Block Chain

on

 Block Chain

Dr. Santosh Bharat Salunkhe, (sbsalunkhe@coe.sveri.ac.in), Associate Professor, SVERI’s College of Engineering, Pandharpur

What Block chain technology actually mean:

Block chain is a growing list of records, called blocks. That is linked to each other using cryptography. Each of these blocks contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp along with its transaction data.

Cryptography is the study and practise of techniques for establishing a secure communication in presence of third parties called adversaries. And timestamp keeps the secure track of creation and modification time of document. And once recorded not even the owner of that document can is able to change it. Thus times tamper’s integrity is never compromised.

It is an open, distributed ledger using peer to peer network that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.

History of Block chain:

Block chain was by a person using the name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as public transaction ledger of the crypto currency bit coin. The identity of this person remains unknown. The invention of block chain for bit coin made it the first digital currency to solve the double spending problem without the need of trusted authority or central server. Block chain is considered a type of Payment rail. Private block chains have been proposed for business use.

Components of Block chain:

  • Node — user or computer within the block chain
  • Transaction — smallest building block of a block chain system
  • Block — a data structure used for keeping a set of transactions which is distributed to all nodes in the network
  • Chain — a sequence of blocks in a specific order
  • Miners — specific nodes which perform the block verification process
  • Consensus— a set of rules and arrangements to carry out blockchain operations

Uses of Block chain:

  • Crypto currencies :

The Bit coin network and Ethereum network are the most popular uses of block chain technology. As the block chain provides a safe transaction without any vulnerability thus block chain can be used for many such networks which can work on public and private levels.

  • Smart contracts :

These are the contracts that take place without human interactions. The main objective of smart contracts is automated escrow. The block chain technology used in contract might lower the moral hazards and optimize them in general.

  • Supply chain :

Block chain can be very useful in supply chain logistics and supply chain management. Ever ledger is one of the inaugural clients of      IBM’s block chain-based tracking service. Walmart and IBM are running a trial to use a block chain-backed system for supply chain monitoring — all nodes of the block chain are administered by Walmart and are located on the IBM cloud. Hyper ledger Grid develops open components for block chain services

  • Financial Services:

Banks are interested in block chain technologies because it helps them with the speed of bank office settlement system. Banks such as UBS are opening new research labs dedicated to block chain technology in order to explore how block chain can be used in financial services to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Berenberg, a German bank, believes that block chain is an “overhyped technology” that has had a large number of “proofs of concept”, but still has major challenges, and very few success stories.

Types of Block chain:

  1. Public Block chain – A public block chain as its name suggests is the block chain of the public, meaning a kind of block chain which is-‘ for the people, by the people and of the people’
  2. Private Block chain – Private block chain as its name suggests is a private property of an individual or an organization.
  3. Consortium or Federated Block chain – This type of block chain tries to remove the sole autonomy which gets vested in just one entity by using private block chains. So here instead of one in charge, you have more than one in charge. Basically, you have a group of companies or representative individuals coming together and making decisions for the best benefit of the whole network. Such groups are also called consortiums or a federation that’s why the name consortium or federated block chain.

References:

  1. Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H., Chen, X. and Wang, H., 2017, June. An overview of blockchain technology: Architecture, consensus, and future trends. In 2017 IEEE international congress on big data (BigData congress) (pp. 557-564). IEEE.
  2. Pilkington, M., 2016. Blockchain technology: principles and applications. In Research handbook on digital transformations. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  3. Yli-Huumo, J., Ko, D., Choi, S., Park, S. and Smolander, K., 2016. Where is current research on blockchain technology?—a systematic review. PloS one, 11(10), p.e0163477.

Comments

Post a Comment