the original message from the encrypted message. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have an algorithm to add all the numbers in an array and output the result. Take 5 and 5. The result would be 10. Easy, right? But now, what if I gave you the number 10 and told you to tell me which two numbers I added? That would be a lot more difficult. I could even say 100, 1000, and so on, each getting more difficult. This is the beauty of hashing algorithms and the blockchain.

This section just scratched the surface of blockchain, so if you would like to go deeper into this amazing technology, click here.

September!

Sorry about that folks, I love explaining complex things like the blockchain. But I just realized — I haven’t even explained what I did in September yet, so I will get right to it!

Recently, I got into this program called The Knowledge Society (TKS). If you’re wondering what it is, it’s essentially a human accelerator. It pushes you to be the best version of yourself to use emerging technologies that impact millions of people. One of my favourite parts of this program is inside the session, where we get to do group work (trust me, it’s really not that boring. In fact, it’s quite fun!) and meet new people. Outside of the sessions, we have braindates, which are essentially meetings we have with other people in TKS around the world to talk about technologies we’re interested in, what we’re up to right now, and so many other things!

I also like practicing the mindset of the week, which right now, is reaching for high standards. There’s so much more that I want to tell you about, but that’s it for now!

My Goals For October

I did a lot in September, but there’s still so much more to do. I want to keep pursuing work in blockchain and finding ways to push myself to my limits.

Also, as a side note: In what I’m about to list, I like to replace “goals” with “action items.” This ensures that I’m going to accomplish them! So, without further ado, my action items:

• I will complete at least 15 braindates this month.
• I will work on my blockchain and implement the front-end so anyone can access it.
• I will post at least one Medium Article about things I learned or did.
• I will start making daily updates to reflect on what I did and visualize how I’m spending my time.

Thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for another article this month!