Blockchain

Introduction

The blockchain’s current visibility is due to the intensity of speculative movement on crypto-assets in recent years, particularly since 2017. Speculation related to crypto-assets may appear to be a gregarious phenomenon fueled, in particular, by the media and by the recent interest shown by powerful institutions or companies wishing to take advantage of this technology by implementing it or at least by discussing it in the wake of this phenomenon. This craze, which has been greatly amplified in recent months, and the significant fluctuation in the price of these crypto-assets have had the effect of restricting the focal length linked to the blockchain to the speculative bubble.

Nevertheless, the blockchain technology and the first uses resulting from it deserve real attention, and the paradox lies in the fact that the main use of this technology is to enable disintermediated transactions to be carried out and, therefore, to a certain extent to speculate with great fluidity.

Before studying in detail the uses resulting from the blockchain, it is necessary to focus on it as a technology, to include it in its technological historical lineage and also in its own technical system [GIL 78, GIL 79].

Blockchain technology is particularly in line with ledgers on clay, papyrus or paper tablets. The main purpose of the first forms of writing was to create ledgers. Uruk’s protocuneiform clay tablets, dated to 3400 or 3300 BCE, traditionally presented as the first traces of ...