Blockchain systems are part of a trend that is moving the internet-of-information era into an internet-of-value era, where assets — and asset ownership — can be transferred instantly and with absolute confidence.

Whether you’re a recent hire at an IT department help desk or the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, you need to know and understand just what blockchain is and how it could change how every business transaction in your organization is recorded, tracked and stored.

This list of terms, written by Mark W. Kaelin for TechRepublic Premium, defines some of the basic vocabulary associated with this technology.

• Featured definition from the download:

  Byzantine fault tolerance

  Each version of the distributed database in the peer-to-peer network must agree on the current state of the database, so a blockchain is considered to be fault-tolerant and secure. One node can’t arbitrarily change the content of a block on its own.

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TIME SAVED: Crafting this content required 14 hours of dedicated writing, editing, research, and design.