Here's how I see things. Blockchains are distributed databases (e.g. MongoDB) with three new characteristics: decentralized (no single entity owns or controls), immutable (tamper-resistant), and assets (you own the asset if you have the private key).
Each new characteristic of blockchain tech leads to business benefits. "Decentralized" helps organizations share resources; e.g. music labels sharing a database of who-wrote-what. "Immutable" gives better audit trails; e.g. to see history of ownership of art. "Assets" can now live on the data store itself, which enables decentralized exchanges and more.
Details: https://blog.bigchaindb.com/three-blockchain-benefits-ae3a2a...
Let's use this as a basis to answer the question...
You can use blockchain tech in your existing centralized stacks. E.g. it would run side-by-side with your instances of Postgres, MongoDB, etc. Typically the blockchain would incorporated as a database-as-a-service. This would make the stack partly-decentralized.
Or you can go for a fully-decentralized stack. You'd have decentralized file systems (e.g. IPFS), decentralized processing aka "smart contracts" (e.g. Ethereum), and decentralized database (e.g. BigchainDB).
I suppose if a blockchain were secured - that is the nodes were all trusted and there was no way for a third party to interject into the blockchain - it could be very useful for solving conflict of interest problems. I believe it is being used for situations similar to "letters of credit" already, and that's a good application scenario.
I haven't been involved with any non-bitcoin blockchain implementations, so I'm not familiar with the specific issues companies face. But I know both Microsoft and IBM have blockchains-as-a-service and I imagine somebody is working on it. I'd love to hear of their experience.
Microsoft has a blog related to their blockchain-as-a-service at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/topics/blockchain/
Both IBM and Microsoft talk about Hyperledger, which appears to be where the service side of the technology is converging. https://www.hyperledger.org/
I'm sure somebody who is actually familiar with these things will come along shortly and explain them to us. Or I hope so.
Watch it; it will change your perspective and understanding.
I mean, back in the days we had the Church and the Nobility which had all the wealth. Now we have what? The Stars and the Businesses?
Sure, all in all more "normal" people got a bigger piece of the pie, but it's still a bad system. Also, many old wealthy families still own their money, look at the nobility of countries like UK. Millions of pounds in the hands of people who did basically nothing for it.
Now what will blockchains change? People who got the know how and money to make it work their way will be the winners and this means basically a big bunch of people who are the winners right now.
Yeah, way to stick it to the man! Those pesky bankers now get it...
But we only swap them out for some companies who put in the know how and money to control the whole thing.
The problem isn't that bankers are bad or monarchs or businesses, the problem is that concentrated power is bad and today this means concentrated wealth.
Blockchain applications can differ from Bitcoin. I think you are aiming your comment more at Bitcoin--or rather not even that but decentralized currencies in general. In that case, a possible change hoped for by many is the removal of central places of trust that can fail. For example, Satoshi Nakamoto used the text, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" for the Genesis Block—it was because of a concern for placing trust in something central like the banks.
Bitcoin does not rely on new breakthroughs in any science. The thing that's revolutionary about it is the idea of a people's currency, not the technologies used. The technologies that make that possible are all quite old.
Bitcoin's "blockchain" is not even the most efficient way to solve a given problem. It is intentionally inefficient by a variable factor (difficulty) to provide economic stability.
After Bitcoin's rise, a lot of people in banking wanted to believe that there is some magic element of Bitcoin that makes it technologically better than what they offer, because that would mean they could use that technology to create their own Bitcoin. But there isn't. People use it precisely because it allows them to store and exchange wealth outside of banks and nation states. The tech is irrelevant.
> Electronic cash for online payments is possible without financial institutions.
Above is taken from a post where I summarize and/or paraphrase the original bitcoin white paper. Goal was to answer question posted by OP: communicate the features (of bitcoin) and blockchains with clear language anyone could understand.
HT to Ben Graham, it's "Bitcoin White Paper for Intelligent Investors" and is here:
https://github.com/DeBraid/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/btc-for...
Step 2.) ??????
Step 3.) Profit!!!
It has quickstart that takes about 20 min to do. By the time you're done, you'll have issued assets, transferred them, and more. https://docs.bigchaindb.com/projects/server/en/latest/quicks...
Live support is at gitter. https://gitter.im/bigchaindb/bigchaindb
(Note: I'm CTO of BigchainDB.)
I think the distributed ledger will take over (R3, Hyperledger, Ripple), noone is going to take mining based blockchains seriously in a few years.