The blockchain is a very tempting technology. The advantages one can see using blockchain in their business is bigger, making it one of the most talked about technologies of our decade.
Today, with companies you can work with to build blockchain for your business, it is easier to get from prototype to production in no-time at all. But ultimately, it is crucial to clearly understand the blockchain technology and its business use-case specifically for you.
So far, we've completed three major implementations of blockchain based products for two different industries across the world. What we have noticed is that the crucial decision comes in, when we are trying to arrive at the data that has to get into the blockchain network.
Before I jump into helping you understand what data should you put into a blockchain network, let me first clear the biggest myth about blockchain:
The blockchain is not a replacement for a distributed database.
What should I store in blockchain?
Blockchain is not exactly a database, in which you can store everything. One of the most important things you should remember about storing data in the blockchain is that there is no 'D' in 'CRUD' operations. Which means, what goes into your blockchain, stays in the blockchain. There is no way for you to tamper it or delete it once it is written.
Blockchain is more like time. Once something is written, you cannot go back and alter it. No matter how sensitive the data is to your business.
This makes it one of the most important business decisions to be made before the development of your blockchain network. Keeping your blockchain network as minimal as possible is very important.
Imagine a scenario where the business decides to put everything in the blockchain thinking that they could pull any data that they want at a later stage. This could include business sensitive data that the business might not want to expose to the others in the chain. With blockchain's ability to store data and make it transparent, regretting at a later point in time to remove the business sensitive data is just not possible.
This decision of what data goes in and what stays out of blockchain varies from one use-case to the other even for a single business.
Think about what is the smallest amount of information you can put into your blockchain that will get the job done for your business.
To make sure you take the right decision, run Blockchain Business Workshops in your company, where we can help you derive a realistic blockchain implementation roadmap to enable the power of blockchain for your business.
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Do you think there's a point in using a private blockchain for event sourced applications?