Blockchain Technology And Its Applications

Blockchain Technology typically refers to the transparent, trustless, publicly accessible ledger that allows us to securely transfer the ownership of units of value using public key encryption and proof of work methods.

The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.

Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016)

The Bitcoin Network is the first successful implementation of blockchain technology.

The technology uses decentralized consensus to maintain the network, which means it is not centrally controlled by a bank, corporation, or government. In fact, the larger the network grows and becomes increasingly decentralized, the more secure it becomes.

Cryptocurrency is a tradable digital asset or digital form of money, built on blockchain technology that only exists online. Cryptocurrencies use cryptography to verify and secure transactions, hence their name. There are currently well over one thousand different cryptocurrencies in the world and many people see them as the keystone of a fairer, future economy.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has warned Nigerians to be cautious against investing in cryptocurrency as doing so would be at their own risk. CBN, on January 12, 2017, issued a circular to Banks and other financial institutions on virtual currency operations in Nigeria.

Howbeit, with time and increasing demands, Cryptocurrency might have a stay in Nigeria.

Blockchain Technology Beyond Cryptocurrency

Blockchain is considered to be a novel revolution in the domain of computing enabling limitless applications such as storing and verifying legal documents including deeds and various certificates, healthcare data, IoT, Cloud and so forth.

Tapscott, rightly indicated Blockchain to be the “World Wide Ledger”, enabling many new applications beyond verifying transactions such as in: smart deeds, decentralized and/or autonomous organizations/ government services etc.

The blockchain can hold any legal document, from deeds and marriage licenses to educational degrees and birth certificates. Call it the World Wide Ledger. It enables smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized government services, and transactions among things.

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Is Changing the World
by Don Tapscott & Alex Tapscott

In an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, most of the communication is in the form of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions. Thus establishing trust among the participating machines is a big challenge that IoT technology still has not been met extensively.

However, Blockchain may act as a catalyst in this regard by enabling enhanced scalability, security, reliability and privacy.

This can be achieved by deploying Blockchain technology to track billions of devices connected to the IoT ecosystems and used to enable and/or coordinate transaction processing.

Applying Blockchain in the IoT ecosystem will also increase reliability by axing the Single Point of Failure (SPOF). The cryptographic algorithms used for encryption of the block data as well as the hashing techniques may provide better security. However, this shall demand more processing power which IoT devices currently suffer from. Thus further research is required to overcome this current limitation.

Underwood considers the application of Blockchain technology to completely overhaul the digital economy.

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize applications and redefine the digital economy.
Sarah Underwood

Ensuring and maintaining trust is both the primary and initial concern of the application of the Blockchain. BC can also be used to gather chronological and sequence information of transactions, as it may be seen as an enormous networked time-stamping system.