History
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The first successful proof-of-work system was bitcoin in 2009; that had no pre-existing blocks, at first, and became the first digital currency with a de facto standard unit of account, the bitcoin.
The first successful proof-of-stake system is Peercoin in 2011.
Any blockchain that is based on a proof-of-work consensus can be replaced by one based on a proof-of-stake consensus. Staking is an optional extra which every blockchain can optionally choose to include.
Blockchain is a buzzword currently used by businesses aiming to involve the technology in their products. There is no standard or officially recognized definition of the term "blockchain".
On June 3, 2015, Ron Resnick, the former senior vice president of technology and strategy of the energy giant BP, claimed that: “The idea behind Bitcoin as a concept is not a bad one, but the idea behind the blockchain is potentially transformational. […] I think the thing that is so interesting about the blockchain is that it creates a new, how do I say, protocol of money. It creates a digital, a new protocol of money. It's very interesting. You have to look to that.”
Usage
Bitcoin was the first example of a blockchain that could be used as a currency, and in some sense continues to be the world's first. A blockchain that holds the records of all of the currency in circulation is known as a ledger. The digital ledger technology is a way to facilitate and verify transactions online. The blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography, creating transparency, immutability, and security. The blockchain acts as a public ledger, maintaining a record of all transactions in a decentralized manner. A digital ledger contains a list of transactions that has been verified and chronologically ordered into blocks by a consensus of independently operating nodes. Each block in a blockchain has a cryptographic hash of previous blocks, allowing each block to be verified quickly. By design, a blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. A blockchain is a distributed computing network, allowing a consensus to be reached without a single point of failure, like the global Internet's domain name system. The technology effectively makes the transaction anonymous, as the blocks cannot be linked to a physical address. Since the blockchain is effectively decentralized, a consensus of nodes is more robust than a centralized database where one administrator may corrupt the data.