Mastering Blockchain

Chapter 1. Origins of Blockchain Technology

The term blockchain may sound mysterious or even scary to the uninitiated. Its literal meaning—a chain of blocks of information—is perhaps the simplest way to explain blockchain. But what is it for? Why does anyone need something called a blockchain?

To find the answer we need to look back to an earlier time, closer to the start of the web. The internet is about storage and distribution of information to large numbers of people. Blockchain has a similar goal, and it builds on previous experiments looking for ways to improve that distribution.

Electronic Systems and Trust

Before blockchain, cryptocurrency, or the systems that use them, could ever be a reality, the internet needed to exist in a reliable and distributed manner, and it needed to be used by a lot of people. In its infancy in the 1960s, the internet was a simple, relatively small network, and it was primarily used as a tool for university researchers and the US government to share information digitally.

Over time, early internet pioneers made the system more usable. The biggest impacts came from the development of TCP/IP, which established a standard for communication, HTTP, which enabled web browsing, and SMTP, which delivered electronic mail. These protocols made the internet accessible not just to researchers, but to everyone, and on a growing number of devices, including computers and later tablets and smartphones.

The evolution of the internet has changed life forever—incredibly ...