Tutorial: A Descriptive Introduction to the Blockchain
Meg Coffin Murray · Communications of the Association for Information Systems · 2019
Blockchain technology, which supports the bitcoin cryptocurrency, has risen to prominence as the technology that will transform how business transactions occur and parties manage assets over the Internet. A decentralized system, the blockchain provides a way to digitally record and securely store verifiable and immutable transactions, which eliminates the need for trusted third-party intermediaries. While simplistically described as a decentralized ledger, the blockchain is a complex technology that integrates peer-to-peer networking, cryptography, and distributed consensus. In this paper, I explain blockchain’s components, describe how a blockchain works, identify use case examples from various industries, explore potentials and limitations, and speculate on the progressive adoption of the blockchain as a transformative technology.