You can think of blockchain as analogous to a book, where each page is a block that contains a reference to the next page–not all books, or blockchains, are created equal. You should be aware of four essential aspects of a blockchain: its data consistency through cryptography, peer-to-peer communication model, consensus mechanism to resolve conflicts, and permission-less incentive model that helps secure the network. It is helpful for you to know that people commonly mean a distributed ledger—in reality, blockchain is more like a collection of technologies. Â