Conceptualizing Blockchains: Characteristics & Applications

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain technology, identifying its key features, formal definitions, and classifying current and emerging applications to fill a gap in academic literature.

Contribution

It offers a formal definition of blockchain, analyzes its core characteristics, and categorizes various applications, enhancing understanding of blockchain's potential and scope.

Findings

Identified key functional characteristics of blockchain

Developed a formal definition of blockchain

Classified current and emerging blockchain applications

Abstract

Blockchain technology has recently gained widespread attention by media, businesses, public sector agencies, and various international organizations, and it is being regarded as potentially even more disruptive than the Internet. Despite significant interest, there is a dearth of academic literature that describes key components of blockchains and discusses potential applications. This paper aims to address this gap. This paper presents an overview of blockchain technology, identifies the blockchain's key functional characteristics, builds a formal definition, and offers a discussion and classification of current and emerging blockchain applications.