Blockchain Technologies, Applications and Cryptocurrencies. Группа авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ will not only serve as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

      The website BlockGeeks.Com (2019) defines “blockchain” as a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree). By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way”. Blockchain use with peer-to-peer electronic cash transactions enabled a number of Financial Technology (FinTech) applications, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) applications and introduction of more than thousand other Cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin still remains the most popular cryptocurrency.

      Blockchains have now moved from electronic cash to other applications in government, supply chain management, healthcare, agriculture, real estate, international development and almost any application that utilize databases that can be replaced with a more secure, immutable, consensus-based, transparent and trust-based database. Apart from FinTech applications, other applications based on blockchains are emerging in every sector and industry as everyone is intent on taking advantage of the special properties of blockchains mentioned in the previous sentence. After bitcoin’s success or failure (it depends), people are trying to apply it to procedures and processes beyond financial transactions. In effect, they are asking: What other agreements can a blockchain automate? What other middlemen can blockchain technology retire?

      

      Some examples of real-world blockchain applications in use are as follows:

      • Land Ownership and Management: Dubai, USA, UK, Sweden, Ukraine, Georgia and Ghana.

      • Development Aid: Aid Transfer Efficiency, South African Early Childhood Development.

      • Supply Chain Management: Diamond Tracking (De Beers), Food Safety (Walmart), Oil Supply (ADNOC), Agricultural Products Supply (LDC).

      • Renewable Energy: WePower (Estonia), Power Ledger (Australia), Acciona Energy (Spain), The Brooklyn Micro Grid (US), The Sun Exchange (South Africa).

      • Remittances: Blockchain Wallet, TransferWise, Ripple’s XRP, BitSpark, MoneyFi, Chynge.

      • Digital Identity: Civic, ValidatedID, THEKEY, Trusti, PeerMountain, Edge, BlockAuth, BlockVerify, CryptID, ExistenceID.

      • Agriculture: Food Traceability, Fair Trade Farming, Organic Farming Certifications, Food Safety (Pesticides Use), New Markets, Logistics.

      • Democracy and Governance: Voting, Decentralisation of Services, GovCoin, Democracy.Earth, FollowMyVote, Smart Participation, Liquid Democracy.

      • Manufacturing and Industrial: Provenance, JioCoin, Hijro, SKUChain, BlockVerify, STORJ.io, RFID Integration, Anti Counterfeiting, Compliance.

      • Health: Modum.io, Gem, SimplyVital Health, MedRec, Electronic Health Records (EHR), Ambr0Sys, Hashed Health, Medical Change, Change Health.

      • Financial Inclusion: MojaLoop, ABRA, Bank Apoalim, Maersk, Augur, Regalii, Ripple, World Remit, Stellar, Oridian, Credits.Vision, OneName, ShoCard.

      • Retail: OpenBazaar, Loyyal, Blockpoint.io, Customer Data Management, Transparency, Warranty, Goods Tracking, Customer Loyalty.

      • Climate Change: Power Ledger, ClimateCoin.io, Carbon Emission Trading, Clean Energy, GHG.

      

      • Environment: SOLshare, PlasticBank, Agora Tech Lab, EnergiToken, CarbonX, Veridium, IBM, United Nations, Waste Reduction, GiveTrack.

      • Human Rights: Stop the Traffik, Dash Venezuela, Micro Trade, OpenGarden, RightMesh, Media Freedom, Social Media Awareness.

      • Access to Water: Clean Water Coin, Decentralized Water Management, Water Quality Assurance Regulations, Water Trading.

      • Cyber-security: GuardTime, REMME, IoT Security, Decentralized Storage Solutions, Safer DNS, Security in P2P Messaging systems.

      Cryptocurrencies are “digital money” that do not physically exist but can be converted to any popular physical currency. Bitcoin, the first digital money, was hatched as an act of defiance. Unleashed in the wake of the Great Recession, the cryptocurrency was touted by its early champions as an antidote to the inequities and corruption of the traditional financial system. Bitcoin sought to replace the services provided by financial institutions with cryptography and code. When you pay your mortgage, a series of agreements occur in the background between your financial institution and others, enabling money to go from your account to someone else’s. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies replace those background agreements and transactions with software — specifically, a distributed and secure database called a Blockchain.

      If you could piece together a running tabulation of who held every dollar, then suddenly the physical representations would become unnecessary. Bitcoin achieved the running tabulation by creating a single, universally accessible digital ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin’s blockchain, unlike the ledgers maintained by traditional financial institutions, is replicated on networked computers around the globe and is accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. A class of participants on this network, called miners, is responsible for detecting transaction requests from users, aggregating them, validating them and adding them to the blockchain as new blocks. It’s called a chain because changes can be made only by adding new information to the end. Each new addition, or block, contains a set of new transactions — a couple of thousand that reference previous transactions in the chain.

      “CIO Insights Reflections: Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains — their Importance in the Future” by Notling & Muller (2017) reports the following: “With the help of cryptography and a collective booking system called Blockchain, cryptocurrencies build a distributed, safe and decentralized payment system, which does not need banks, intermediates, an organization or a central technical infrastructure to work. The main difference to the current types of money we know is that an intermediate, which is responsible for production (e.g. central bank) or exchange (banks) is not needed. Exchanges of digital values and goods are made directly between two individuals.” Known cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and IOTA. In a sense, they are scarce commodities as the amount of available currency units is in this case limited by mathematical algorithms. After every digital currency unit is issued, there is no way to generate additional currency units from it (e.g. Bitcoin is limited to 21 million units). Furthermore, every cryptocurrency has its own currency generating process. The main factors likely to affect the future development of cryptocurrencies are, in Notling & Muller’s (2017) opinions, interventions by the government and central banks and questions on how the sector will be regulated.

      The chapters in this book are as follows:

       Chapter 1: A Literature Review in Support of Blockchain Technologies

      Blockchain technology has to be one of the biggest innovations of the 21st century given the ripple effect it is having on various sectors from financial СКАЧАТЬ