Here we can see, “how many blockchains are there”
What Is Blockchain?
At its core, Blockchain may be a distributed digital ledger that stores data of any kind. A blockchain can record information about cryptocurrency transactions, NFT ownership, or Defi intelligent contracts.
While any conventional database can store this type of data, Blockchain is exclusive therein; it’s decentralized. Instead of being maintained in one location by a centralized administrator—think of an Excel spreadsheet or a bank database—many identical copies of a blockchain database are persisted multiple computers opened up across a network. These individual computers are mentioned as nodes.
Why Do We Need Different Types of Blockchain?
Before we do an actual discussion of blockchain types, let’s learn why we’d like them in the first place.
When blockchain technology was introduced to the planet, it had been a public blockchain type with cryptocurrency use-case. It’s tough to know the intent of its creator, but generally, it provided the concept of decentralized ledger technology (DLT).
The DLT concept changed how we solve things around us. It gave organizations the power to figure without counting on a centralized entity.
Distributed technology solves the drawbacks of centralization but brings tons of other unraveling problems when it involves applying blockchain technology to different scenarios.
For instance, bitcoin used an inefficient consensus algorithm, Proof-of-Work. It required the nodes to unravel mathematical calculations using energy.
Initially, it had been not a drag, but as soon because the difficulty increased, the time and energy required to unravel those mathematical equations also increased. This inefficiency makes it not suitable for any system that must stay efficient regardless of what.
For example, banks affect tons of transactions a day. So, this blockchain type is not suitable for it.
There were other problems related to the primary generation of Blockchain, including scalability, no automation, and so on. Anyhow, you’ll use the article as a sort of blockchain technology pdf when in need.
A Different Viewpoint on The Issue
Now, let’s take a unique outlook on the matter. Not everyone, including organizations, can use a public blockchain. This is often because they can’t make every aspect of their business public. They do have some critical data that creates their business success. If it gets public, then there’ll be competitors using it.
To solve the said use-cases, private or federated Blockchain came into existence. Private blockchains offer a private environment where the organization decides who participates in it. This enables them to require advantage of blockchain features without the necessity to form everything public.
To summarize, we have got subsequent –
- The first-generation Blockchain had multiple drawbacks, including efficiency and scalability.
- Also, it’s a public blockchain that doesn’t suit everyone’s schedule or needs.
These two reasons are often seen because of the cornerstone of advancement within the different types of blockchain technology.
Different Types of Blockchain Technology
Now that we’ve established an honest understanding of the necessity for blockchain technology types. It’s now time for us to find out about them.
At a look, there are four different significant sorts of blockchain technologies. They include the subsequent.
- Public
- Private
- Hybrid
- Federated
1.Public Blockchain
A public blockchain is one among the various sorts of blockchain technology. A public blockchain is that the permission-less distributed ledger technology where anyone can join and do transactions. It’s a non-restrictive version where each peer features a copy of the ledger. This also means anyone can access the general public Blockchain if they need an online connection.
One of the primary public blockchains that were released to the general public was the bitcoin public blockchain. It enabled anyone connected to the web to try to do transactions in a decentralized manner.
The verification of the transactions is completed through consensus methods like Proof-of-Work(PoW), Proof-of-Stake(PoS), etc. At the cores, the participating nodes require to try to dodo the heavy-lifting, including validating transactions to form the general public blockchain work. If a public blockchain doesn’t have the specified peers participating in solving transactions, it’ll become non-functional. Different types of blockchain platforms use these various sorts of Blockchain because of their project base. However, each platform introduces more features in its platform apart from the standard ones.
Examples of public blockchain: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, NEO
What Are the Advantages?
Public blockchains are good at what they are doing. Its advantages include the subsequent.
- Anyone can join the general public Blockchain.
- It brings trust among the entire community of users
- Everyone feels incentivized to figure towards the betterment of the general public network
- Public Blockchain requires no intermediaries to figure.
- Public blockchains also are secure, counting on the amount of participating nodes.
- It brings transparency to the entire network because the available data is out there for verification purposes.
What Are the Disadvantages?
Public Blockchain does suffer from disadvantages. They’re as follows:
They suffer from a scarcity of transaction speed. It can take a couple of minutes to hours before a transaction is completed. For example, bitcoin can only manage seven transactions per second compared to 24,000 transactions per second done by VISA. This is often because it takes time to unravel the mathematical problems than complete the transaction.
Another problem with public Blockchain is scalability. They cannot scale, thanks to how they work. The more nodes join, the clumsier and slow the network becomes. There are steps taken to unravel the matter . for instance, Bitcoin functions on lighting the network, which takes transactions off-chain to form the most bitcoin network faster and more scalable.
