How Many Blockchain Categories Exist?

How long do you believe the blockchain hype will last?

Blockchain you said? Well, we keep seeing it in headlines, it is mentioned on TV, online, everywhere! There are books, conferences, courses about it. There are people who love it, people who have reservations about it, people who hate it.
But one thing is for sure. It is here now, and whether it stays or not, it has certainly managed to rock the boat.

Blockchain: A solution to an ongoing data issue

As described in a previous post of mine, blockchain is the technology that has evolved solving our problem of storing data in a permanent, secure, unchangeable and secure way.

The Blockchain as a technology is one. But it can be implemented in different ways, each one may use a different protocol for verifications etc.

So in this series of posts we will try to explain in simple terms how we can recognize the category of the Blockchains, what elements we should know and what characteristics we can keep in mind so that we can evaluate the information given.

After all, there are so many projects and start ups that try to persuade us to invest or to embrace their new products; The least we can do is have some ideas about how to understand more about them and if they worth our time (and/or money)

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Blockchain Workflow Wikipedia - CC by SA 4.0

What is Blockchain?

If we get to the core of Blockchain Technology, we are talking about a DLT, or Distributed Ledger Technology

Distributed: "A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which then communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to each other."
From Wikipedia

While a Ledger is "a permanent summary of all amounts entered in supporting journals which list individual transactions by date."
From Wikipedia

So a Distributed Ledger Technology means keeping records of individual transactions to a number of different computers, which have the ability to communicate with each other and pass messages regarding transactions.

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Screen Shot from Google Trends - Searches of Public Vs Private Blockchain - We see that private shows a significantly higher amount of searches, and its peaks follow the public blockchains higher points. It would probably worth to see when those peaks showed up. - source

What are the main categories of Blockchain?

There are mainly two types of blockchain, the public (permissionless) or the private (or permissioned)

The permissionless blockchains (aka public)

The most famous example being the bitcoin, these blockchains permit to any user to join their network for any actions such as to read or to verify transactions. There is no centralized authority, so there is a need to have a pre-established a consensus mechanism in order to ensure trust between their peers.

The permissioned blockchains (aka private)

In this case, for a user to gain access, a central authority controls the users access. You can see many examples of both categories here and perform your own research too.

What's in it for us?

Blockchain technology has been around for almost a decade and it has disrupted the way we are thinking, introducing us to new ways of managing our data. Blockchain users are still considered to be the early adopters and there are many things going on behind the scenes. Governments, Financial Institutions, Universities, Global Organizations are trying to figure out ways to take advantage of this technology.

Can you think of one or more ways that this kind of blockchain can improve our quality of life? Our work? Our environment?

What would you like to learn about blockchain? What do you think will happen in the future? Will it be embraced or will it be forgotten?

To be continued

I tried to explain very simply the main concepts of block chain, with the goal to come back soon with more detailed information about existing and future blockchain powered projects in the various sections of our life.

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Sources and further reading