An Introduction to Blockchain

Blockchain technology is in its infancy but it is new revolution of the digital age. Block chain was originally devised for digital currency Bitcoin, but is increasingly used in other industry verticals like land registry, medicine, etc.

 According to Don & Alex Tapscott, authors of the book, Blockchain Revolution

 “A blockchain is like an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transaction but virtually everything of value.”

In blockchain, transactions are added in the blocks after consensus of all the stakeholders. The blocks of transactions are added in the exact sequence as they occur. Like a chain of events (transactions) in a sequence. Hence the name blockchain.

Each block can have number of transactions. The blocks cannot be copied, manipulated or corrupted by any single person. The data can only be changed after a broad consensus between all the stakeholders. This inbuilt mechanism makes blockchain a distributed, tamper-proof network, free of localised failure due to any single point hostile intrusion.

Blockchain uses distributed ledger technology. The distributed ledger has smart contracts, support for public and private players and a consensus mechanism.

In the next post I will talk about what a smart contract is and how it is used in the blockchain.