How Blockchain work in a mobile app

Question

I'm curious to know how blockchain can be accessed on mobile.
To my knowledge I understand that each has to continuously mine the network to get the latest update on information. But, since blockchain is a massive ledgers that has to be downloaded by every new user that joins the network. How is such thing possible on a mobile device??

Answer 1

At present there is no provision to run a blockchain node using mobile.

You can however use a mobile client to access the blockchain for transactions. But that connection is done by a backend service (example Coinbase).

They are connected to many nodes, but as an android user, you can just send a request to there API, their backend in turn handles all web3.js transactions and returns a response. So, the provision you have is to use web3.js to get information and send requests.