5

HOW SAFE ARE BLOCKCHAINS? IT DEPENDS

by Allison Berke

Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underlying bitcoin, may prove to be far more valuable than the currency it supports. But it’s only as valuable as it is secure. As we begin to put distributed ledger technology into practice, it’s important to make sure that the initial conditions we’re establishing aren’t setting us up for security issues later on.

To understand the inherent security risks in blockchain technology, it’s important to understand the difference between public and private blockchains.

Bitcoin relies on a public blockchain, a system of recording transactions that allows anyone to read or write transactions. Anyone can aggregate and publish those transactions, ...

Get Blockchain now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.