It has taken almost 10 centuries for the next big disruption in the way transaction ledgers are created. In the 11th<\/sup> century, the double entry bookkeeping system changed how a ledger was maintained and now many centuries later, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize how systems of records are maintained.<\/p>\n
To demystify blockchain and describe it in extremely simple words, it is nothing but a ledger which has the following characteristics:<\/p>\n
\n
Distributed & decentralized<\/li>\n
Immutable \u2013 write once, read many times<\/li>\n
Mathematically verified<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The above properties enable blockchain to maintain a list of records with a very high level of trust without the need for a central authority to authenticate the transactions. Blockchain enables the programmatic authentication of records using certain mathematical algorithms that are completely tamper proof.<\/p>\n