A Primer for Blockchain

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain technology, explaining its fundamentals, potential applications, and societal implications, highlighting its disruptive potential and current understanding.

Contribution

It offers an all-encompassing basic explanation of blockchain, its workings, and potential uses, filling a gap in accessible scholarly literature.

Findings

Blockchain has significant disruptive potential.

Current applications include virtual currencies and legal implications.

Future societal impacts remain uncertain.

Abstract

Much has been written about the likely impact of blockchain technology. Early scholarship on this topic has focused on the legal and financial implications of virtual currencies which is based on blockchain technology. Rapid introduction and diffusion of technological changes throughout society, such as blockchain, continue to exceed the ability of law and regulation to keep pace. Will blockchain prove as disruptive to business models and entrenched societal institutions as: electricity, radio, television, or the internet? What beneficial aspects of the blockchain have been identified thus far and what future applications are probable? Should we expect blockchain technology to result in massive global changes? The primary goal of this article about blockchain is to present an all-encompassing basic explanation of: what it is; how it works; and what it's important. This article contributes to the scholarly literature and our understanding by providing a cogent description of this important technology and look at potential uses.