What are Blockchain’s Issues and Limitations?

What Problems Blockchain do Face?

The blockchain is often spoken of as a completely revolutionary technology, and this is partly true. It has the potential to make significant changes in many sectors of the economy. However, it is hardly worth considering the blockchain as a panacea for all diseases of mankind. Before using this technology, it is worth assessing the associated problems.

What are Blockchain’s Issues and Limitations?

The blockchain, of course, has its own characteristics, which, however, are not unique. If you want to make a registry or database open, validated, resistant to hacking and self-consistent, it is not necessary to use the blockchain for this. And it is absolutely not necessary to decentralize normally functioning systems.

Network Size

Due to the complexity of the system built on the blockchain, due to the encryption used and the distributed nature of the network, transactions in it can be processed slowly — compared to “traditional” payment systems, that is, with cash or credit card payments. Posting a bitcoin transaction may take several hours, which means it will not work with Bitcoins for a cup of coffee – if the seller does not want to take your word, and it was precisely the need to trust the counterparty Bitcoin was meant to save us.

Theoretically, the same applies to other blockchain networks, which are not intended to transfer value, but to store some other transactions or, say, events of the Internet of things. The fact is that a blockchain is, after all, just a computer file, access to which as its size grows and the network of computers that access it grows, becomes slower.

Human Error

Although the revolutionary nature of the blockchain is obvious, in order to understand the cryptographic principles on which it is built, you need to spend some time reading the documentation. Experts are talking about excluding the middleman from traditional financial relations — there is no longer any need to clear payments or examine them for fraud, but in practice, banks do a good job with this function.

It is not by chance that the first blockchain – Bitcoin – appeared immediately after the 2008 financial crisis, amid growing mistrust towards existing financial institutions and instruments. Ten years have passed since then, and nothing like this has happened, so you have to ask yourself: is there now a demand for such radical changes as a complete restructuring of the financial services industry? Yes, the previous crisis was unexpected, and we don’t know what will happen tomorrow – perhaps, some world events will once again settle in the public consciousness a thirst for change.

Politics

Again, this is largely true for the cryptocurrency. Nevertheless, the fact remains that in recent months, in this new volatile world, quite a few have lost money. Due to the absence of any supervision, fraud and market manipulation are common here. For example, you can take the Onecoin project, which, as it turned out, was a financial pyramid – at the same time millions of investors believed that they were dealing with a “new Bitcoin”. As in many other areas related to hi-tech, legislation often does not keep pace with innovations, which creates space for new fraudulent schemes. – It’s good for people who are feverishly trying to invest in a new area, more than enough.

Even if you try to stick to known tokens by speculating on cryptocurrencies, there is always a chance that the exchange or online wallet in which you keep your coins will be hacked, closed by the government for questionable practices or the owners will simply run away with your money. normal supervision in this area.

So, when to use blockchain?

In that case, for example, when you for some reason do not want to create a centralized solution. For example – fear that law enforcement agencies will start to fight with him. There was already a precedent – before Bitcoin there was already a digital currency, Liberty Reserve, which the FBI eventually covered in 2013. In fact, it was the same bitcoin, only “centralized”.

The second option – for some reason you do not trust the “center”. You fear that he will perform the wrong functions that you need, for example.

Well, the third – when a decentralized solution is easier to create. For example – hospitals in a region want to share data about the epidemiological situation. You can break through funding, establish a new structure, buy a large server for it, hire staff to maintain it, etc. But this requires substantial expenses – financial and organizational. It is much easier for hospitals to create a blockchain solution based on existing facilities, the benefit of high performance, in this case, is not necessary.