The blocks once recorded are designed to be resistant to modification; the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. Through the use of a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server, a public blockchain database is managed autonomously. Blockchains are an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way as depicted. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.
Blockchains are secure by design and an example of a distributed computing system with high byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus can therefore be achieved with a public blockchain. As we shall discuss in detail later, these features make blockchains ideal for recording events, medical records and other records management activities, identity management, transaction processing, and a host of emerging applications. Moreover, blockchain technologies allow us to achieve large-scale and systematic cooperation in an entirely distributed and decentralized manner.
This can be considered and implemented as a global governance tool, capable of managing social interactions on a large scale and dismissing traditional central authorities. For example, in 2015, libertarian political activist Vit Jedlička declared Gornja Siga—a seven-square-kilometer patch of uninhabited forest between Croatia and Serbia—to be the “Free Republic of Liberland.” He used the Bitcoin blockchain as a provisional government and released a constitutional document setting out how this new country would be governed: voluntary taxation, an almost nonexistent government, and zero restrictions whatsoever on speech and information.