“I don’t even know what blockchain is,” someone recently told Techtonics. So to demystify the latest buzzword in technology, blockchain is a secure, distributed digital ledger shared among all participants. For example, parties to a transaction agree to make blockchain the official source of record, say for a land deed. So they encode the deed on a digital “block.” Once it’s there, any updates can be entered by adding new blocks to the “chain.” The record cannot be altered.

Blockchain powers digital currency Bitcoin, but the two should not be confused. And it’s creating quite a stir in the health and financial sectors, to name just a couple of its potential applications. But a lot of people know little about blockchain or how it works. Hopefully, this infographic will shed some light on this promising technology.

(T. Benson for VOA/Techtonics)