Blockchain is becoming increasingly popular among industries worldwide and has the ability to revolutionize the way the world conducts business digitally. Blockchain is defined by IBM as, “a shared ledger for recording the history of transactions, that cannot be altered.” It has no central authority and is peer-to-peer combined with a system of “smart contracts” and other assistive technologies. Blockchain is decentralized, meaning it is stored on multiple computers, enabling it to be immensely secure with no way of being altered unless altering all other blocks. All parties must give a consensus before a new transaction is added to the network. Blockchain is utilized worldwide by a variety of industries including finance, health care, law, real estate, government and education.

To fully understand the scope of blockchain it is important to dissect the word. The “block” refers to the digital information stored on the “chain,” public or private networks. The blocks, where digital information is stored is comprised of three different functions:

  • Storage of information about the transaction, such as the amount, and the date and time
  • Information about who is making the transaction
  • Each block has an identifying “hash” created by algorithms to immutably chain the data