2018 17th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/ 12th

IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering

Blockchain versus Database: A Critical Analysis

Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury∗ , Alan Colman∗ , Muhammad Ashad Kabir† , Jun Han∗ and Paul Sarda∗
∗ School of Software and Electrical Engineering,

Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Email: {mjchowdhury, acolman, jhan, 4949501}@swin.edu.au
† School of Computing and Mathematics
Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia
Email: [email protected]

Abstract—In recent times, Bitcoin has gained special attention business process management and supply chains [7]. In the
both from industry and academia. The underlying technology emerging field of the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain
that enables Bitcoin (or more generally crypto-currency) is called technology can be used in different scenarios and forms [8].
blockchain. At the core of the blockchain technology is a data
structure that keeps record of the transactions in the network. These include the management of privacy and security of IoT
The special feature that distinguishes it from existing technology [9], as well as the development of new scenarios and business
is its immutability of the stored records. To achieve immutability, opportunities. The blockchain technology is also being applied
it uses consensus and cryptographic mechanisms. As the data is in higher education [10]. Several higher education institutions
stored in distributed nodes this technology is also termed as have employed the blockchain technology to design different
“Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)”. As many researchers
and practitioners are joining the hype of blockchain, some of solutions and approaches for managing student records. In
them are raising the question about the fundamental difference general, most of the blockchain solutions in education sector
between blockchain and traditional database and its real value use the Bitcoin blockchain [11].
or potential. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of both There is little doubt that the blockchain technology is still
technologies based on a survey of the research literature where in the initial phase of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for emerging
blockchain solutions are applied to various scenarios. Based on
this analysis, we further develop a decision tree diagram that will technologies [25]. Government and research organizations are
help both practitioners and researchers to choose the appropriate pouring funding for blockchain related research. Recently,
technology for their use cases. Using our proposed decision tree the European Commission has announced 30 billion on new
we evaluate a sample of the existing works to see to what extent investments in technology initiatives including those involving
the blockchain solutions have been used appropriately in the blockchain [12]. However,there is considerable debate in the
relevant problem domains.
Index Terms—blockchain, database, distributed ledger tech-
community about the value of blockchain over a shared
nology. database [1]. For example, Narayanan contends that private
blockchains are just another name for a shared database
[13]. Others, like Greenspan, see several differences between
I. I NTRODUCTION
private blockchains and SQL databases, from trust building to
Blockchain technology aims at creating a decentralized en- robustness [14].
vironment where no third party is in control of the transactions While blockchain is a powerful technology but if it is
and data [19]. In general, the blockchain is a time-stamped indiscriminately applied to use cases without considering
chain of blocks jointly maintained by all participating nodes. the strength and weakness of the technology, we will fail
Blocks are basically containers that aggregate transactions. to realize the true potential of this technology. We have
The blocks are chained together cryptographically: each block therefore conducted a scoping review [16] to understand how
is digitally signed and ‘chained’ to the previous block by different researchers are using this technology. Our findings
including that block’s hash value. New blocks can only be reveal that most of the exiting literatures focus on “how” the
appended to the end of the chain, thus the blockchain provides blockchain technology works and, to a lesser extent, on “what”
an immutable data storage (existing transactions cannot be (potential) applications and usages that business organizations
updated or deleted). For this reason, many systems built on the can leverage. For its part, the “why” question, which focuses
blockchain technology achieve secured distribution of digital on the organizational motivations for adopting the blockchain
assets among untrusted clients. technology, was scarcely discussed in the literature.
Blockchain has been used in several domains due to the The main question we address with this paper is, whether or
benefits of distributed data storage and immutable audit trails. not the proposed applications of the blockchain technology as
In healthcare, several approaches have been introduced in a solution to problems, have a well-founded basis. In answer-
the field of Electronic Health Records (EHR) [2] [3] [4]. ing the question above, we make a number of contributions,
Due to the transparency of the technology, governments and 1) We have conducted a scope review to see the trend in
businesses also try to apply the technology and harvest its the volume and areas of research concerning blockchain
benefits [5] [6] in applications such as electronic cash systems, in the last 5 years.

