A genesis block is considered the first block in a blockchain. It is almost always hardcoded into the application that utilizes its blockchain. It does not reference a previous block since there wouldn’t be a preceding block. A genesis block should not be confused with a generation transaction which is considered the first transaction a miner creates in a block. Blocks hold transactions that store unalterable data related to the network. Blocks are then hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree. A block, plus all of the blocks preceding and following it, form a blockchain. Each block replicates all of the data contained in the previous block. A blockchain is a list of records that is expanding all of the time. It all begins with the Genesis block.
