International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET)
e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 04 Issue: 07 | July -2017
p-ISSN: 2395-0072
www.irjet.net
Blockchain and its Scope in Retail Arijit Chakrabarti1, Ashesh Kumar Chaudhuri2 1,2 Consultant,
IBM India Pvt. Ltd., Kolkata, West Bengal, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract - Blockchain is an emerging technology for
of existing transactions on blockchain to avoid tampering and any revision. The entire network reaches a point of consensus before a transaction is included into the immutable data storage. The next writer of new records on the immutable data storage is decided through different mechanisms like Proof-of-work or Proof-of-stake.
decentralized and transactional data sharing across a large network of untrusted participants. It enables new forms of distributed software architectures. Although the technology was mainly adopted in digital currency in initial days, but it is a promising technology for other areas too. This paper provides an introduction to blockchain technology in a simplified manner. It also discusses about how blockchain technology can be used in some business processes in the retail sector to benefit the customers and the retailers to a great extent. The paper highlights the market trend in blockchain adoption and some of the challenges as well.
Blockchain technology itself is non-controversial and has worked flawlessly over the years and is being successfully applied to both financial and non-financial applications. The design of a blockchain-based system is yet to be systematically explored, and there is little understanding about the impact of introducing blockchain into a software architecture.
Key Words: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Hash, Loyalty, Retail
Bitcoin is the most popular example that is based on blockchain technology. It is also the most controversial one since it helped enable a multibillion-dollar global market of anonymous transactions without any governmental control. A lot of scope is there to explore its use in various domains including retail. This paper aims at touching upon some of the areas in retail domain where blockchain technology can be utilized to benefit the customers and the retailers.
1. INTRODUCTION The world came to know about the Blockchain nine years back when Satoshi Nakamoto conceptualized it in 2008; but it got implemented a year later, through Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency and digital payment system. The concept was later generalized to distributed ledger that leverages the blockchain to verify and store transactions without cryptocurrency [1]. The term blockchain is extensively used these days to represent a new disruptive technology poised to be the next big thing across industries from healthcare to finance to retail. According to Gartner, their client inquiries on blockchain and related topics have quadrupled since August 2015.
The paper is organized into few sections. Section 2 explains the technology behind Blockchain, whereas Blockchain’s existing market is highlighted in Section 3. Section 4 explores its application in retail sector and Section 5 indicates some of the challenges. The paper is concluded in Section 6 finally.
2. BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
Blockchain is a distributed database of records or public ledger of digital events or transactions that got executed and have been shared among participating parties across a large network of untrusted participants. It stores data in blocks that can verify information and are very difficult to hack [2]. It eliminates the requirement of a third-party verification and thus disrupts any sector that leverages it traditionally. Blockchain can replace a third party whenever the third party is involved in producing a transaction. Each transaction in the public ledger is supposed to be verified by consensus of the majority of participants in the system and once entered, information will never be erased as it is immutable.
A blockchain is a public ledger consisting of ordered and timestamped records of transactions arranged in data blocks which will use cryptographic validation to link themselves together. Blockchain is a way of recording data and transactions digitally. Each record is a block linked chronologically together into a chain. A block of one or more new transactions is collected into the transaction data part of a block. Copies of each transaction are hashed, and the hashes are then paired, hashed, paired again, and hashed again until a single hash remains there, the Merkle root of a Merkle tree which is stored in the block header [3]. It chains the blocks together and ensures that a transaction is modified without modifying the block that records it and other following blocks. The transactions are also chained together similarly.
Blockchain data structure is a timestamped list of blocks, which records and aggregates data on transactions that might have ever occurred within the blockchain network. So blockchain provides an immutable data storage that only allows insertion of transactions and no updating or deletion
Š 2017, IRJET
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