the idea of Blockchain. 3 examples of applications used for Blockchain

Blockchain
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October 17, 2019
Questions:
1 Describe in your own words the idea of Blockchain. What are the Three examples of applications used for Blockchain?
Generally speaking, blockchain technology is the technology whereby records of transactions or any other exchange is kept in time-stamped and immutable data that has no central servers, but rather managed by a cluster of different computers that each takes account of every changes. In other words, a blockchain technology does not rely on a single server, but rather of multiple servers acting in unison, while also cross-checking any irregularities that could occur in one of the servers. Lastly, each of these servers and users are also anonymous, which further adds to the security of such technology CITATION Cro16 \l 1033 (Crosby, Pattanayak, Verma, & Kalyanaraman, 2016). Accordingly, the three examples of the usage of Blockchain technology are (1) cryptocurrency systems, (2) smart contracts, and (3) Internet-of-Things systems CITATION Men18 \l 1033 (Mengelkamp, Notheisen, Beer, Dauer, & Weinhardt, 2018).
2 Explain in your own words the key issues and challenges related to security and privacy.
Despite being a promising solution for most issues that exist today, Blockchain technology also poses some challenges, especially when it comes to security and privacy of the users. One of the main issues related to this technology is the fact that as compared to traditional storage devices, every transaction happening within a blockchain is publicly distributed to every node that is present CITATION LuQ17 \l 1033 (Lu & Xu, 2017). This means that even private data could be accessed by an individual who has access on one of the many nodes, since each one acts as ‘servers’ in themselves. Accordingly, there are also some studies that states that despite the use of ‘pseudonyms’ (i.e., bitcoins), the accumulation of such data could then become sufficient enough to locate the genesis block, where the transaction occurred CITATION Sny19 \l 1033 (Snyder, 2019).
Another possible security issue about blockchains are what is commonly known as 51% attacks. These attacks show that even blockchains are vulnerable to ...