Trustworthy and the potential to be a game-changer, the technology has the ability to revolutionize the future of geospatial world
Of late there has been a lot of interest in Blockchain technology and many researchers are looking at ways in which Blockchain can be used in geospatial systems. This is expected because geospatial systems have made very good use of computing technology right from databases to networks and the Cloud. Geospatial technology is increasingly becoming embedded in other systems like BIM, BI, BPE and so forth. Therefore, it is only some time before it embraces Blockchain technology.
The Chain in Blockchain is the chain of transactions in the form of ledger entries about assets which could be money, imagery, data, maps, documents, etc. In reality what is actually transacted are tokens containing the metadata of the assets. The actual physical transfer happens separately. Block refers to the grouping of transactions related to each other. A way of looking at a Blockchain is to consider it as a ledger where all transactions are entered. So in what way is a Blockchain different from a database?
Difference between Blockchain and database
Blockchains are open to all members, therefore the ledger of transactions are available to all members. There are no centralised administrators as it is a peer-to-peer network. Every transaction entered in the Blockchain is verified and approved by consensus among the members. However, there are validators called ‘miners’ who can review the transactions and validate them. The two key characteristics of Blockchains are trust and immutability. Just like in business where transactions are based on trust so also the members operate on trust. Immutability is ensured by the prevention of a record of a transaction being modified or deleted. When a member makes a transaction it is date and time stamped and is accompanied by a key generated by the computer using the members private key.
This story is from the September-October 2017 edition of Geospatial World.
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This story is from the September-October 2017 edition of Geospatial World.
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