He stressed that blockchain is not the same thing as bitcoin, but merely the ledger that enables it to function. Applying blockchain broadly across business operations creates a shared system of record and a \u201csmart contract\u201d that embeds business terms in a transaction database and executes them with each transaction. Transactions are secure, authenticated, and verifiable, Gary said, when all parties agree to this sort of network-verified transaction. The blockchain-enabled ledger is permissioned, of course, so that individual participants see only the transactions that apply to them.<\/p>\n

As bitcoin aficionados know, cryptography is employed with blockchain. Bitcoin cryptographic mining provides verification for anonymous participants, albeit with a significant cost in computing resources (thus, the use of the term \u201cmining\u201d). In contrast, when all parties are known and trusted, a commitment to blockchain can be effected at much lower cost, Gari said. He outlined \u201cproof of stake\u201d and multi-signature processes to accomplish this.<\/p>\n

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