Description
"How will Blockchain fare Beyond Bitcoin?". To answer that, we need to start with 'What is “blockchain”?' It turns out, there is no one standard definition. The term was introduced as a shorthand for “chain of blocks of transactions,” in the context of the Bitcoin system. Bitcoin's blockchain is public, distributed, permissionless, and secure -- without any trusted third party. Over the past few years, blockchain-based solutions have been proposed for other, non-cryptocurrency applications, such as real-estate ownership records, voting information, or identity verification. One of the greatest expectation is that blockchain would allow to eliminate trusted third parties and lead to disintermediation. It has proven to be a challenge, because changing the protocol, for example by removing native tokens, changes the properties of the resulting blockchain. So, for non-cryptocurrency blockchains we only have permissioned blockchains so far, and they require some involvement of trusted parties.
Keywords
- blockchain,
- Bitcoin,
- permissioned,
- permissionless,
- trusted third party
Disciplines
Publication Date
December, 2019
Citation Information
Hanna Halaburda. "Blockchain beyond Bitcoin" (2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/halaburda/46/