Blockchain – Platforms and Solutions

Enterprise Blockchain

The basic blockchain concept can be defined quite simply: It is a shared,
decentralized, cryptographically secured, and immutable digital ledger.
However, enterprise blockchain enriches this definition with a few key
attributes:

Accountability: Network members are known and identified by
cryptographic membership keys with assigned access permissions by
business role. Without such accountability, compliance with regulations
such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996
(HIPAA) and General Data Protection Regulation of 2018 (GDPR)
would be nearly impossible to achieve.

Privacy: Although members are known to the network, transactions are
shared only with those members that need to know about them.
Enterprise blockchain uses various techniques to achieve privacy, including peer-to-peer1
connections, privacy channels, and zero-knowledge proofs.

Scalability: Supporting an immense volume of transactions is critical to
enterprise scenarios. Because transactions are not typically throttled in
enterprise blockchains as they are in networks like Bitcoin, they can be
carried out immediately. Any particular enterprise’s transaction rates
will depend on many factors, including the number of peers and the
complexity of the smart contract. Transaction rates measured in
thousands of transactions per second are certainly achievable.

Security: Enterprise blockchains are fault-tolerant. With fault-tolerant
consensus algorithms, the network continues to operate even in the
presence of bad actors or carelessness. An example of a fault-tolerant
consensus algorithm is RAFT.5

Motivational: An enterprise blockchain benefits from a built-in incentive system to help accelerate the adoption curve. You can think of this
driver as a “loyalty point” or a “token” that delivers a motivational and
economic incentive for network providers and consumers.
Enterprise blockchains are often incorrectly characterized as private networks. In reality, access to an enterprise blockchain is controlled by “the
governors,” who set the policy establishing how new members can participate in the network. The visibility (public or private) of the network
depends on how it is governed. Thus, it is true that enterprise blockchains
are permissioned, but not necessarily private.