Blockchains allow businesses and individuals to quickly carry out secure, accurate transactions while removing intermediaries. By cutting out middlemen, distributing control, and providing a tamper-proof ledger, blockchains present a more cost-efficient, accessible, and reliable transaction platform than centralized ledger systems.
Accessibility
Public blockchains issue no restrictions on transactions or participation. No one can be denied access to the platform and no transaction is treated with priority over another.
Removing intermediaries
Centralized ledgers or databases are typically encumbered by the costs and inefficiencies of the middlemen they rely on. Blockchains remove with these limitations by avoiding intermediaries altogether. Without a middleman, there is no need to pay a middleman. Without the need for slow bureaucracy, you can also exchange assets directly and immediately. You do not have to limit the speed of your transaction to the work-rate of expensive bankers, lawyers, or politicians.
Automation
Smart contracts powered by blockchain technology have the power to automate many traditionally manual processes thereby increasing efficiency. When one party to an agreement satisfies the requirements of said agreement, the smart contract will automatically trigger to satisfy the requirements of the other party. Think of a payment to a supplier being automatically triggered once goods are received.
Trustlessness
You no longer have to trust other individuals with the ledger and your assets. Blockchains are trustless systems which means that no user needs to have faith in the reliability and truthfulness of any other user to guarantee the validity of a transaction.
Tamper-proof
Blockchains are inherently resistant to tampering. A bad seed could compromise a central system by altering the single ledger; however, they would need to alter at least a majority (usually 51%) of ledgers to tamper with a decentralized blockchain system.
Immutability
Blockchains are immutable if they do not provide any user with the ability to alter or delete historical records. Some blockchains, however, opt for controlled mutability which allows records to be changed, but places heavy restrictions upon that option.
The aforementioned benefits of blockchain are the key benefits of the technology, but there are others. Blockchains are constant and global meaning anyone, anywhere, anytime can access the data on the chain or transact with it. They are also fast, inexpensive, and secure when compared to their centralized counterparts. All of these benefits have contributed the increasing popularity of blockchain and to an ever-expanding list of blockchain use cases.
