How the Blockchain Brings Social Benefits to Emerging Economies - Knowledge@Wharton

Developing countries such as India, Kenya and others in East Africa are discovering an increasing array of applications for blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that promises a secure, peer-to-peer mechanism for verifying information.   Blockchain is essentially a growing list of so-called “blocks” (a record of transactions in a decentralized ledger), which form a “chain” in a peer-to-peer network. Participants in the network verify or validate the blocks, eliminating the need for a trusted entity like a regulator or an accounting firm to authenticate the information in them. According to experts, the blockchain is secure and tamper-proof by design because transactions cannot be changed once the network has verified them.  http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/blockchain-brings-social-benefits-emerging-economies/