Bitcoin Forum

Blockchain could be relevant in mobile payments system, services relying on Aadhaar and more

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/blockchain-could-be-relevant-in-mobile-payments-system-or-373010.html

If you have been following the news since the last couple of years, you must have noticed that there are two terms that have become part of daily tech parlance. Bitcoins and Blockchain. While the bitcoin pertains to crypto currency, it is the underlying technology driving it — Blockchain — which has potential to be used in various applications.

Blockchain is simply a peer to peer software technology that stores information across a network of computers. Blockchain is a distributed network, so there isn’t one central authority (such as banks) managing the transactions. This is done so as to prevent any one entity from taking down the entire network, in case it is corrupted. Blockchain uses cryptography to ensure that records cannot be duplicated or interchanged. There is an online system-wide account book called the distributed ledger which records every transaction happening between two entities and that record is stored chronologically and added to the blockchain. All parties in a secure network receive copies of the records of financial transactions. This means that the transactions do not have to be independently verified by third parties. To put it in perspective, blockchain has a record of anyone who has ever owned a bitcoin, since its inception.