Episode 4: Platforms of Blockchains and their adoption ( How to choose? )

Dear reader, as this is a chain of blog, to take maximum advantage of the understanding about what blockchain is, i would highly recommend reading my earlier three blogs on this topic:-

Episode 1: Basics of Blockchain

Episode 2:- Types of Blockchain

Episode 3:- Components of Blockchain

In the episode we will be exploring few of the very common platforms on which blockchain runs. There are several platforms available for the blockchain. However there is a bit of functionality difference them. It’s necessary for the designers to understand the sane and choose the best platform for the given solution.

In case if you have heard, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Croda, these are names of just a few of the platforms. A blockchain platform can be defined as “peer-to-peer” network, which uses a defined consensus mechanism to prevent modification of an ordered series time stamped records.

Choosing the best Blockchain Platform:-

The selection of the blockchain platform is done on the basis of several criteria related to its usability, flexibility, performance, and potential. Also, to most users, its able important that weather its an open source or a closed source. Let me explain these criteria in a bit more detail.

Usability: I would like to define usability is how simple of easy is the platform to lean and start implementing. What are the number of methods available to interact with the platforms ( APIs, GUIs, Clients etc…). Is there a platform specific language that one has to lean to start coding in the same, or, does it support generic languages as well.

 Adoption:- Second important aspect is the adoption of the platform. Better the adoption of the platform, it would be easy to find the tools and armors to make your work simpler. In case of public blockchain where your would need miners to run your blockchain, this becomes a very important criteria. The better the platform is adopted, the chances are , it would be relatively easy to find miners.

Flexibility: few of the platforms are general purpose platforms, but few are designed for specific tasks. It would depend on if you have any platform designed for the kind of problem you are trying to solve for, then it becomes easy to get your work done, else usually the general purpose blockchain are best suited.

Scalability: By scalability, I would mean “Transactions/sec”. Few of the platforms can only handle less no of transactions per second, so if you build a solution that has a high data flow into it, the response time will be slow, and you and other participants would need to invest in a lot of hardware, so the cost becomes higher.   

Consensus and incentive mechanism :- It’s the heart of the blockchain. Few of the platforms only supports few types of consensus algorithms, so one has to understand the same before choose the right platform for his solution.

Currency :- In case your solution comprises of money transactions, Also, its good to understand what currency does the platform use, is it cryptocurrency ( like bitcoin), or the general currency (like USD).

Support Smart Contracts :- At times, smart contracts are a very integral part of the solution that u design. If that is the case, then the platform should be able to support Smart contracts. ( We will talk more about smart contract in Episode 7)

Security:  Last but not the least, in blockchain the security is as imp as any of above parameters. Security can be defined as security of transaction data, user anonymity, and the security of blockchain itself.

The comparison of few of the top blockchain platforms is given below.

( Pic Courtesy )

I understand that this particular episode was a bit technical, but sometimes its important to have a very very basic understanding of the technical landscape to appreciate the overall solution.

My next few blogs will be:

Episode 4: Platforms of Blockchain

Episode 5: Use cases of Blockchain in Supply Chain

Episode 6: Smart Contract