IET EngX

30 Apr 2026

4 minute read time.

Blog Post by Central London Network volunteer Phil Snuggs

Blockchain is a modern technology and still in its infancy

The November Central London Network Evening Lecture at Savoy Place was a deep dive into Blockchain by , founder &CEO of Appliedblockchain. This was Adi’s second time with us, the previous lecture being 6 years ago. Adi indicated that this is a subject that will grow rapidly as it is understood more by technical and entrepreneur users.

Initially I was sceptical by the subject and thought this topic would be more jargon busting technology with the onset of AI. The presentation by was engaging and interesting to the point you had to listen and take notice.

The fundamental change is that the US Government is driving Blockchain now and global governments are taking notice. Adi emphasised that to understand the fundamentals of Blockchain was key to moving forward.

Data privacy is fundamental to ensuring funds and manipulation of instructions are fully understood. Managing a single party versus a group management was discussed
Single party asset management by a financial institution is open to fraud and hackers.
Infrastructure design must be very secure and software code will be customised.
Group party management assets using blockchain technology creates a single ledger for buyer and for seller which is shared as an example.
A single node contains a wallet and is accessed by a private asset key only known to users. Node software is identical and is controlled by smart contract which is analogous to an App used on iOS and Android.

Banks spend billions on crypto and firewalls to keep single transaction models secure. Blockchain managed by group asset is efficient and secure method of keeping data private. Records are kept secure in wallets connected via nodes which are protected by private single keys. Transfers are guaranteed and any changes to the ledgers must be identical to buyer and lender. Records are kept of all transactions so there is an audit trail.

Bitcoin and Ethereum is a token system favoured by the financial system houses. It was stated that ledgers can’t be compromised . This was to reference to the person handing over access to funds.

Blockchain Bitcoins were created for financial transactions because of:

Trust
Users wishing to have financial investment i.e. turn £1 into £2
Efficient, faster, and cheaper
Transactions are less manual

When transactions are agreed by buyer and seller, the protocol is buyer cannot retrieve funds and payment is only completed once the work is completed. Access to wallets use biometrics and are linked to passkeys. Blockchain is very efficient and can deal with complex transactions, and it is more favourable to businesses for financial transactions.

Data privacy using blockchain is important so other business do not have visibility of users’ transactions. Escrow Smart Contract is a secure way of exchanging transactions between wallets. The issue here businesses need commercial privacy, and how do you validate the wallets and have privacy?

Various systems and processes have been developed over the past 5-10 years:

ZKP - Zero Knowledge Proof the user can only view transactions and investigate the ledger.
Private networks-non shared system, which is not efficient, it is like having a car but with no wheels as an analogy.
Advances in Cryptography to protect who can view the data by collaboration. Use of Quantum PC for increased privacy around data. Prover has sample data and Verifier will review the sample data to establish the authenticity without seeing all the transactions.
ZCASH - Zee Cash is old and uses ZKP to prove integrity of wallet without knowing balances and full knowledge of the ledger.
Layer 2’s - public ledger automatically copies to layer 1 for recovery of data in case of compromise. Use of ZKF process of Prover to Verifier for validation of data.
TEE - Trusted Execution Environment this is secure chip as used in your Apple phone for financial transactions. This is very secure using biometrics to access encrypted data. Due to security incident of listening to codes on chip to access codes.

Silent Data combined with Layer 1&2 data privacy is a secure method for data privacy. Blockchain uses Silent Data, see slide 38 in the linked presentation for more detail.

Feel free to share your experience with blockchain and opinions on the future of using the technology in the comments Section below and please follow the Central London Network on X (Twitter) and Facebook.

Watch the Lecture on IET TV here:

https://tv.theiet.org/?videoid=18413

Presentation Slides Here:

PDF