More than a decade after its birth, the blockchain today represents a paradigm and a platform for innovation that can provide new answers to many different needs of businesses, organisations, citizens and consumers.
For a long time, knowledge and attention towards blockchain was mainly limited to the world of developers and digital finance. Recently, however, there has been an important qualitative leap forward and blockchain is now conquering new areas of application, offering possible solutions that solve the needs of businesses and their stakeholders in an innovative way.
Blockchain technology: some clarifications
The blockchain is a sub-family of technologies in which the ledger is structured as a chain of blocks containing transactions and whose validation is entrusted to a consensus mechanism, distributed over all the nodes of the network (in the case of permissionless or public blockchains) or over all the nodes that are authorised to participate in the process of validating the transactions to be included in the ledger (in the case of permissioned or private blockchains).
The main features of blockchain technologies are the immutability of the ledger, transparency, traceability of transactions and security based on cryptographic techniques. This is made possible by the fact that the blockchain is based on a network and from the point of view of functionality it allows a database to be managed in a distributed and decentralised manner.
From a strictly operational point of view, the blockchain can be seen as an alternative to centralised archives, allowing the management of data updates with the collaboration of the participants in the Network and with the possibility of having shared data, accessible, distributed among all participants. In fact, it facilitates data management in terms of verification and authorisation without the need for a central authority.
Blockchain and Distributed Ledger
Blockchain can be considered as a technology that belongs to the category of Distributed Ledger technologies. Distributed Ledger Technology or DLT can be defined as a set of systems characterised by the fact that they refer to a distributed ledger, governed in such a way as to allow access and the possibility of making changes by several nodes in a network.
Any transaction is subject to an asymmetrical double-key signature mechanism that, although it does not have certificates issued by accredited certifiers (the blockchain envisages precisely the overcoming of centralised certifying bodies), works with a mechanism similar to that of the digital signature. DLTs involve the use of cryptographic algorithms that enable the user to use the system by providing him with a public key and a private key that is used to sign transactions or to activate smart contracts or other services connected to the blockchain.
In particular, we can say that blockchains are Distributed Ledger technologies characterised by a record set up and structured to manage transactions within a Chain of Blocks. From the point of view of the "management rules", each block is "added" to the chain on the basis of a process based on the Consent distributed on all the nodes of the network, i.e. with the participation of all the nodes that are called to contribute to the validation of the transactions present in each block (as we will see later) and to their "inclusion" in the register.
The great transparency, traceability and security of blockchain transactions is guaranteed by a real and complete distributed logic where there is no longer any centre and where the governance mechanisms are built around the concept of trust between all actors.
The blockchain as a public ledger open to all
The blockchain can also be seen as a decentralised database that stores assets and transactions on a peer-to-peer network. It is a public registry for the management of data related to transactions present in blocks and managed through cryptography by network participants who verify, approve and subsequently register all blocks with all data of each transaction on all nodes. The same "information" is therefore present on all nodes and therefore becomes unchangeable except through an operation that requires the approval of the majority of the nodes of the network and that in any case will not change the history of that same information.
The blockchain is not an application, it is not a system, it is not a technology. The blockchain is a new paradigm for managing information that makes it possible to guarantee the true immutability of data because it is able to guarantee and certify the complete history of all data and all operations linked to each transaction.
Among its many applications, blockchain can also be used for crowdfunding. One of the possible applications, the one chosen by us at 2meet2biz.com, is to apply the blockchain to replicable and procedural internal processes. By becoming a validator node on Commercio.network, our aim is to guide the processes of the campaigns on our platform through digital transformation, with the development and use of technologies capable of making the investment process innovative, both for principals and investors, and maximising the value chain of the campaigns presented.
Find out more - https://2meet2biz.com/it/blockchain