Blockchain has captured the attention of many organizations as a technology with intriguing possibilities. The basic concept involves a series of records, linked together using digital encryption technology. Records are bound together in blocks, each of which contains a hash of the previous block in the chain, in addition to its own data. This structure takes advantage of public key / private key encryption to enable the data in the blockchain to be openly viewed, but impossible to change. Blockchains can be distributed across diverse storage devices and need not be managed on a centralized server or database. The hashes used to bind each block are created using software that uses a private key to generate a hash, which can be validated with the associated public key. Implementations of blockchains can either be open to the world for viewing, or they can be associated with permission systems available only to authorized users.
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