Where was the cotton grown in the jeans you are wearing? Where was the chicken raised that you will use in that grilled chicken salad tonight? Answers to both questions can readily be had through the use of blockchain, as students quickly discovered at the first blockchain hackathon hosted by the <\/span>Sam M. Walton College of Business<\/span><\/a> at the University of Arkansas.<\/span><\/p>\n The event surpassed expectations, according to <\/span>Professor Zach Steelman<\/span><\/a> from the Department of Information Systems at the Walton College, who was instrumental in bringing this blockchain hackathon to campus. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe could not have hoped for a better outcome,” he said <\/span>in a statement<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n The event began on the evening of Oct. 27 (Friday) and concluded the following afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n Blockchain is the underlying technology behind bitcoin. Basically, it is a <\/span>distributed database<\/span><\/a> that grows with the record formed by each new transaction, which are called \u201cblocks.\u201d The series of blocks within the database form the \u201cchain.\u201d Hence, the name \u201cblockchain.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Each block contains a <\/span>t<\/span>imestamp<\/span><\/a> and a link to a previous block. Once recorded, the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. Through the use of a <\/span>peer-to-peer<\/span><\/a> networks and a distributed timestamping server, a blockchain database is managed autonomously.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is blockchain?<\/b><\/h2>\n