A weekly Tuesday gathering that will be explicitly social in nature, meaning we close our laptops and share some food and drink. Each week (unless there is an already-scheduled Tuesday experiment), we'll try to find one person to tell us about something they are working on. It doesn't have to be overly structured or 'curated' but just casual.

This week, Ven Marella talks about his research into blockchains:

Trust without third parties through Block Chain Technology

Background: When you cast your vote in an election, how do you know that your ballot is counted? When you buy a piece of property, how do you know that it is really registered in your name? To answer these questions, you need to have a system where all the records are stored as data, where facts can be verified by everyone and security of the data is guaranteed. Blockchain is one such system.

Topic: Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed database where all the transactions are recorded in a ledger. Blockchain stores the information across a network of personal computers usually called as nodes. When a transaction occurs, all the nodes in the system are notified and process it. There is no centralized authority that owns the access to the information. Every node in the network can access the information and process the transactions. No single node in the system can manipulate the data because all the other nodes have access to correct information. Hence, block chain technology is extremely secure.

The science behind the block chain technology is cryptography. Each node in the system has a private key and a public key. A private key is the secret key of a node, which is used to encrypt the transactions whereas a public key is shared with every other node in the system and is used to decrypt the transactions. Each node in the system is identified by an address instead of the name of the individuals, so, the system maintains perfect anonymity.