Blockchain—a highly encrypted method of transmitting data across a network—first came to public consciousness with the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but major businesses have been slow to adopt the technology.
Now, a new book by Northeastern professor of international business and strategy Ravi Sarathy, “Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain: Lessons in Disruption from Fintech, Supply Chains, and Consumer Industries,” explores the whys behind this reticence and offers solutions to the problems blockchain still presents.
Blockchain relies on a distributed network of computers to provide “a very high standard of encryption,” Sarathy says, in which member computers within the network collectively validate transactions.
When a transaction is certified, it gets added to a “block,” each of which contains information about transactions in the previous blocks. As these blocks stack up, they form a chain, an “immutable” digital record, or ledger, of every transaction that’s ever occurred along that blockchain, Sarathy says. “You can go all the way back to 2009, when the very first Bitcoin transaction happened, and literally trace… every transaction in every Bitcoin that’s ever been created.”
Thanks to these collective validations, he says, blockchains are very secure. “The Bitcoin network itself has never been hacked. Wallets have been hacked, where people store Bitcoin, [and] exchanges have been hacked, which store Bitcoin on behalf of the client,” but the Bitcoin blockchain itself has remained secure.
Continue reading: https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/10/18/blockchain-business-use/
Now, a new book by Northeastern professor of international business and strategy Ravi Sarathy, “Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain: Lessons in Disruption from Fintech, Supply Chains, and Consumer Industries,” explores the whys behind this reticence and offers solutions to the problems blockchain still presents.
Blockchain relies on a distributed network of computers to provide “a very high standard of encryption,” Sarathy says, in which member computers within the network collectively validate transactions.
When a transaction is certified, it gets added to a “block,” each of which contains information about transactions in the previous blocks. As these blocks stack up, they form a chain, an “immutable” digital record, or ledger, of every transaction that’s ever occurred along that blockchain, Sarathy says. “You can go all the way back to 2009, when the very first Bitcoin transaction happened, and literally trace… every transaction in every Bitcoin that’s ever been created.”
Thanks to these collective validations, he says, blockchains are very secure. “The Bitcoin network itself has never been hacked. Wallets have been hacked, where people store Bitcoin, [and] exchanges have been hacked, which store Bitcoin on behalf of the client,” but the Bitcoin blockchain itself has remained secure.
Continue reading: https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/10/18/blockchain-business-use/