The last disadvantage of a public blockchain is that the consensus method choice. Bitcoin, for instance, uses Proof-of-Work (PoW), which consumes tons of energy. However, this has been partially solved by using more efficient algorithms like Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
What Are the Use Cases?
There are multiple use-cases of the general public Blockchain. To urge a far better idea, let’s list a number of them below.
- Voting: Governments can do voting through public Blockchain employing transparency and trust.
- Fundraising: Companies or initiatives can make use of the general public Blockchain for improving transparency and trust.
2.Private Blockchain
A private blockchain is one among the various sorts of blockchain technology. A personal blockchain is often best defined because the Blockchain works during a restrictive environment, i.e., a closed network. It’s also a permissioned blockchain that’s under the control of an entity.
Private blockchains are amazing for use at a privately-held company or organization that uses them for internal use-cases. By doing so, you’ll use the Blockchain effectively and permit only selected participants to access the blockchain network. The organization also can set different parameters to the network, including accessibility, authorization, then on!
So, how is it different from a public blockchain? It’s different in the way it’s accessed. Otherwise, it offers an equivalent set of features to the general public Blockchain, providing transparency, trust, and security to the chosen participants.
Another significant difference is that it’s pretty centralized as just one authority looks over the network. So, it doesn’t have a decentralized theoretical nature. There also are various sorts of blockchain platforms that use private Blockchain because of the base of their platform. More so, all of them tend to be unique and offer different features.
In many cases, a personal blockchain is taken into account permissioned Blockchain. But the concept of permissioned Blockchain is far broader because it can include public Blockchain also.
Examples of Private blockchain: Multichain, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Corda
What Are the Advantages?
Private blockchains are fast. This is often because there are few participants compared to the general public Blockchain. In short, it takes less time for the network to succeed in consensus leading to faster transactions.
Private blockchains are more scalable. The scalability is feasible because, during a private blockchain, only a couple of nodes are authorized to validate transactions. This suggests it doesn’t matter if the network grows; the private Blockchain will work on its previous speed and efficiency. The key here is that the centralization aspect of deciding.
What Are the Disadvantages?
Private blockchains aren’t genuinely decentralized. This is often one of the most important disadvantages of personal Blockchain and goes against the core philosophy of distributed ledger technology or Blockchain generally.
Achieving trust within the private Blockchain is challenging because the centralized nodes make the last call.
Lastly, as there are only a few nodes here, the safety isn’t all that good. It’s important to know that it’s possible to lose security if a particular number of nodes go rogue and compromise the consensus method utilized by the private network.
What Are the Use Cases?
There are multiple private Blockchain use-cases. A number of them are listed below.
- Supply chain management: Organizations can deploy a personal blockchain to manage their supply chain.
- Asset ownership: Assets are often tracked and verified employing a private blockchain.
- Internal Voting: Private Blockchain is additionally effective at internal voting.
3.Consortium Blockchain
A consortium blockchain is one among the various sorts of blockchain technology. A consortium blockchain (also called Federated blockchains) may be a creative approach to solving organizations’ needs where there’s a requirement for public and personal blockchain features. During a consortium blockchain, some aspects of the organizations are made public, while others remain private.
More so, albeit it’s not hospitable mass people, it still holds a decentralized nature. How? Well, a consortium blockchain is managed by quite one organization. The preset nodes control the consensus procedures during a consortium blockchain. So, there’s a single nobody force of centralized outcome here.
To ensure proper functionality, the consortium features a validator node that will do two functions: validate transactions and initiate or receive transactions. As compared, the member node can receive or initiate transactions.
In short, it offers all the features of a personal blockchain, including transparency, privacy, and efficiency, without one party having consolidated power.
Examples of Consortium Blockchain: Marco Polo, Energy Web Foundation, IBM Food Trust.
What Are the Advantages?
- It offers better customizability and control over resources.
- Consortium blockchains are safer and have better scalability.
- It is also more efficient compared to public blockchain networks.
- Works with well-defined governance structures.
- It offers access controls.
What Are the Disadvantages?
- Even though it’s secure, the entire network is often compromised thanks to the member’s integrity.
- It is less transparent.
- Regulations and censorship can have an enormous impact on network functionality.
- It is also less anonymous compared to other sorts of Blockchain.
What Are the Use Cases?
There are multiple use-cases of consortium blockchain. a number of them include the subsequent
- Banking and payments: a gaggle of banks can work together and make a consortium. They will decide the nodes which will validate transactions.
- Research: A consortium blockchain is often wont to share research data and results.
- Food tracking: it’s also great for food tracking.
