Page 25 - Seniors Today October 2020

Tech Matters
timestamped and linked to the rest of the be updated when the correct credentials
block. These are then conveyed over the are applied, and most importantly, those
network for verification and validation credentials are verified by a majority of
for ‘mining.’ The records of verified participants in the network. It’s like, you
transactions are then transferred and have multiple pixels of a photograph lying
stored in a single block. in different computers, but the picture
Blockchain technology was invented can only be viewed when the pixels are

The Next in 2008 but started gaining traction stitched together! You’re securing this
against the idea of a single point of failure
only with Bitcoin’s launch. Blockchain
focuses on three significant deliverables:
and somebody working nefariously to
Revolution Value – enables an asset to be transferred corrupt the database. The beauty is that you
have this democratisation of the process of
without a centralised middleman; Trust
– creates permanent records of who owns dating the database.
what, secure to preserve the ‘information Well, Blockchain is a promising technology
Blockchain technology is not yet familiar to most today, yet the potential is integrity’ and Reliability – the concept of that is going beyond cryptocurrency

enormous, writes Sandeep Suri decentralised network removes the single into more mainstream applications in
point of failure. business like Insurance and Real Estate.
Blockchain technology is a hot topic and ‘hash.’ Every ‘hash’ also contains the hash of The technology is still in its infancy
the subject of numerous studies. Some the previous block in the chain. In a specific Process integrity stage but will become a mass product
experts consider it as the next technological order, the link with each other is to form a In essence, Blockchain is a chain of gradually as companies better understand
revolution after the internet. blockchain. information that leaves a perfect audit how Blockchain can lower the cost of
There are numerous explanations out The term blockchain is generally associated history. One can go back through time completing secure transactions between
there on the topic. The way I see Blockchain with cryptocurrency like the Bitcoin and and see the entire database. If you’re their customers and suppliers while
is really to think of it as a database. And Ethereum; the underlying technology applies recording things like property titles, reducing their needs on intermediaries. I
it’s a database that is shared across several to many different domains. At its core, a insurance, you can see a previous owner agree, Blockchain is not so profound today,
participants. We think about a network of blockchain is a mechanism for creating a of the property/insurance and the current yet the potential is enormous. It’s a space
participants, and each has a computer. The distributed ledger. The word ‘Distributed’ here owner. You’ve got this perfect audit trail. that needs to be watched closely as we
idea is, simultaneously, each member of means that multiple parties can participate, But the really exciting thing is the idea of move forward for another transformative
the network holds an identical copy of the view, and audit the ledger’s data. process integrity as the database can only technology wave!
blockchain database. With every transaction that is executed
The fundamental principle followed is that through Blockchain, it’s blocked together with
the information is potentially available to all all other transactions. To the other end, the
participants at the moment in time. It’s a new transaction needs validation by more than
way of keeping transactions without having a 50% within the Blockchain network. Once
central agency like a bank. the validation process is over, the block is
Or simply put, it’s a distributed,
decentralised public ledger that is stored in
the digital format called ‘block’ and stored
in a public database - the ‘chain.’ It is an
open ledger that records online financial
transactions in chains. Each chain has
individual units called ‘Blocks’. Similarly, Blockchain offers value, trust and reliability – all key in the
each block consists of a unique code called world of information Though Blockchain was invented in 2008, it gained traction with the arrival of Bitcoin

24 SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #16 | OCTOBER 2020 25