ABSTRACT
Blockchain is a series of transactions, records or blocks, which are cryptographically secure, timestamped with the previous block’s hash and has characteristics that are immutable, decentralized and transparent. Within the community, users can record transactions in a distributed ledger, which is tamperproof and means transactions cannot changed after they are published. This chapter provides an introduction to blockchain, its architecture, categorization (public, private and consortium), commonly used platforms and languages and will help readers understand different applications with use cases in the current scenario and the future and also defines several consensus algorithms. This review is an attempt to give a comprehensive understanding of blockchain technology and explores the potential of the technology in various fields.
