When and why use blockchain in an IT project

Blockchain is one of the most disruptive emerging technology. Understanding how it works and its real added value in an IT project, it’s not an easy task especially for CEOs and CIOs. This problem underlines the importance to better clarify the intrinsic characteristics of the blockchain technology and its properties.

Let’s start by describing the origin of blockchain: Bitcon. At the beginning, the idea was to create a digital currency, or cryptocurrency, without the (in)famous “single point of failure” problem that can be found on Napster or BitTorrent. Moreover, blockchain introduced other properties that are crucial in order to build a functional cryptocurrency:

• Permissionless: There is no centralized governance on the nodes of the network. Indeed, each entity can build its own node and put it in the network.
• Trustless: In the blockchain network there is no trust, at all. An example can be seen with Bitcoin. Indeed, each user can send and/or receive a “digital value” without any broker in the middle.
• Censorship resistant: All the transaction in the blockchain cannot be censored because everything appends inside the blockchain network without any broker in the middle.

Those are the main properties that blockchain can put in an IT project. So, the main question is: does your IT project need those functions? The answer to this question will give you the added value of the blockchain.