The Internet became publicly available in 1993.

Since then, it has grown to become a part of our

lives. Between 2008 and 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to the basics of
Blockchain. Although initially, as with all new concepts and technologies, blockchain and
cryptocurrencies remained elusive to many, they are today gaining acceptance and getting
applied widely. Just like the Internet, blockchains and cryptocurrencies shall soon become an
integral part of our daily lives!
We now have platforms for creating public, private or hybrid blockchains. Many programmers are
also developing their own blockchain applications using standard programming languages. Use
cases for blockchain are also growing rapidly, particularly in areas that are prone to fraud and
where intermediaries or middlemen need to be done away with. Consequently, blockchain
technologies are being applied in the banking industry, Stock Exchange, Land registries, Social
Media, Health Services, Contracting and in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations.
Key attributes that are making blockchains gain rapid adoptions are the fact that they keep
records which are permanent (since modifying a record in a block within a given node leads to
the invalidation of the block by the other nodes in the Blockchain), the need for consensus by all
nodes when a new block (a set of records, determined by the predefined size of a block within a
given blockchain) is being created, which creates trust within the blockchain and the fact that it is
possible to trace the history of a given asset whose records are maintained in the blockchain.
Although to achieve these characteristics requires the decentralization of the data repository (the
chain of blocks in which records are stored), which in turn slows down the turnaround time to
complete a transaction, the trust element currently outweighs the trade-off of transaction speed.
As the technologies used in blockchain continue to evolve, the consensus building turnaround
time should reduce to speeds that might make cryptocurrencies to be used at points-of-sale with
ease.
In spite of the little grey shade still lingering on the blockchain technology, it is poised to be the
next dominant technology on the Internet that shall drive e-commerce, e-business, content
generation and payment for the same, identity security on the Internet, et al. Notably, blockchain
is bound to eat into the services rendered at virtually all brick-and-mortar establishments. The
safe side to be on for any such establishments is to begin adopting the technology and gain a
share of the market that shall be lost by the brick-and-mortar establishments to the
blockchain's digital alternative.