Nice Article undervaluedstocks
Highlights from the Article:
Blockchain governance - Even if Blockchain is secure (often moot), its whole ecosystem needs governance.
Link to entire article: https://www.bloorresearch.com/2018/04/blockchain-governance/
Written By: David Norfolk
Published: 3rd April 2018
Content Copyright © 2018 Bloor. All Rights Reserved.
This blog was originally posted under: The Norfolk Punt
Potential Blockchain issues include the “51% attack” where over half the nodes are induced to agree on a corrupted transaction. Not impossible to arrange, I’d have thought, in these days of botnets and state-sponsored hacking. But there are other possible issues – how do you manage a blockchain that grows without limit; how do you enforce policies for what goes on a blockchain; is latency an issue (how long does it take for all occurrences of the blockchain to come into synch?); “deletion” of transactions in error is a problem (since you can’t delete off the blockchain, how long does it take for a transaction correcting an error to get everywhere?); guaranteed performance would be useful (cryptocoin exchanges have been known to overload); authentication of people allowed to use a blockchain might be a good idea; and, of course, there is the quantum computing issue (Blockchain needs to get into “quantum encryption” before someone works out how to factor large almost-primes easily). Many of these issues are now being recognised and addressed, by companies such as Blocksafe Technologies (see below) .
I’m not really interested in public cryptocurrencies here. Most business Blockchain ecosystems will be Private or “Permissioned”: permission is required for a user to read the information on the blockchain and conduct transactions; and nodes that perform the mining are defined by the entity that manages the private blockchain. Here, the biggest issue is probably authentication and the biggest threat the malware (keyboard loggers etc) that infects many desktops and mobile devices, possibly looking out specifically for wallet-type activities.
Whatever the issues with any particular blockchain technology (and the technology will evolve and improve) Blockchain has huge potential for distributed ledger applications in business generally (far beyond just cryptocurrencies). However, in order to be useful to the business, Blockchains will usually be private to that business (“permissioned”) and will be part of a well-governed ecosystem. This ecosystem must control who has permission to put transactions on the blockchain, and must secure the endpoints (digital wallets or whatever) against attack.
One of the chief issues around a secure technology (such as Blockchain is capable of being) is that it becomes trusted – and if someone puts corrupt garbage into it, the garbage that comes out is probably trusted too. BlockSafe CEO Rich Zaziski says: “Our goal is to secure the blockchain ecosystem with a suite of distinct solutions that protect against an array of cyber vulnerabilities. We plan to secure private blockchains with the Blockchain Defender that acts as a gateway to a blockchain and authenticates transactions, scans transaction data for malicious content and mitigates DDoS attacks. We also aim to secure desktop and mobile crypto wallets with Crypto Defender which takes a proactive and preventative approach in protecting crypto wallets, versus a reactive approach, which is usually easy to thwart”. I think that some such governance technology is badly needed, and sooner rather than later.[/b ]
Highlights from the Article:
Blockchain governance - Even if Blockchain is secure (often moot), its whole ecosystem needs governance.
Link to entire article: https://www.bloorresearch.com/2018/04/blockchain-governance/
Written By: David Norfolk
Published: 3rd April 2018
Content Copyright © 2018 Bloor. All Rights Reserved.
This blog was originally posted under: The Norfolk Punt
Potential Blockchain issues include the “51% attack” where over half the nodes are induced to agree on a corrupted transaction. Not impossible to arrange, I’d have thought, in these days of botnets and state-sponsored hacking. But there are other possible issues – how do you manage a blockchain that grows without limit; how do you enforce policies for what goes on a blockchain; is latency an issue (how long does it take for all occurrences of the blockchain to come into synch?); “deletion” of transactions in error is a problem (since you can’t delete off the blockchain, how long does it take for a transaction correcting an error to get everywhere?); guaranteed performance would be useful (cryptocoin exchanges have been known to overload); authentication of people allowed to use a blockchain might be a good idea; and, of course, there is the quantum computing issue (Blockchain needs to get into “quantum encryption” before someone works out how to factor large almost-primes easily). Many of these issues are now being recognised and addressed, by companies such as Blocksafe Technologies (see below) .
I’m not really interested in public cryptocurrencies here. Most business Blockchain ecosystems will be Private or “Permissioned”: permission is required for a user to read the information on the blockchain and conduct transactions; and nodes that perform the mining are defined by the entity that manages the private blockchain. Here, the biggest issue is probably authentication and the biggest threat the malware (keyboard loggers etc) that infects many desktops and mobile devices, possibly looking out specifically for wallet-type activities.
Whatever the issues with any particular blockchain technology (and the technology will evolve and improve) Blockchain has huge potential for distributed ledger applications in business generally (far beyond just cryptocurrencies). However, in order to be useful to the business, Blockchains will usually be private to that business (“permissioned”) and will be part of a well-governed ecosystem. This ecosystem must control who has permission to put transactions on the blockchain, and must secure the endpoints (digital wallets or whatever) against attack.
One of the chief issues around a secure technology (such as Blockchain is capable of being) is that it becomes trusted – and if someone puts corrupt garbage into it, the garbage that comes out is probably trusted too. BlockSafe CEO Rich Zaziski says: “Our goal is to secure the blockchain ecosystem with a suite of distinct solutions that protect against an array of cyber vulnerabilities. We plan to secure private blockchains with the Blockchain Defender that acts as a gateway to a blockchain and authenticates transactions, scans transaction data for malicious content and mitigates DDoS attacks. We also aim to secure desktop and mobile crypto wallets with Crypto Defender which takes a proactive and preventative approach in protecting crypto wallets, versus a reactive approach, which is usually easy to thwart”. I think that some such governance technology is badly needed, and sooner rather than later.[/b ]
1
