Blockchain. Problem lies Within
At the time of its creation, blockchain offered a previously unheard-of approach to many things. Financial relations based on “third parties” (banks) were revised, the blockchain began to participate in conclusion of contracts and resolution of legal disputes, new public and commercial organizations, that put decentralization and autonomy — the DAO — at the forefront has appeared. Blockchain introduced the concept of a “social contract” bound by a digital algorithm.
In fact, there are now two systems in the digital world: the classic centralized one, which was born with the very concept of the Internet, and the new decentralized one. The “new” system got “the right to live” relatively recently — when the average computing power of the user devices reached 47 Gflops in 2010.
From that moment on, the growth in demand for decentralization became inevitable. A number of scandals related to the peculiarities of personal data processing by Facebook formed another question: how to protect against outrage and oversight of corporations? Each new intervention by tech giants, each new ban has created more and more mistrust and fear of people for the privacy of their life. In April 2020, there were already more than 65% of such people in the world.
Blockchain as a technology was able to answer all questions and doubts. This way, a demand for “blockchained” platforms was formed. Many events this and last year indicate the superiority of the distributed data exchange model over the centralized one. And announcements from Google, Amazon and Netflix show their weakness in the face of really heavy infrastructure loads.
On the other hand, distributed systems provide greater reliability. Data will not be lost if one of the network nodes fails, another will always come in his place. It is logical to draw an analogy with amateur radio communication, which often covers tens of thousands of kilometers, where each participant amplifies the previous one in order to transmit a message from Southeast Asia to Northern Europe along such a chain. Radio channels are duplicated, creating a reliable delivery system — and the message always reaches the recipient. A network built in the same way over the Internet, that includes such protection methods as Zero-Proof and ECC, is highly reliable, provides a stable communication channel and ensures that personal data remains only under the user’s personal control.
“Exist” is not “Solve”
Many might say: “There are many similar solutions. Why create another one?”. This point is worth considering in more detail. There are a number of problems:
- Computing power. User devices often cannot provide the computational speed required for efficient work with the blockchain. Therefore, most corporate and public blockchain solutions are only partially decentralized, if not entirely dependent on corporate servers. Blockchain is a reliable structure. But not fast. “Security at first” is the basic principle of the blockchain. For those data that prevails on the Internet and other networks, this principle does not apply. The modern consumer absorbs content at a tremendous speed, mainly on mobile devices, which imposes serious restrictions on performance and the amount of memory used by the device.
- Data storage size. Most of the existing blockchain solutions are built on platforms that are unsuitable for storing huge amounts of data. For example, using the LiteCoin blockchain to store the workflow in a midsize company can bankrupt it. Someone has to contain the incredible volumes of IT infrastructure required to store data and process requests for the entire blockchain? Therefore, we can conclude that storing data in the blockchain itself greatly increases the volume of the blockchain and slows down the data addition process.
- Control problem. If the network, in which the participants work, is controlled by one person, then there is always a risk of losing access at the request of that person. But what if the user has saved in such a service a food list? Or a list of meetings? Or in a closed segment of the network exists a company’s document flow? A modern person relies heavily on such things as Google Notes, Google Calendar, Google Drive, but does not even think about what the loss of access to them may cost.
The widespread demand for digital services has matched with an increase in the computing power and storage capacity of smartphones. According to statistics, more than half of the world’s traffic belongs to mobile devices. And they do not have access to all the advantages of the blockchain in the form that underlies its idea — the idea of freedom and equality of participants. So what can be done to solve these problems?
We are ExtraChain. And we have an answer.
