CHAPTER 2

Blockchain

What Is Blockchain?

The concept behind blockchain technology was first described by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in the article, How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document (1991)1 in the Journal of Cryptology. In the article, they proposed procedures for using a “distributed network of users” and cryptographic hash functions to create a “digital safety-deposit box” or trusted timestamping service for digital data. Now, decades later, blockchain technology is a reality and is making groundbreaking impacts on the tech world, even though the technology is still evolving.

A blockchain is a digital ledger—a log of transactions or assets— consisting of discrete blocks of digital information that are linked in a chain and tagged ...

Get Business and Emerging Technologies 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.