The purpose of the Blockchain is to allow digital information to be recorded and distributed, but not to be edited. Blockchain technology was first proposed in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, two researchers who wanted to implement a system where document timestamps could not be changed, but the first real-world implementation of Blockchain was with the launch of Bitcoin in January 2009. The Bitcoin protocol is built on a blockchain. Satoshi Nakamoto, (the creator of Bitcoin's fake name), referred to digital curreny as "a completely peer-to-peer, non-trusted third-party electronic cash system." in a research article introducing the digital currency The most important thing to understand here is that the Blockchain is only used as a tool to transparently save a payment book in the case of Bitcoin, but blockchain can in theory be used to literally record any number of data points, including votes in an election, product inventories, state descriptions, house deeds and much more. There are currently a wide variety of blockchain-based projects looking to implement blockchain in ways that will help the community as opposed to simply recording transactions. A good example of this is the use of blockchain as a way to vote in democratic elections. The nature of the blockchain immutability means that fraudulent voting will be much more difficult to happen. For example, a voting system might work so that each citizen of a country is given a single cryptocurrency or coin. Next, each candidate is given a specific wallet address and voters send their tokens (or crypto) to the address of the candidate they want to vote for. The transparent and traceable nature of the blockchain will eliminate the need to count votes and the ability of bad actors to change physical ballots.