Blockchain is often touted as a world-changing technology and in many ways, it is. However, it isn’t necessarily the cure-all panacea for the world’s problems that many evangelists would have you believe.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the issues with blockchain that anyone thinking of using it should understand. Starting with perhaps the biggest…
- Blockchain has an environmental cost
At least, the way it is being used today, it does. Blockchain relies on encryption to provide its security as well as establish consensus over a distributed network. This essentially means that, in order to “prove” that a user has permission to write to the chain, complex algorithms must be run, which in turn require large amounts of computing power. Of course, this comes at a cost. Taking the most widely known and used blockchain as an example – Bitcoin – last year it was claimed that the computing power required to keep the network running consumes as much energy as was used by 159 of the world’s nations.
Aryan Nava 