TREND 6Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers
The One-Sentence Definition
A blockchain or distributed ledger is, in very simplistic terms, a kind of highly secure database – a way of storing information, in other words.
What Are Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers?
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has said, “What the Internet did for communications, I think blockchain will do for trusted transactions.”1 That’s quite a strong prediction. So what’s so special about blockchain technology?
In today’s digital age, storing, authenticating, and protecting data presents serious challenges for many organizations. Blockchain technology promises a practical solution to this problem, providing a useful and secure way to authenticate information, identities, transactions, and more. As we’ll see later in the chapter, this makes blockchain an increasingly attractive tool for industries like banking and insurance, among others. In fact, blockchain can be used to provide a super-secure real-time record of pretty much anything: financial transactions, contracts, supply chain information, even physical assets.
Blockchain, then, is essentially a way of storing data. To put it in more technical terms, it’s a form of open, distributed ledger (i.e. a database), where the data is distributed (i.e. duplicated) across many computers and is typically decentralized. It’s this decentralization aspect that makes blockchain so transformative. For one thing, it means there’s no one central point of attack for hackers ...
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