Blockchain technology is heralding in a fairer world, where producers and buyers can directly exchange goods and services, without the need for banks and centralised institutions.
The financial world has long been controlled by banks, which have provided currency, credit and security needed to facilitate economic transactions.
This old system is open to errors through relying on humans for validations and legal checks around, in the case of property, for example, ownership, and credit ratings.
Before a new transaction is recorded, it must be agreed by all users, according to agreed rules – and once it has been inputted, it can’t be tampered with.
It’s not just finance and cryptocurrency that stands to benefit.
Blockchain is mathematics at its heart and is specifically based on the application of what’s called elliptical curve cryptography.
It could be a set of receipts added by a charitable organisation that shows a tranche of donated funds has been spent in an appropriate manner.
The point is that no new hash can be created and added to a blockchain unless the data it represents conforms to a set of rules agreed in advance by its users.
The process of validating the addition of data to a blockchain is called mining, and those who do this work are called blockchain miners.
In terms of security, blockchain advocates argue that it is superior to that of the banks and other institutions because the digital records are not held in one or two databases that hackers can then attack.
The hash of each block in a blockchain can be thought of as something like an electronic fingerprint, as it uniquely identifies each block and all of its contents.
It might be possible, using the power of a modern supercomputer to tamper with and recalculate all of the hashes in a block to create a new, altered but valid blockchain.
Proof of work is a mechanism introduced by blockchain builders to slow down the creation of new blocks in the chain so that it takes much longer – perhaps up to 10 minutes – to validate proof of work and add a new block to the chain.
If someone in the chain creates a new block, this is sent to everyone, and each node on the chain makes sure it hasn’t been tampered with.
To successfully tamper with a blockchain, a hacker must interfere with all the blocks on the chain, redo the proof of work for each block and take control of more than 50 per cent of the peer-to-peer blockchain network.
These contracts are essentially software programmes that are stored on the blockchain and used to perform functions, such as exchange of bitcoins, when certain pre-agreed conditions are met.
A new application of blockchain receiving considerable media attention is the use of non-fungible tokens in the world of digital art and media.
It is used in complicated industries where parts, components and ingredients from multiple sources, and countries, must all be validated before being combined together in some final product.
Dr Laura Brady is programme manager at FutureNeuro, the SFI Research Centre for Chronic and Rarer Neurological Diseases, at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
“The project is developing this AI and blockchain-enabled platform that will match patients based on their genotype and phenotype to relevant clinical trials,” says Brady.
“Mary might get a notification that she’s been matched with 10 clinical trials that have considered her disease, where’s she at with her disease, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria for clinical trials,” says Brady.
“In Ireland, milk recording is happening in four main places,” he says .