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This article summarizes a report published by AIEF on May 30,2019.
lockchain is often defined as ledgers with entries organized in an append-only, sequential chain using cryptographic links and distributed out and stored on a peer-to-peer computer network. Its an emerging recordkeeping technology producing new forms of records, and new modalities of recordkeeping, with which records and information professionals will need to engage. This new technology has been considered or implemented in practically every country in the world; blockchains ubiquity requires that records and information managers should be able to understand, operate, and support the design of such systems.
In a new AIEF report, Biockchain Technology and Recordkeeping, the authors aim to provide an overview of blockchain technology that helps information professionals know how to address the challenge of effectively managing records in these emerging recordkeeping environments. The chapters respond to, and are structured according to, an initial set of questions from the AIEFs call for proposals for a study on blockchain, records, and information management. The authors shared their current state of understanding with a view to help prepare records and information professionals for the future of recordkeeping in a blockchain world.
The first chapte provides an overview of blockchain technology, explains how blockchain operates as a "technology of trust," and introduces technical aspects in greater detail. The chapter presents the three interacting "trust layers" on which blockchain systems are designed: a social layer, a records layer, and a technical layer. The primary focus of the overview is on the records layer, but there is also an explanation of how records professionals can understand the other two layers and, to some extent, how the layers interact in the design and operation of blockchain systems. The technical sections cover aspects of how blockchain transactions are executed, present the blockchain technical features, provide an overview of the types of blockchains, and explain the blockchain technology stack.
Chapter 2, "The Creation and Storage of Blockchain Records" is about what records are generated by and stored in blockchain systems. The chapter highlights that records and their location in blockchain systems are complicated by four factors: 1) differences among various blockchain systems in terms of how they generate and store records, 2) the distributed and decentralized architecture of...