The power of blockchain is not (only) in decentralisation

  We have heard it so many times, “When there is no decentralisation it isn’t Blockchain” or “When it doesn’t involve a cryptocurrency you cannot call it Blockchain”. Many of these early advocates have since altered their opinion.

Full decentralisation provides the strongest immutability and immutability equals trust. However, even decentralised Blockchain has vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include the 51% attack in proof of work consensus (PoW), Rogue forks and Man-In-the-Middle attacks. Vulnerabilities in decentralised Blockchain is not the subject of this article so we will not explain them individually. For more information on these vulnerabilities, please see our article “Challenges of decentralised Blockchain”

Another notable issue with decentralisation is the size of a chain over time requiring ever more storage capacity of each node as well as the high-power consumption of mining. The current estimated electricity consumption for the Bitcoin network is between...

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While the industry evolves, we see many new Blockchain products. As a stakeholder in the wider ecosystem, we receive many marketing emails about yet another revolutionising product. Some are inspiring; some are not. With many of them, we wonder if the world really needs them, or if it provides an added value. It seems like some businesses try to put the Blockchain into everything. Then, every so often, there are the ones that trouble us because they sell a false sense of added trust.

The promise of decentralised Blockchain is a trust-less system that records immutable records of truth. However, we have detected severe vulnerabilities when looking under the hood of some products currently surfacing in the market. Often the vulnerability is not with the Blockchain protocol nor the consensus algorithm. In these products, it is the basic design, architecture and workflows that are sensitive to manipulation.

Most of us see through companies trying to take advantage of a buzzword and implement a Blockchain solution where it is merely a gimmick. However, advertising a false sense of trust to consumers goes entirely against the Blockchain promise and can damage the industry. We therefore found it necessary to bring some more awareness to our readers so you can rec... 

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