Abstract - Blockchain promises greater speed, security, accuracy, and transparency for every electronic transactional or record-keeping process. Proponents say Blockchain will make processing payments, trading stocks, managing health-care records and birth certificates, processing property titles, monitoring digital supply chains, and coordinating the growing Internet of Things (IoT) faster, easier, and cheaper. Notwithstanding this growing litany of theoretical benefits and proposed use cases, Blockchain’s real potential of attaining wide-spread adoption is unclear. Commentators are characterizing the next two years as an early adopter phase that will prepare industry, government, and society for the real Blockchain revolution yet to begin. The goal of this research paper is to present evidence of early adopter activity indicating that Blockchain is on track to fulfill its potential to adapt to, and transform our society. The research includes historical background, a survey of current literature on early adopter activities, and a brief evaluation of various implementations of Blockchain, including a discussion of their current application. Index Terms—Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger, Quorum, Cryptography, Data Security I. INTRODUCTION LOCKCHAIN is a distributed ledger software technology that constitutes the underlying platform of Bitcoin. It is used to establish a peer-to-peer (P2P) public ledger maintained over a network of computers, and can provide an alternative to the centralized governance characteristic of traditional currencies. Its basic principles are: 1. Distributed Database 2. Peer-to-Peer Transmission 3. Transparency with Pseudonymity 4. Immutability of Records 5. Computational Logic Transactions are clustered into chronologically chained blocks of data using a hashing algorithm that theoretically makes the record immutable. The Blockchain is replicated to each participating node on the network, and administration of the software is orchestrated by consensus of the participating nodes, where the self-validating process replaces the trusted intermediary roles of banks, title companies, and other market middlemen. The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey and tutorial on Blockchain technology, to review the potential uses, vulnerabilities, and barriers, and to present case studies of current Blockchain applications. Developing the project included the creation and live demonstration of a standard Blockchain implementation [1]. A. History of Blockchain The conceptual principles of Blockchain were introduced by Haber and Stornetta in 1991. Their proposal was to digitally time stamp intellectual property documents in chronological order to authenticate authorship, providing ownership protection for the author. The stamp would be in the form of a hash code, and each hash would be dependent on the ones preceding it in the chain. Thus, a block’s data could not be altered without altering all the other blocks chained to the one in question. As a further precaution, they advocated publishing the sequence of records in a public forum so data could be reviewed and verified by any interested third party, essentially crowd-sourcing the verification function. The term “Blockchain” originated in reference to a “chain of blocks” as described by Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym) in 2008; it was conceived as a method for validating ownership of virtual currency in a publicly distributed ledger. Nakamoto’s purpose in proposing a peer-to-peer electronic cash system was to make powerful, centralized third parties obsolete by disintermediating financial transactions. In 2009, the first application of Blockchain technology appeared in the source code for the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Since then, Blockchain has expanded its functionality and now supports an array of different transactions. After seven years of successful use with Bitcoin, Blockchain technology is now being considered as an alternative to centralized accounting ledgers and other identity- and ownership-based record keeping systems. Note that the term “Blockchain” often refers to the implementation of the distributed ledger technology supporting Bitcoin; however, “Blockchain” or “Blockchain technology” may also be used in general reference to distributed ledger technology or to the data structure itself, depending on the context. Occasionally the acronym DLT is used independently to refer to Distributed Ledger Technology [2]. B. Characteristics and Benefits Blockchain is a decentralized ledger on a peer-to-peer network which allows transactions to be processed without recourse to Blockchain Security and Demonstration Yao Yao, Jack Rasmus-Vorrath, Ivelin Angelov B