Blockchain

Blockchain technology provides a way for a community of participants to maintain a shared, tamper-evident, and tamper-resistant digital ledger. It is the underlying technology for many cryptocurrency systems, but it can also be used in other types of applications.

A blockchain is the ledger itself. It contains transactional records that are grouped into blocks. Each block is cryptographically linked to the previous block, making the ledger tamper evident. If data in an earlier block is changed, the cryptographic link to that block changes, and the change can be detected in later blocks. As new blocks are added, older blocks become more difficult to modify, creating tamper resistance.

A blockchain network is the network in which a blockchain is used. Copies of the ledger are maintained across nodes in the network, and new blocks are added according to established validation and consensus rules. This distributed structure, together with cryptographic mechanisms, helps make the blockchain resilient to later attempts to alter the ledger.

NIST researchers have been investigating blockchain technologies at multiple levels, from use cases, applications, and existing services to protocols, security guarantees, and cryptographic mechanisms. Research outcomes include scientific papers, software for experimentation, and technical guidance for other NIST work in this area. Blockchain technology has the potential to be implemented in many different systems, including manufacturing supply chains, data registries, digital identification, and records management.

Credit: NIST

NIST Projects

NISTIR 8202 – Blockchain Technology Overview 
Point of Contact: dylan.yaga [at] nist.gov (Dylan Yaga)
Summary: A high-level technical document explaining the technology involved in blockchain systems, as well as how the systems work.

Blockchain for Industrial Applications Community of Interest
Point of Contact:  blockchainCOI [at] nist.gov (blockchainCOI[at]nist[dot]gov)
Summary: The BIA COI – with members from government, industry, and academia – is providing guidelines to create a (better) synergy between end users, research community, and solution providers to reduce complexity, cost, and delay of adoption of blockchain technologies.

Enhanced Distributed Ledger Technology 
Point of Contact: d.kuhn [at] nist.gov (D. Richard Kuhn) 
Summary: The Enhanced Distributed Ledger Technology project examines the traditional blockchain data structure and seeks to create a new data structure (the block matrix) to provide high reliability, and security while also enabling deletion or updating capabilities not currently found in most blockchain systems.

NIST Cybersecurity White Paper - A Taxonomic Approach to Understanding Emerging Blockchain Identity Management Systems 
Points of Contacts: blockchain-idms-paper [at] nist.gov (blockchain-idms-paper[at]nist[dot]gov)
Summary: A high-level technical document breaking down the key components, emerging standards, and system architectures that support blockchain-based identity management systems.

NISTIR 8301 – Blockchain Networks: Token Design and Management Overview
Points of Contacts: blockchain-token-paper [at] nist.gov (blockchain-token-paper[at]nist[dot]gov)
Summary: An overview of token data models and important building blocks for account, transaction, and infrastructure management in an effort to lower the barriers to study, prototype, and integrate token-related standards and protocols