The global blockchain technology is gaining momentum as organization around the globe found the unlimited potential of the technology. It is believed to be one to the hottest sector in coming years. Many research analysts predict the global blockchain technology market to grow at a significant rate with market size to reach multi-billion dollars in the next five years. A report from RBC Capital Markets called "Crypto Currency & Blockchain Technology: A Decentralized Future" examines trends in the Canadian crypto space and predictions for how the market will grow. The report predicts "A Potential Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity". A global blockchain report from WinterGreen Research is forecasting the market size to reach $60.7 billion in 2024.

Blockchain is a digital, decentralized ledger that keeps a record of all transactions that occur on a peer-to-peer network. The blockchain enables visibility of all activities and reveals where an asset is and who owns it at any point in time. Transactions are not anonymous, but they are pseudonymous in that a transaction record is created, but identifying information is encrypted, and no personal information is shared.

For a transaction to be completed, it must go through the following process. First, a participant in the blockchain requests a transaction of goods or information. Before it can be accepted, it must first be verified by a group of miners. The mining network is made up of a large group of people who compete to solve a prescribed and complicated mathematical calculation using computers dedicated to the task. The first miner to find the solution to the mathematical calculation is the miner who has the privilege of announcing the next transaction, or block, to be added to the blockchain. Miners are incentivized to do this by receiving either cryptocurrency or another form of relevant payment. Once this verification takes place, the transaction can be accepted by the receiving party, and becomes permanently stored as a new block on the blockchain.

At a high level, blockchain allows a buyer and seller to interact directly, without the need for a trusted third-party intermediary to transfer the goods or information. The safety of this process can be compared to the transfer of information on a shared online document, where many people can see the document at the same time. If someone manipulates the document from its original form, it would be evident to all users since everyone has the same copy of the document. The idea of an open ledger can also be compared to a sporting event, where each spectator knows what the score is at any one time and no one would be able to change the score without convincing everyone present that there's a very good reason for doing so. A shared online document, a sporting event and blockchain all achieve a situation where there are multiple participants who have an agreed upon a historical record of events which cannot be tampered with.

The blockchain technology was initially constructed to support the trading of cryptocurrency, but is increasingly being used to support any transaction of goods or information that has required a centralized third party in the past. This can range from money or cryptocurrency to health records and supply chain records.

In a private or permissioned blockchain, participants must be invited or receive permission to participate and have visibility of all activities on that particular blockchain network. With permissioned blockchains, this may or may not involve the mining process described above, but instead can be verified simply by fact that others are witnessing the transfer of information. An example of this would be a network where the information is much more sensitive such as individual health records where only hospitals have access to the blockchain network as opposed to the general public.

The value of a blockchain is that it enables a shared database without a central administrator (disintermediation). Rather than having some centralized application, blockchain transactions can have their own proof of validity and authorization to enforce the constraints.

A blockchain is a technology to efficiently record transactions, with key advantages being disintermediation, decentralized, distributed, programmable, verifiable, divisible, immutable, and with faster and lower cost to data.

Numerous opportunities are emerging for blockchain-based applications world-wide, not only for the use in digital currencies, which are the early adopters of the space, but also in a wide variety of other non-financial, but data driven applications. Such industries include, but are not limited to:

Industry experts are predicting that almost every application in the future will eventually utilize a blockchain.