Question

What is blockchain technology and how does it work and what is its advantages?

Answer 1

Blockchain technology backs up Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to this day, but there’s been a recent groundswell of interest from a variety of industries in making distributed ledger technology work, especially in business. Here's a primer on what blockchain technology is, how it works, and where it is showing the most promise in business

What is a blockchain?

A blockchain is the structure of data that represents a financial ledger entry, or a record of a transaction. Each transaction is digitally signed to ensure its authenticity and that no one tampers with it, so the ledger itself and the existing transactions within it are assumed to be of high integrity
The real magic comes, however, from these digital ledger entries being distributed among a deployment or infrastructure. These additional nodes and layers in the infrastructure serve the purpose of providing a consensus about the state of a transaction at any given second; they all have copies of the existing authenticated ledger distributed amongst them.

[ Cut through the blockchain to hype to find out whichblockchain pilots are showing enterprise promise and where blockchain is poised for a big-business breakout. | Get the latest on emerging technologies and digital transformation bysigning up for our CIO newsletter. ]

How do blockchains work?

When a new transaction or an edit to an existing transaction comes in to a blockchain, generally a majority of the nodes within a blockchain implementation must execute algorithms to evaluate and verify the history of the individual blockchain block that is proposed. If a majority of the nodes come to a consensus that the history and signature is valid, the new block of transactions is accepted into the ledger and a new block is added to the chain of transactions. If a majority does not concede to the addition or modification of the ledger entry, it is denied and not added to the chain. This distributed consensus model is what allows blockchain to run as a distributed ledger without the need for some central, unifying authority saying what transactions are valid and (perhaps more importantly) which ones are not.

How can blockchains be structured?

Blockchains can be configured to work in a number of ways that use different mechanisms to achieve consensus on transactions and, in particular, to define known participants in the chain and exclude everyone else. The largest example of blockchain in use, Bitcoin, employs an anonymous public ledger in which anyone can participate. For more private uses of blockchain among a smaller number of known actors, many organizations are deploying permissioned blockchains to control who participates in transaction activity.

What are the benefits of blockchains?

Blockchain is attractive to a number of different constituencies for a variety of reasons, including the following:

The lack of a requirement for a central authority makes it an ideal ledger and settlement solution for joint ventures and affiliate relationships that are generally made on an equal or 50/50 footing without a provision for an arbitrator or manager. Indeed, having the computers verify transactions and settle them eliminates the need for clearinghouses and other settlement agents, providing disintermediation in a business arrangement and generally reducing costs while improving the speed at which transactions can be made, verified, settled, and recorded.

The digital signatures and verifications make it difficult to envision a scenario wherein a bad actor could cause fraud and introduce problems that are costly to remove and resolve. The cryptographic integrity of the whole pending transaction, as well as examination by multiple nodes of the blockchain architecture, protect against threats and malevolent use of the technology. (It is important to note that this security protection has largely been untested in the marketplace and, while strong on a theoretical basis, questions remain about how well the protections will hold up in the reality of the digital economy we live in today.)

The concept of blockchain works really well at tracking how assets move through a supply chain, through certain vendors and factories to transmission and transportation lines and into their final locations.

Answer 2

Explanation:

Blockchain technology uses a digital signature feature to conduct fraud-free transactions making it impossible to corrupt or change the data of an individual by the other users without a specific digital signature.