What Is Blockchain Technology?
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. To use a basic analogy, it is easy to steal a cookie from a cookie jar, kept in a secluded place than stealing the cookie from a cookie jar kept in a market place, being observed by thousands of people.
Bitcoin is the most popular example that is intrinsically tied to blockchain technology. It is also the most controversial one since it helps to enable a multibillion-dollar global market of anonymous transactions without any governmental control. Hence it has to deal with a number of regulatory issues involving national governments and financial institutions.
However, Blockchain technology itself is non-controversial and has worked flawlessly over the years and is being successfully applied to both financial and non-financial world applications. Last year, Marc Andreessen, the doyen of Silicon Valley’s capitalists, listed the blockchain distributed consensus model as the most important invention since the Internet itself. Johann Palychata from BNP Paribas wrote in the Quintessence magazine that bitcoin’s blockchain, the software that allows the digital currency to function should be considered as an invention like the steam or combustion engine that has the potential to transform the world of finance and beyond.
Current digital economy is based on the reliance on a certain trusted authority. Our all online transactions rely on trusting someone to tell us the truth—it can be an email service provider telling us that our email has been delivered; it can be a certification authority telling us that a certain digital certificate is trustworthy; or it can be a social network such as Facebook telling us that our posts regarding our life events have been shared only with our friends or it can be a bank telling us that our money has been delivered reliably to our dear ones in a remote country. The fact is that we live our life precariously in the digital world by relying on a third entity for the security and privacy of our digital assets. The fact remains that these third party sources can be hacked, manipulated or compromised.
Bitcoin is the most popular example that is intrinsically tied to blockchain technology. It is also the most controversial one since it helps to enable a multibillion-dollar global market of anonymous transactions without any governmental control. Hence it has to deal with a number of regulatory issues involving national governments and financial institutions.
However, Blockchain technology itself is non-controversial and has worked flawlessly over the years and is being successfully applied to both financial and non-financial world applications. Last year, Marc Andreessen, the doyen of Silicon Valley’s capitalists, listed the blockchain distributed consensus model as the most important invention since the Internet itself. Johann Palychata from BNP Paribas wrote in the Quintessence magazine that bitcoin’s blockchain, the software that allows the digital currency to function should be considered as an invention like the steam or combustion engine that has the potential to transform the world of finance and beyond.
Current digital economy is based on the reliance on a certain trusted authority. Our all online transactions rely on trusting someone to tell us the truth—it can be an email service provider telling us that our email has been delivered; it can be a certification authority telling us that a certain digital certificate is trustworthy; or it can be a social network such as Facebook telling us that our posts regarding our life events have been shared only with our friends or it can be a bank telling us that our money has been delivered reliably to our dear ones in a remote country. The fact is that we live our life precariously in the digital world by relying on a third entity for the security and privacy of our digital assets. The fact remains that these third party sources can be hacked, manipulated or compromised.
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