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This article is to help you get more clarity about what is Bockchain, a key technology within the Digital Transformation era.
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A blockchain is essentially a distributed database of records or public ledger of all transactions or digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties. Each transaction in the public ledger is verified by consensus of a majority of the participants in the system. And, once entered, information can never be erased. The blockchain contains a certain and verifiable record of every single transaction ever made. Bitcoin, the decentralized peer-to-peer digital currency, is the most popular example that uses blockchain technology. The digital currency bitcoin itself is highly controversial but the underlying blockchain technology has worked flawlessly and found wide range of applications in both financial and nonfinancial world.
The main hypothesis is that the blockchain establishes a system of creating a distributed consensus in the digital online world. This allows participating entities to know for certain that a digital event happened by creating an irrefutable record in a public ledger. It does this without compromising the privacy of the digital assets and parties involved. The distributed consensus and anonymity are two important characteristics of blockchain technology.
Blockchain opens the door for developing a democratic open and scalable digital economy from a centralized one. There are tremendous opportunities in this disruptive technology and revolution in this space has just begun.
The advantages of Blockchain technology outweigh the regulatory issues and technical challenges. One key emerging use case of blockchain technology involves Smart Contracts. Smart contracts are basically computer programs that can automatically execute the terms of a contract. When a pre-configured condition in a smart contract among participating entities is met then the parties involved in a contractual agreement can be automatically made payments as per the contract in a transparent manner.
Smart Property is another related concept which is regarding controlling the ownership of a property or asset via blockchain using Smart Contracts. The property can be physical such as car, house, smartphone etc. or it can be non-physical such as shares of a company. It should be noted here that even Bitcoin is not really a currency -Bitcoin is all about controlling the ownership of money.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/what-is-blockchain.html
http://www.cio.com/article/3055847/security/what-is-blockchain-and-how-does-it-work.html
http://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/BlockchainPaper.pdf
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