You have probably heard of blockchains. The technique, strongly connected to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is currently among the biggest trends in the tech industry. But what is a blockchain and how can it be used?
A blockchain is basically a growing list of blocks of data, where each block is connected to the previous one, using hash values. Blockchains are mainly used in peer-to-peer networks as a distributed, shared write-once-read-many database. Each active participant in the network stores a copy of the blockchain for reasons of availability and security. (more…)