Here at Eccensys, we love blockchain. We love the concept, the tech and how potentially disruptive it is. In fact, we love it so much, we are actively developing software using blockchain right now.

I want to take a look at how blockchain can be used in Zimbabwe, aside from the most obvious use case, Bitcoin, of course.

Benefits of blockchain

Before we do that, let’s take a look at why blockchain awesome. Blockchain is a distributed ledger that has the following properties;

• Decentralization
• Transparency
• Immutability(ideally)
• High temporal accuracy
• Security

What does this all mean?

Decentralization

This just means no one person, government or organisation controls it. Think of it as the software equivalent of crowdfunding. In other words, a lot of people work together and contribute processing power to facilitate transactions securely.

Transparency

All blockchain transactions are visible to all nodes. As a result, it is easy to see what’s going on as all nodes can have access to all transactions.

This leads to some confusion. For instance, people believing that their personal data is publicly visible.

This is not the case. In reality, only public addresses are visible, not personal details. Because of this, no personal data is compromised as long as private data is kept private.

Immutable

You can not change transactions after the fact, ideally. This is awesome because no one can go back and rewrite history. We may as well set it in stone.

This immutable trail is what gives blockchain it’s security and makes auditing possible.

If you are interested in why I keep saying “ideally” then check out another post I wrote about hacking blockchain.

Temporal Accuracy

This is a fancy way of saying it accurately keeps track of when transactions occur. Sometimes it’s nice to use fancy words, it makes me feel smart.

Security

Blockchain has the potential to be very secure. Although there are still some kinks that need to be worked out, the concept as a whole is a secure concept.

This article turned out to be a pretty large read so I broke it up into two. You can read part two here.