Now you have seen the complete process in regards to the commanding generals and left and ends. But how does this whole phenomenon relate to the blockchain? the blockchain is a distributed ledger, which is not controlled by any central authority. It works on the principle where all the parties who are sharing the information in the network reach an agreement and only then the data is confirmed. Moreover, the miners who validate the information concerning blockchain receives incentives over the blockchain proof of work is one of the Pioneer consensus algorithms, which gave us a probabilistic solution for Byzantine generals problem described by Satoshi Nakamoto. Now let's relate the proof of work consensus algorithm with the previous solution in the example that we discussed.

As you remember from the example for a journal realized form of two generals problem. Every commander and leftenant is sharing the message in continuity with the previous message they receive. Commander is sending the message to left in and one who is taking the message given by the commander and incorporating his message in the continuity of the previous message. In the same way the blockchain has the blocks storing the transactions, blocks are joined together using the last hash block, and this forms the complete chain. Moreover, every leftenant is limited to a specific time constraint of 10 minutes for producing his attack order. The same can be related to the blockchain where every block is bound with the time constraint.

For example, in Bitcoin, a block has to be formed in 10 minutes, and the miners cannot divert from this 10 minutes foundation. If a minor node or a computer is taking much more Then 10 minutes, then we can easily conclude that the miner has been compromised and should be removed from the blockchain network. Finally, blockchain also has the concept of nonce value, where announced is a random number added with the block data in such a way that we have a certain number of leading zeros in front of the block hash value. The same can be linked with over example of commander and leftenant, where we had the nonce number added with the attack order to make sure that the message formation is forced to follow 10 minutes time constraint and avoid any modifications. The blockchain is also working on the same principle where a block is being formed in the 10 minutes interval in Bitcoin blockchain.

If people start putting in much bigger machines and try to form a block before 10 minutes, the blockchain will adjust itself and increase the value of nouns in such a way that the blockchain Admission again takes 10 minutes. If people start removing the machines from the blockchain network, then the blockchain will adjust back to reduce the value of nouns in such a way that the block is always constrained to 10 minutes. In this way over example is related to the blockchain. Whenever a miner solves the puzzle and confirms the block over the blockchain, all the nodes in the network will verify the block before adding it to their copy of the chain. The nodes first need to reach a consensus on the validity of the block data. Only then the network will synchronize and the state of blockchain will be updated with the new block.

Moreover, apart from the entire flow described here, blockchain also follows one more principle which is known as the longest chain rule. Mostly in blockchain platforms. Multiple miners work on the same block and it could be a possibility that numerous miners guess the nouns and confirm the block in the fraction of seconds. This will lead to the formation of multiple chains. longest chain rule defines that blockchain will always maintain a single chain. And if such a situation arises for multiple chains, then blockchain will shift to the chain which has been most worked upon, or has the highest difficulty.

We will soon see more details over the longest chain rule and how the blockchain can help us in solving the conflicts in mining. This image is depicting a basic overview of why nobody can cheat over the blockchain. Taking the example for Bitcoin blockchain. As you can see, in this example, everybody is working on the current block, which is block 91 shown in the image. One of the miners in the system is an attacker and he wants to alter a transaction inside block 74 Which is around 17 blocks behind the block 91. To successfully alter the transaction, the attacking miner has to make changes in the desired block and also redo all the computations for the blocks from block 74 to 90.

And finally then do the calculation of block 91. This is 18 blocks of expensive computing power required by that miner to change all the data which is needed to be replaced for a successful attack and modification of the transaction. Moreover, he has to do all the 18 blocks computation before everybody else in the Bitcoin network finishes just one block, which is block 91. Under the Bitcoin network, even a single block confirmation is very expensive and challenging to confirm 18 blocks in a timeframe of 10 minutes would be almost impossible for the attacker to achieve That's why it's very difficult or nearly impossible to cheat the Bitcoin blockchain. Now let's go ahead and learn more about the longest chain rule and how blockchain helps us to solve the conflicts within the mining algorithms.