The blockchain allows the Bitcoin network to have shared database through a decentralised ledger. It is publicly available and records each and every transactions that occurred on the network as well as the balance of public addresses.
The Bitcoin blockchain is a series of blocks that holds transaction data of approximately 10 minutes of network activity. Miners create new blocks of transactions by solving a mathematical formula.
By doing so, the network rewards them with freshly mined Bitcoin.
Each block records the information of multiple transactions including:
Each blockchain block stores every Bitcoin transaction that was created and confirmed by the network during a ten minute period.
Once a new block is mined, it is added to an immutable public distributed ledger; this is the blockchain: a chronological combination of data blocks.
Blockchain technology offers three tangible benefits compared to centralised databases: