A Peer to Peer Money Transfer Using SHA256 and Merkle Tree

Abstract

A blockchain maintains a permanent record of all the transactions that happen in a bitcoin network. It is an append-only ledger which is distributed to every node in the network. We have made use of blockchain technology for recording the transactions of peers without any supervision of a central authority. A cryptographic protocol using the Merkle tree and SHA-256 hashing technique is described which makes it possible to confirm the transactions are integrity protected and to archive the transactional history using Merkle tree in an append only ledger. Paper also discusses miners, who contribute to proof of work and validation of transactions in the peer to peer network.