Page 40 - Banking Finance October 2020

ARTICLE

BLOCKCHAIN

TECHNOLOGY

The term "Blockchain" (previously Block Chain) can be simply
Abstract defined as the term itself denotes - a chain of blocks. It is a
Blockchain is one of the most talked-about emerging distributed form of ledger keeping where each individual
technologies in today's digital space along with AI - node maintains all the chain of blocks or transactions
Artificial Intelligence, ML - Machine Learning, IoT - preceding it. This latest technology is the buzz word of all
Internet of Things, Big Data, Edge/Cloud Computing that the industries today including the Banking and Financial
is capable of, if implemented and accepted worldwide, Sector, where the utility is far-reaching and huge.
bringing about a huge change in the way
communications/transactions are carried out in any form The definition of Blockchain as per Wikipedia is "a growing
and in any industry. Though some of the forward-thinking list of records, called blocks that are linked using
organizations have started using this technology, large- cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of
scale adoption will change the way things are being the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data which
perceived today. is generally represented as a Hash/Merkletree".

Blockchain is widely believed to be invented by a person (or
a group) going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008,
About the author whose identity is unknown, particularly for the purpose of

cryptocurrency "bitcoin". In his original paper, Satoshi
Prasanna Babu M R Nakamoto used the words block and chain separately, but
Manager (Research)
State Bank Institute of Innovation & it later became popular as a single word blockchain.
Technology (SBIIT), Hyderabad
Blockchain technology can neither be attributed to an

40 | 2020 | OCTOBER | BANKING FINANCE