Page - 104 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

ensures that each participant (e.g. consultants and clients involved in the network) has equal rights and always a synchronised, validated andup-to-date versionof the blockchain.This alsomeans that decisions (e.g. on codeupdates)must bemadeby amajority. By storing the blocks in the distributed network, the verification of the transactions by numerous nodes as well as the cryptographic encryption and the complex consensus mechanisms, a high degree of integrity and manipulation security is generated in a blockchain (Hooper 2018). Thismakes it highly reliable and trustworthy (e.g. for verification to a third party, such as a health insurance company). Decentraliseddataprocessingwithmany replications also leads to ahighdegree of reliability (Burgwinkel 2016). This redundancy is thus effective protection against attacks and data loss. Furthermore, the interlinking of the individual data blockswith thehelpof transparent hashing in thedistributednetwork ensuresgood traceability of the permanently traceable transaction history (e.g. in the form of a medical history; ConsultancyUK2017). The blockchain also enables transactions to be processed faster andmore efficiently than previousmethods. This can lead to an increase in quality at lower costs compared to other IT systems.The technology also ensures disintermediation, i.e. the streamlining of value chains, which can prevent dominant market positions (Song et al. 2016). Particularly, (fee-based) intermediary players are affected,which could be eliminated byusing ablockchain (Düring and Fisbeck 2017).3 However, the advantages are also countered by several disadvantages (Cap 2019; Kossow 2019). Currently, the scaling of blockchains is problematic: since each node of the network has to store all data, large amounts of data of several terabytes can accumulate in a short time, especially with numerous transactions Fig. 1 Illustration of the blockgeneration of a blockchain. SourceOwn illustration according to Burgwinkel (2016) 3For a direct transfer, for example, banks would no longer be necessary or notaries for the confirmation of contracts. In this way, corruption can be prevented, whichmakes the blockchain not only technologically economical but also socially relevant. 108 S. Gerth and L. Heim