Summary

In this chapter, which served as a preview of the hands-on content to be presented in chapters 8 to 12, I explained the disruptive effects of the blockchain and pointed out that the main reason for this is that blockchain is a trustless system that employs a consensus protocol to validate transactions. This makes it very secure and is a major factor in its adoption. Blockchain is not owned by a single vendor or corporation, which makes it easy for anyone to develop the technology further. Because of the distributed network model, there is no single pointof failure, so nodes can appear, disappear, or malfunction without affecting the group as a whole. Operations happen in real time on the blockchain, and whenever a transaction occurs, it is broadcast to all validating nodes. Then, one of the nodes validates the transaction and adds it to the blockchain. Inherent in its distributed model is that it is very scalable. A blockchain is highly programmable and so advanced that it can run...