Decentralized data structure management technology (DDSM), such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology, is grabbing ever-increasing attention as a result of its potential to revolutionize the way we conduct business, run our governments and go about daily life. While cryptographic digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, have garnered significant hype more recently due to intense market volatility, DDSM technology offers much more.

At its core, DDSM is a decentralized software-based and implemented system that openly manages vast amounts of data over the Internet thereby allowing ready access to verify the exchange of the data. Transactions are transparent, and once verified by consensus, are locked and virtually impossible to change. As a result of the technology’s transparency, consensus-based transaction confirmation process, and locking of blocks of data that cannot be changed, the potential for fraud and abuse is essentially eliminated. The management of trust is thereby deferred from an historically trusted (or, perhaps, not so trusted) intermediary, such as a bank, government or government agency, school, company or any other entity asserting centralized control over data (thereby representing a single point of failure), to a decentralized network guided by a common protocol.