The team here at MEDIA Protocol are deeply committed to creating a more direct, transparent and secure ecosystem for content creators, publishers, and consumers through the revolutionary application of blockchain technology. We’re here to connect the worlds of marketing and technology for everyone’s benefit.

We’ve got love for both worlds, but from our own experience we know that they can sometimes feel, literally, worlds apart. So we’re committed, not just to connecting them, but to creating a common understanding between them.

This series of articles aims to explain the ins and outs of blockchain security to help everyone — the marketeers, the technologists, and the content consumers — understand the principles behind this game-changing technology.

We want to help educate by demystifying the potential applications of blockchain technology. Most importantly, we feel it’s vital to highlight and clarify the security elements of blockchain; how it safeguards data, enables open and transparent record-keeping and ensures secure digital transactions.

Strap in, and welcome to the MEDIA Protocol Blockchain Education Programme.

Part 1 — Blockchain: Is It Secure?

Transparency and security is the biggest concern for people when they interact with online content. For MEDIA Protocol, transparency and openness is fundamental to a better digital content ecosystem. It is important for people to know their data is secure and trust those who acquire and use their data.

With growing concerns over the security of personal data online and the misuse of user data by social media platforms, blockchain technology is being positioned as the answer to these problems. In this first article in our Educational Series, we take a look at Blockchain Technology and ask: Is it really secure?

Ledgers: The Old-Fashioned Way Of Recording Data And Transactions

Ledgers have always been a fundamental tool for accountants needing to record economic transactions. Historically, ledgers have been used to record payments, deals and track the movement of assets, amongst other things. These records were kept in books. Often occupying stacks of shelves in secure rooms.

This kind of record keeping has since been greatly simplified, and the process made more efficient and convenient, through the use of computers. With the advent of Distributed Ledger Technology however, transactions are becoming faster, more secure and, most importantly, decentralised.

Online Ledgers: The New Decentralised Way Of Recording Data And Transactions

In order to understand how the blockchain works as a secure and transparent system for recording transactions, we must first explore and explain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

DLT is a system for recording transactions, much like the original paper ledger system, but instead of the information being kept centrally in one location, details of the transaction are recorded in multiple places simultaneously. There is no central data store.

A distributed ledger is a database that is shared and synchronized across a digital network made up of computers, or nodes, situated in multiple locations, run by different institutions, with no fixed geographical centre.

No single authority has control over the ledger.

More importantly, DLT creates a transparent transaction that can be viewed by anyone. Participants at each node within the network can access the data recordings shared across that network and can own identical copies. Any additions or amendments made to the ledger are reflected and copied to all participants, almost instantaneously.

And since the data is distributed across a network, it is highly resistant to cyber attacks — all copies of the ledger spread across the network would have to be located and attacked simultaneously in order for an attack to be successful.

Distributed Ledger Technology is much more secure because each node on the network holds records. The result: a system that’s more difficult to manipulate.

Distributed Ledgers: Cutting Out The Middleman

In the current economic model transactions can be authorised and executed almost instantly. However, settlement still takes time, anywhere from a few hours to a number of days.

Take for instance buying a house. The actual purchase deal can be negotiated, signed and completed relatively quickly. But it’s the accompanying process of verifying and registering the change of ownership, as part of the purchase, that is drawn out and time consuming. Lawyers and various local government offices and departments are all involved in the process, each with their own ledger full of transactions. These are not always accessible or readily available to the other parties involved in the purchase process.

What blockchain technology offers is a way for multiple parties to conduct a single transaction. It offers access to a shared ledger. Cutting out the middleman and speeding up the process.

Blockchain Explained

In simple terms, blockchain is a way of bundling transactions together into blocks of data. These blocks are then chained together and spread across a network of computers.

A buyer and a seller initiate a transaction. This is packaged together with other pending transactions waiting to be verified, forming a block.

Computers on the network check through all the data available across the network to see whether the transaction can be allowed to continue. Once they have ascertained that no other previous activity between the parties involved has taken place that may invalidate the current transaction, they verify the transaction.

This is then time-stamped and attached to the previous block. Each block in the chain refers back to the previous block.

Transparency Throughout The System

As a public ledger, the very nature of blockchain and DLT makes every transaction visible to everyone. They become public knowledge.

It’s a far more transparent way of handling records and transactions because the data is shared, and seen, across a network. Again, this very feature of the technology makes a successful cyber attack a lot less likely.

The applications of this technology are wide, varied and potentially endless. Ultimately, what it offers people is the ability to hold and better control the use and distribution of personal information. It enables you to be selective with what data you share and with whom.

Is Blockchain The Future Of Secure Online Transactions?

All the evidence so far seems to suggest that it’s heading that way.

For now, however, the technology is very much in its infancy and at a development phase, with new applications and methods being constantly discovered and explored.

Whichever way you look at it though, blockchain is here to stay, with banks and health organisations amongst some of the early high-profile investors in research and development.

The principles of transparency and security that underpin the blockchain model are what make it such an attractive prospect.

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