Blockchain timeline: 1990
Much of the groundwork for the blockchain was set in the early 1990s. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta met while working for US software company Bellcore, where they identified a problem: the world relied so heavily on records that weren’t authenticated by an independent party, diminishing trust in their efficacy – and the duo wanted to set about creating a solution.
Blockchain timeline: 1991
Within a year of presenting their idea, Haber and Stornetta had written the algorithm that would become recognised as the blockchain.
The term itself is derived from the way data, such as the record of a transaction and its unique hash, is packaged into blocks and linked together like a chain. The more blocks are added, the stronger the chain becomes.
Blockchain timeline: 1998
By the end of the 1990s, computer scientist Nick Szabo had attempted one of the very first applications of this new ‘decentralised’ system, proposing ‘bit gold’ – a forerunner to the very popular bitcoin. Bit gold was never implemented, and it would take another decade before anybody would build on Haber and Stornetta’s work to launch a decentralised currency.