This book has served to first highlight some of the recent
innovations in the space of blockchain technologies. It has
outlined some important aspects of blockchain architectures
and their commonality and distinguishing features from
different types of database structures. It has then described a
number of features that are vital from a financial application
perspective, including permissioning, data integrity, data
security and data authenticity as well as important regulatory
requirements relating to account provisioning for financial asset
reporting, and the blockchain aspects that can help adhere to
these. Then several innovative new areas of development for
second generation blockchain technologies are detailed,
including central bank treasury ledgers, retail and investment
bank ledgers, trading, and settlement and clearing processes,
finishing with a discussion on multi-signature Escrow services.