This publication is intended to provide a high-level technical overview of blockchain technology. It discusses its application for electronic currency as well as broader uses. The document looks at different categories and approaches for different blockchain platforms.
This document is intended to help readers to understand the technologies which comprise blockchain systems and to understand how blockchains can be appropriately and usefully applied to technology problems.
Section 1 provides an introduction to the topic of blockchain technology.
Section 2 defines the high-level components of a blockchain system architecture, including hashes, transactions, ledgers, blocks, and blockchains.
Section 3 discusses how a blockchain is expanded through the addition of new blocks representing sets of transactions.
Section 4 examines the need for consensus models to resolve conflicts among blockchain mining nodes.
Section 5 introduces the concept of forking.
Section 6 defines and discusses smart contracts.
Section 7 looks at blockchain permission models, discusses their application considerations, and provides use case examples for each model.
Section 8 provides several examples of blockchain platforms in use today to indicate the variations from one platform to another.
Section 9 highlights some of the limitations of blockchain technology.
Section 10 gives a short conclusion for the document.
Appendix A contains a glossary for selected terms defined in the document.
Appendix B provides a list of acronyms and abbreviations used in the document.
Appendix C defines the references used throughout the document.
Source: https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/draft#pubs-abstract-header