What Type of Blockchain Network Do You Need for Your Business?
The interest around blockchain has been well-chronicled for everybody to take notice of the technology in the past few years. Deeper enthusiasts have delved further into the different types of blockchain networks along with their possibilities.
Differences between public non-permissioned blockchain networks and private permissioned blockchain networks are fairly straightforward. In all its simplicity, a public permissionless blockchain has no access restrictions to view its data or participate. Usually, such networks offer economic incentives for those who secure them and utilize some type of lottery based consensus algorithm. Some of the largest, most known public blockchains are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
On the other hand, private permissioned blockchain networks requires permission to read the information on the blockchain and limits the parties who can transact or participate. Some examples include R3’s Corda, as well as various Hyperledger frameworks including Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Sawtooth among others. There are few cases where a private permission-less network would make sense but there are some examples of public permissioned networks appearing in order to facilitate better scaling of public networks.
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin captured the difference between public and private networks nicely when he said,
“Essentially, instead of having a fully public and uncontrolled network and state machine secured by crypto-economics (e.g. proof of work, proof of stake), it is also possible to create a system where access permissions are more tightly controlled, with rights to modify or even read the blockchain state restricted to a few users, while still maintaining many kinds of partial guarantees of authenticity and decentralization that blockchains provide.”
