11 Mai Blockchain
Blockchain is projected to be the latest revolutionary technology and is gaining increasing attention from academics and practitioners.
A ‘blockchain’ in a nutshell is a distributed public consensus system that maintains an immutable record of transactions on the web, incapable of being falsified after the event.
How does it works?
The cryptography behind the protocol is based on asymmetric encryption modulo mathematics where the ‘key’ for encrypting a message or transaction is different from the ‘key’ to decrypt it.
The algorithm accomplishes this by splitting the key into a private and a public key that are mathematically linked trapdoor functions.
By calculating modulus functions of mutually known starting numbers, only the sender and recipient can encrypt and decrypt messages using their own different private keys, while the transaction itself can be verified publicly by using the ‘public key’.
Since it requires no ‘central authority’ as a ‘book-keeper’, transactions are faster depending upon the number of nodes that mine the data at any particular point in time.
The usual incentive to verify the blockchain is the dispensing of bitcoin.
However, as the supply of this algorithmically designed anti-inflationary crypto-currency dwindles, that incentive could be a transaction fee or linked to remuneration in goods and services…
What does all this mean to manufacturers in simple terms?
The blockchain is a simple way of passing information, which could include embedded financial transactions, from party A to B to C to…Z in a fully automated and safe manner without the need for intermediaries, whereby the final receiving party Z has direct access to the complete and non-falsifiable web-based transactional record tracing all the way back to originating party A.
The first party to a transaction initiates the process by creating a block. This block is verified by multiple computers distributed around the net. The verified block then becomes the starting point for a chain of blocks as the contents are passed from party to party which is stored across the net in multiple copies thereby creating an indestructible single unique record including its whole transactional history.
This effectively creates an accounting ledger that can never later be changed or falsified given that this could only be done by changing or falsifying every single copy of the ledger distributed across the net, which would be effectively impossible. In effect, copies of the blockchain are stored at multiple places in the cloud, thereby providing assurance that even if one storage site was knocked out by a catastrophe; sufficient copies would remain such that the block chain would not be lost.
This exploits the same feature of the web that underpinned its creation, namely the idea that whole areas of the network could be wiped out for example by nuclear war and yet the information stored on the network would be preserved.
Impacts on Supply Chains
- Digitalization influences supply chain practice, and should therefore be integrated as a new boundary condition in supply chain optimization…
- Blockchain technology influences the prediction of governance structures in the supply chain.
- Blockchain technology limits opportunistic behavior, environmental and behavioral uncertainty.
- Blockchain application reduces transaction costs and enables more market-oriented governance structures.