4.Hybrid Blockchain
Hybrid Blockchain is one among the various sorts of blockchain technology. Hybrid Blockchain is the last sort of Blockchain that we are getting to discuss here. More so, hybrid Blockchain might sound sort of a consortium blockchain, but it’s not. However, there are often some similarities between them.
Hybrid Blockchain is best defined as a mixture of a personal and public blockchain. It’s use-cases in a corporation that neither wants to deploy a personal blockchain nor public Blockchain and quickly wants to deploy both worlds’ best.
Example of Hybrid Blockchain: Dragonchain, XinFin’s Hybrid blockchain
What Are the Advantages?
- Works during a closed ecosystem without the necessity to form everything public.
- Rules are often changed consistent with the requirements.
- Hybrid networks also are resistant to 51% of attacks.
- It offers privacy while still connected with a public network.
- It offers good scalability compared to the general public network.
What Are the Disadvantages?
- Not completely transparent.
- Upgrading to the hybrid Blockchain are often a challenge.
- There is no incentive for participating and contributing to the network.
What Are the Use Cases?
Some of the simplest use-cases of the Hybrid Blockchain are as follows:
- Real estate: you’ll use hybrid networks for real-estate purposes where real-estate companies can use it to run their systems and use the general public to point out information to the general public.
- Retail: Retail also can use the hybrid network to streamline their processes.
- Highly regulated markets: Hybrid blockchains also are ideal for highly regulated markets like financial markets.
Which Blockchain Type Should You Choose?
Each Blockchain has something unique to supply. That’s why there’s not an easy answer to what sort of Blockchain you ought to choose.
However, to form sure that you make the proper choice, let’s undergo all of them and understand what they need to supply.
Public Blockchain Network
As you already know, anyone can join public blockchains, and therefore the information is out there to everyone. This makes them ideal for organizations that thrive on trust and transparency. This suggests that NGOs or social support groups can make the foremost out of the public-based Blockchain.
Its public nature also means it can’t be used for businesses within the private sector. The rationale behind it’s that they have to keep their data private. Also, public blockchains are often expensive to manage because they require nodes to act as a miner and run either Proof-of-Work(PoW) or Proof-of-Stack(PoS).
So, if you’re an individual who wants to introduce a replacement global cryptocurrency, then this could be for you! If you would like everything public, Jokes apart, it knows to create a public blockchain network.
Private Blockchain Network
The private Blockchain is that the opposite of the general public Blockchain because it offers a personal network. It’s best for businesses that need a private network but wants to urge the advantages of Blockchain. They’re also centralized, suggesting that a corporation can control the network without keeping it hospitable to the general public.
They offer all the key features of Blockchain and provide corporate members how to create trust through immutability and security.
In private networks, the corporate also can set rules and manage the network consistent with their requirements.
Consortium Blockchain Network
Next, we have a consortium blockchain network controlled by a group of organizations or nodes instead of a centralized node or a decentralized network. A consortium blockchain is sweet because it comes with pre-selected nodes.
It is ideal for an answer that needs collaboration across the board. As an example, supply chain, food, medicine — all of those would require collaboration across brands.
Hybrid Blockchain Network
Finally, we’ve got the last blockchain technology type – Hybrid Blockchain. If you’re looking to urge all the benefits of both private and public Blockchain with minimal disadvantage, you ought to choose this Blockchain.
In reality, hybrid Blockchain does accompany disadvantages like other blockchain technology types. However, they’re pretty minimal.
It seems that hybrid blockchains may be perfect for tons of upcoming business models. So, choose well.
Conclusion
I hope you found this helpful guide. If you’ve got any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to use the shape below.
User Questions:
- Who invented Blockchain?
Satoshi Nakamoto
Blockchain can grow a bedrock of worldwide record-keeping systems, but it was launched just 10 years ago. It had been created by the unknown persons behind the web cash currency bitcoin, under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Is Vechain a direct investment?
Is Vechain an honest investment in 2021? Vechain may be a good investment in 2021. consistent with technical analysis, the risk/reward ratio is nearly nine to at least one (8.92:1), which is best than Bitcoin and Ethereum. The basics also are solid, with good tech, an honest team, and lots of real-world use cases.
- Who is Bitcoin owned by?
Bitcoin is open-source, meaning its design is public. Nobody person owns or controls Bitcoin, and anyone can participate. While Satoshi continued to regulate Bitcoin’s development, users and developers congregated in Bitcoin forums to contribute code and work on the project, which had become a collaborative effort.
- Blockchain technology isn’t a subsequent industrial revolution like most people are claiming.
Change my view: Blockchain technology is not the next technological revolution like most people are claiming. from CryptoTechnology
- How Many Individual’ Blockchains’ Exist within the World?
How Many Individual ‘Blockchains’ Exist in the World? from CryptoCurrency
