[ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN RYERSON UNIVERSITY’S FORA MAGAZINE IN 2018]
By: Andrew Dick
The promise of what blockchain can do seems unrealistic, but when you realize exactly what a blockchain is, the picture becomes less absurd. Blockchains many believe they are the next big technology for managing lists of data (add data types) . That may not sound as exciting as self-driving vehicles, but it is undoubtedly disruptive as “lists” are at the core of most businesses.
That’s why the blockchain is now being touted as a solution for industries like Healthcare, Government, Logistics, Financial Services, Identity, Energy, IOT, AI, Voting and Land Registries. They all utilize expensive centralized databases to protect their data from attack.
Managing data in a blockchain may cut costs and increase security — ironically, with greater transparency. The blockchain distributes storage costs and processing power across the network while protecting the network from attack. This is possible because the complete ledger is stored on all nodes of the network, making it next to impossible to tamper with. Currently, the main weakness with current blockchain technologies is the speed of transactions
One of the biggest breakthroughs in “list-managing” has been “double-entry” accounting, still the fundamental system underlying bookkeeping today. The “double-entry” system had a profound effect on capitalism, politics, and society since its widespread adoption in the 14th century. Will blockchain technology be able to have a similar effect? Only if it conquers its biggest weakness: scalability.
Further Reading
- Why Blockchain Is The Future Of The Sharing Economy
- Realizing the Potential of Blockchain
- The trust machine
- Why Everyone Missed the Most Important Invention in the Last 500 Years
- Disrupting the trust business
- What is Blockchain Technology? A Step-by-Step Guide For Beginners
- Seven projects to look at how Distributed Ledger Technology could transform the energy market, banking and health care
- The Promise of Blockchain
- The origins of accounting
- Wikipedia – Double-entry bookkeeping system
- Blockchain and the Democratization of Trust
