This session will provide its attendees with a good understanding of the ideas underpinning blockchain technologies and various applications for blockchain technology. Blockchain is now relevant for all software developers in the finance domain. Moving away from its roots as an enabling technology for drug dealing, Blockchain is now seen as the new technical solution to problems from price discovery to securities clearing, from property registers to KYC customer checking. Everywhere you look new possible applications are emerging, even if few have moved into serious use yet.

In this session, we will review the fundamental ideas underpinning blockchain technologies and consider what problems its architectural characteristics make it suitable for. We will get an idea of what it is like to work with blockchain technology by seeing the code for some simple “smart contracts” and how to work with blockchain languages, like Solidity. Attendees will gain an understanding of what a blockchain is and  what it is not, an awareness of the more mature blockchain implementations, and learn the architectural characteristics of blockchain technology. They’ll also learn some possible uses for Blockchain and gain some pointers on how to get started with the technology and work with smart contracts.