What Are Enterprise Blockchains?

Anyone who writes a technical history of the past few years will certainly write a lot about Bitcoin and blockchain technology. We’ve seen startups, ICOs, and open source projects all wanting to cash in on blockchains. Some of these are new applications; some attempt to graft blockchains onto some existing business or application domain. Everything old is new again, and “now with blockchain.”

The problem is that very few people actually know what a blockchain is, what it means, and how it might be useful. And the intense ideology surrounding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies doesn’t help. Interest in blockchain technologies is certainly driven in part by the roller-coaster ride in Bitcoin prices, but that doesn’t explain it. So, what is a blockchain, and why are so many people interested in it? What problems might blockchains solve?

First, a clarification: I am writing specifically about blockchains, not Bitcoin. The underlying technology on which Bitcoin is based is a blockchain. That statement itself needs a fair amount of unpacking, but it is good enough for now: we’re not discussing Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Dogecoin, or any other cryptocurrency. They are all based on a blockchain. For practical purposes, the “Bitcoin blockchain” is the reference implementation for a blockchain. It’s the best way we currently have to look at what a blockchain is and how it might be used. The code behind Bitcoin’s blockchain is also used by many other cryptocurrencies. ...