Blockchain and Trust

Strong movement within computing is the use of blockchains. Cryptocurrencies provide examples of the original type of blockchain, sometimes referred to as public, permissionless, or unpermissioned blockchains. Blockchains are sometimes seen as solving new technical problems, but where they generally bring value is actually in providing new technical approaches to solve societal or institutional problems. The addition of the permissioned blockchain allows trustors to form transitive trust relationships to the trustees through the medium of the blockchain system, which is backed by distributed trust relationships from the multiple members of the system. There are many consensus mechanisms and associated algorithms, and the choice of which mechanism is adopted for a particular blockchain system is one of the blockchain's key characteristics. The fact that trust is required actually turns out to be an explicit point in one aspect of most permissionless blockchains: software implementations.