What Makes Blockchain Attractive For Application Development

Architecting an Enterprise Blockchain solution is much like the development of custom software or any other enterprise application. The need to create a custom technology solution is born from business need. To address a business problem or opportunity, often new technological applications must be created. In the case of Blockchain, due to its inherent security as well as its capability to create immutable append only data, Blockchain is attractive to solve many business problems.?

?Blockchain design workflow

o??Address the stakeholder

The stakeholder is the most critical part of the Blockchain application design. The stakeholders have needs that will be met by the solution. It is important to gain complete insight into the stakeholder challenges in the design of the solution. It is important to also educate the stakeholder as to what Blockchain can do and what it cannot do as Blockchain is not always the perfect solution for every single technological need.

o??Address the use case

As we have discussed Blockchain is a great solution for many technological challenges. However, Blockchain is not a solution for every business problem that exist. It is important to understand the specific business case and see if Blockchain is a fit. Fortunately, many tools exist to help with this. One such tool is the Blockchain decision tree. By leveraging such a tool, one can more quickly and thoroughly address Blockchain as a solution.

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§?Include the four pillars for blockchains

§?Distributed ledger

§?Smart contracts

§?Permanent ledger

§?Node distribution

The above 4 pillars are critical to Blockchain. If these 4 pillars are a business need, then Blockchain could be a perfect application to solve the business need. The distributed ledger is a secure ledger that is secured in a diversified manner. It is highly immutable due to the dynamics of Blockchain. Smart contracts greatly reduce the errors and omissions of business processed as they are mathematically and algorithmically driven, and hash certified and consensus approved. A permanent ledger is needed for a De Facto “master” ledger. The last pillar of Blockchain is the fact that the computing is distributed upon “nodes”, this adds to security as well as gives the application HA “High Availability.”

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o??Address the blockchain decision tree

§?Shared database?

§?Shared ledger?

§?Shared rules?

§?Transaction rules?

§?Immutable transactions?

§?Decentralization?

There are many Blockchain decision trees available however the above is excellent.?If the business requirements require the above features and functionalities, Blockchain is typically a good fit. Each element of the decision tree should be examined and agreed upon by stakeholders and designers to establish if Blockchain is unique to be applied to the needed application.

o??Address the blockchain design

§?Hash

§?Nonce

§?Records

§?Consensus

Not all Blockchains are designed the same. While all Blockchains have the above four features, they may be implemented in different fashions. I.E., permissioned vs. non permissioned Blockchains or public vs. private Blockchains may implement these features in a slightly different manner. There could be differing security rules around records and consensus could be reached in a slightly different manner among differing types of Blockchain solutions. That is why addressing the stakeholder is such an important stage as it allows you to tailor what flavor of Blockchain is best for your client.

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o??Address the blockchain implementation

o??Address the blockchain tasking

The implementation of the Blockchain should hopefully be the pay off for a great design. By carefully choosing the type of Blockchain based on stakeholder needs and understanding the clients Enterprise application and security environment, the clients Blockchain application should help in addressing the business need that they have. In addition, the Blockchain task should show business value and not just be that Blockchain was used for the sake of using Blockchain when other applications may have worked just as well or better.

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·??????Risk management

o??Categorize the system

o??Select controls

o??Implement controls

o??Assess controls

o??Authorize the system

o??Monitor controls

While Blockchain is inherently secure due to the features we have described earlier in the paper, the data fed into the Blockchain application as well as the data coming out of the Blockchain application should be subject to the NIST framework to secure the system within the overall enterprise technology infrastructure.

Some examples of successful Blockchain applications????

o??IOTA

o??EOS

o??Tezos

o??Bitcoin

Bitcoin represents what could perhaps be one of the best use cases for the application of Blockchain technology. If you look at a decision tree, the needs of Bitcoin meet all the 7 questions needed to validate Blockchain as a proper application given the decision tree I used in this paper. Additionally, Bitcoin adheres to the 4 pillars of Blockchain. Bitcoin was born from the need for immutable transactions and a shared ledger with hashing and consensus. It is hard to imagine, and application better suited to the Blockchain design than Bitcoin.

References:

Books

Holbrook, J.?Architecting enterprise blockchain solutions.

Chittoda, J.?Mastering blockchain programming with Solidity.

Websites

Anon, A. (2022). Retrieved 17 January 2022, from?https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/big_data_and_business_intelligence/9781789954722/15/ch15lvl1sec78/disadvantages-of-ethereum-based-tokens

Frankenfield, J. (2022, January 21).?Distributed Ledger Technology. Investopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/distributed-ledger-technology-dlt.asp

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