Revolutionizing the Traditional Business Network

With traditional methods for recording transactions and tracking assets, participants on a network keep their own ledgers and other records. This traditional method can be expensive, partially because it involves intermediaries that charge fees for their services. It’s clearly inefficient due to delays in executing agreements and the duplication of effort required to maintain numerous ledgers. It’s also vulnerable because if a central system (for example, a bank) is compromised due to fraud, cyberattack, or a simple mistake, the entire business network is affected. Business networks also use blockchain. The blockchain architecture gives participants the ability to share a ledger that’s updated through peer-to-peer replication each time a transaction occurs. Peer-to-peer replication means that each participant (also called a node) in the network acts as both a publisher and a subscriber.

The blockchain network is economical and efficient because it eliminates duplication of effort and reduces the need for intermediaries. It’s also less vulnerable because it uses consensus models to validate information. Transactions are secure, authenticated, and verifiable.

Source: Blockchain for Dummies, IBM