Blockchain Technology making deep inroads into Multiple Sectors

Last Updated on July 14, 2018 by Bharat Saini

Blockchain technology offers the ability to create businesses and operations that are both flexible and secure. Its applications are still in the developmental stage.  The demand for blockchain-based services is on the rise, and the technology is maturing and advancing at a rapid pace. The potential applications for blockchain technology are almost without limit. It is making deep inroads into multiple sectors, with the financial sector being the main beneficiary.

Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed and public digital ledger that is used for maintaining a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the collusion of the network. A blockchain functions as a decentralized database that is managed by computers belonging to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Each of the computers in the distributed network maintains a copy of the ledger to prevent a single point of failure (SPOF) and all copies are updated and validated simultaneously.

Blockchain is a continuously growing list of records called blocks. A block records some or all of the recent transactions. Once completed, a block goes into the blockchain as a permanent database. Each time a block gets completed, a new one is generated. There are a countless number of such blocks in the blockchain, connected to each other, like links in a chain, in proper linear, chronological order. Every block contains a hash of the previous block. The blockchain has complete information about different user addresses and their balances right from the genesis block to the most recently completed block. Blocks are secured using cryptography.

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages, various aspects in information security, such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography.

• Blockchain technology, which was invented by Santoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public transaction ledger of the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
• Banks around the world are rushing to adopt blockchain for cross-border trade finance transactions, touting the benefits of the digital ledger technology for both speeding up transactions and improving security.
• Recently some Indian banks have joined a consortium that aims to introduce blockchain technology in order to speed up processing and approval new loans and have signed up for the India Trade Connect consortium, which hired Infosys to develop a blockchain platform for loans that back trade transactions within India.
• Applications with blockchain technology, that is superior to existing technologies, are much more efficient, transparent and cost effective. Many of the existing systems will become obsolete if blockchain technology is used to carry out transactional services.