The Corvus | August 2018
Demystifying Blockchain
Technology
Ifeanyi Ezugbo-Nwobi and Vivian Ojukwu
Overview
The internet has evolved massively since
its inception in the 90’s and has become
an integral part of our daily lives. Its
unique ability of connecting the farthest
parts of the world and turning it into a
global village has expanded interactions
between people irrespective of race,
language or geographical affiliations.
Despite these successes, the level of
trust in trade, especially e-commerce,
is yet to attain heights reached by
other types of social interactions (like
social media and information transfer)
boosted by the internet. Online, there
are still challenges in the areas of
identity management, record keeping
and value transfer. Consequently, most
successful value transfer transactions
between different parties are aided
by intermediaries such as Banks,
lawyers, brokers etc. The proponents
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of blockchain technology seek to solve
these problems by providing a platform
to guarantee trust, eliminate these
intermediaries and act as a fulcrum for
efficient value transfer.
Blockchain is an open, digital distributed
ledger that can record transactions
between parties in an efficient,
permanent and verifiable manner. It
can be programmed to keep records of
virtually anything of value and transfer
same from one party to another. Value
in this instance could represent money,
shares, stocks, property deeds, digital
royalty or in the not too distant future
electoral votes.
Currently, we rely on intermediaries
such as financial institutions, legal
professionals as well as central
authorities to complete transactions and
transfer asset ownership. Blockchain
represents a clear departure from this
norm; it seeks to foster a platform
where digital records of transactions
and events are created and added
onto a chain in chronological order
and enables participants to verify and
authenticate the information directly
without 3rd party intermediaries
and central authorities. Blockchain
technology seeks to build a world
where every agreement, process,
task, payment and literally anything
of value would have a digital record
and signature that could be identified,
validated, stored and shared.
Blockchain technology has gained
enormous popularity over the years and
has been lauded to have a significant
impact on Information technology
(IT) in much the same way that Linux
did, becoming a cornerstone in
modern application development. The
technology, no doubt, has the potential
Demystifying Blockchain Technology
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