Blockchain's biggest challenge: Securing the world’s most secure technology
“Blockchain, it’s an immutable distributed ledger,” is something we’ve all heard from bitcoin enthusiasts time and time again, but what does that really mean? How safe is it? How can we secure tech’s most secure technology?
An immutable distributed ledger sounds complicated but at its core, the idea is simple: blockchain works as a shared record of information that multiple parties reference and can observe any addition made to it.
Any questionable addition to the blockchain will always be recognized by the other holders of the same record. The questionable addition is then compared against the records held by every other party to determine if it was indeed a legitimate addition. If a transaction is legitimate, it is added to the record permanently. Blockchain was created to be a trustless self-regulating system to facilitate the transparent exchange of information between parties while protecting the privacy of all involved. However, the groundbreaking technology isn’t without vulnerability, one that hackers are already busy exploiting.