A Gentle Introduction to Interbank Payment Systems
How do banks pay each other? In most countries, when banks want to transfer money to each other, perhaps upon instruction from a customer, they don’t put bundles of banknotes in vans, they pay...
Category: introductions
A gentle introduction to money
This post aims to explain the various common forms of money that exist today, and the words we use to describe them.
A gentle introduction to self-sovereign identity
In May 2017, the Indian Centre for Internet and Society think tank published a report detailing the ways in which India’s national identity database (Aadhaar) is leaking potentially compromising personal information. The information relates...
A gentle introduction to Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)
Some technology startup companies are raising money in a new way, by issuing digital tokens in return for funds. This is often colloquially called “doing an ICO”, and this article aims to explain how...
A gentle introduction to The Hyperledger Project
When people ask, “What is Hyperledger?”, the answer I give is usually “Do you mean the project called Hyperledger run by The Linux Foundation, or do you mean one of the ledger technologies incubated by that project which used to be confusingly called Hyperledger Fabric?”. The first is a group of people, the second other is a bunch of code.
A gentle introduction to Ethereum
Ethereum is software running on a network of computers that ensures that data and small computer programs called smart contracts are replicated and processed on all the computers on the network, without a central coordinator. The vision is to create an unstoppable censorship-resistant self-sustaining decentralised world computer.
On loyalty point schemes and blockchains
This post attempts to describe how I understand the purpose of loyalty points, and in this context, how applicable blockchains are as a technical solution.
A gentle introduction to immutability of blockchains
In the context of data security, the immutability of data stored on blockchains is important. What do people mean when they say “Blockchains are immutable”? In this post I try to explain the key concepts. It...
A gentle introduction to smart contracts
Smart contracts can be thought of as “automated trustworthy workflow between parties without a central specific co-ordinator.”. Here’s how I think about them.
A gentle introduction to digital tokens
We explore digital tokens in relation to cryptocurrencies and blockchains, differentiating between blockchain-native tokens like BTC and asset-backed tokens like IOUs on Ripple.
