The Rise of Blockchains: Disrupting Economies and Transforming Societies.

• Author: Bagis, Bilal

By Nir Kshetri

Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022, 216 pages, $120.00, ISBN: 9781802208160

Blockchain is a newly emerging technology that has already drastically changed many aspects of our life and the way businesses and national economies function. It could be used in smart contracts in the shipping industry, in digitalizing the supply chains, payments, and in financing trade amongst others. Blockchain most basically helps deal with the trust issue and decreases the cost of verification procedures. It increases efficiency in business processes and supply chains, helps with the digitalization processes and smart contracts, and also helps overcome reputational or trust-wise issues. This new mechanism of proving trustworthiness is particularly important for SMEs and individuals that don't yet have a built-up reputation.

Blockchain helps create new networks, organizations, and models; functions as an intermediary instrument or authority of verification and replaces the conventional trust instrument in any formal business relationship. Blockchain could even be an alternative tool or mean of governance, legal identity, and could potentially replace public verification or approval mechanisms. Its decentralized nature, however, most basically means the validation process is not through a central authority, but rather via a consensus algorithm in a distributed network.

It is, meanwhile, a database or digital ledger created by a network of devices. They are secure by design and because there is no central data storage, hacking would not be able to delete all data or information regarding the transactions. It is thus a secure and decentralized network that verifies transactions. The network keeps digital records of transactions on multiple devices simultaneously.

As a new distributed ledger technology, blockchain is transforming economies, politics, and even whole societies. Blockchain technology and the ecosystem around it, including the much-related internet of things, artificial intelligence, NFTs, metaverse, Web 3.0, and cryptocurrencies are all altering the payment, supply chain, and even the cybersecurity and privacy systems. Although it came along with the cryptocurrency revolution, NFTs and metaverse are probably the most trendy applications of blockchain technology. Metaverse is expected to further propagate the NFT market.

Kshetri's The Rise of Blockchains is a timely, to-the-point, and detailed book on a relatively new and still...