2324-9013/18/31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1348

DOI 10.1109/TrustCom/BigDataSE.2018.00186
 2) We have provide a comparative analysis between the opens up the door of opportunities to build and utilize
blockchain and database technologies. a system where every possible state or interaction is
3) We propose a decision tree to check whether the use verifiable by the authorised entities.
case in hand should use blockchain or not. If yes, what • Immutability and irreversibility of chain state: Achiev-
kind of blockchain technology should be used. ing a distributed consensus with the participation of
4) Using the decision tree, we have also done a preliminary a large number of nodes ensures that the chain state
assessment of the existing literature to gauge the extent becomes practically immutable and irreversible after a
to which the proposed uses of blockchain are justifiably certain period of time. This also applies to smart-contracts
in terms of the unique advantages that blockchain pro- and hence enabling the deployment and execution of
vides. immutable computer programs.
In section 2, we give an overview the properties of the • Data (transaction) persistence: Data in a blockchain is
blockchain technology and its various variants. Section 3 stored in a distributed fashion ensuring its persistency as
presents the scoping review of the blockchain technology. We long as there are participating nodes in the P2P network.
discuss three popular use cases of blockchain in section 4. • Data provenance: The data storage process in any
We present a comparison between blockchain and database in blockchain is facilitated by means of a mechanism called
section 5. Section 6 presents and discusses a decision-making the transaction. Every transaction needs to be digitally
process (in the form of decision tree / flow chart) that helps signed using public key cryptography which ensures the
to determine when to use which type of blockchain. Using authenticity of the source of data. Combining this with the
this decision-making process, We assess the appropriateness immutability and irreversibility of a blockchain provides
of a sample of existing uses of blockchain in section 7. We a strong non-repudiation instrument for any data in the
conclude the paper in Section 8. blockchain.
• Distributed data control: A blockchain ensures that
II. B LOCKCHAIN data in the chain are stored in a distributed manner that
Bitcoin [15], introduced in 2008, has emerged as the world’s exhibits no single point of failure.
first widely used digital currency and has been used in a wide • Accountability and transparency: Since the state of
range of applications. Interestingly, it is underpinned by a the chain, along with every single interaction among
novel mechanism called the Distributed Ledger Technology participating entities, can be verified by any authorised
(DLT), also known as the blockchain technology, providing entity, it promotes accountability and transparency.
its solid technical foundation.
Even though the terms blockchain and DLT are used inter- III. S COPING R EVIEW
changeably in the literature, there is a subtle difference be- In this study we have taken from Arksey [16] O’Malleys
tween them which is worth highlighting. A blockchain is just [17] and Levac et. al.’s [18] the guidelines on how to conduct
an example of a particular type of ledger, and there are other a scoping review. The procedures proposed by these method-
types of ledger. When a ledger (including a blockchain) is ologists maximize both systematicity and transparency which,
distributed across a network, it can be regarded as a Distributed in turn, ensure a high level of rigor, reliability, and trust-
Ledger. For simplicity, we will also use the terms inter- worthiness. While scoping reviews are systematic in nature,
changeably. they must not be confused with traditional systematic reviews.
In the last few years, blockchain has received wide-spread Indeed, whereas systematic reviews like meta-analyses attempt
attention from the industry, the government and the academia to integrate prior empirical findings on a mature topic in order
alike and is regarded as one of the fundamental technologies to provide answers to questions like “what works” and “what
to revolutionise the landscapes of several application domains. works best,” scoping reviews attempt to provide an initial
At the centre of the blockchain technology is the blockchain indication of the size and nature of the available literature
itself. A blockchain is a ledger consisting of consecutive on an emerging topic, to identify gaps, and to propose a
blocks chained together following a strict set of rules. The research agenda for future work [20]. In this review, we have
ledger is distributed and stored by the nodes of a P2P network tried to identify the research trends in blockchain and which
where each block is created at a predefined interval in a application domains have received most attention from the
decentralized fashion by means of a consensus algorithm. The blockchain research community.
consensus algorithm guarantees several data integrity related
properties (discussed below) in blockchain. A blockchain A. Volume and Trend of Research
exhibits several properties which make it a suitable candidate We have surveyed three major scholarly indexing databases:
for several application domains. The properties are discussed Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science, and one re-
below. puted publishing venue (i.e., sciencedirect). We have used
• Distributed consensus on the chain state: One of the “blockchain” as the keyword to search these databases. We
crucial properties of any blockchain is its capability to have observed a sharp rise in volume of research over the last
achieve a distributed consensus on the state of the chain five years (Figure 1). If we just compare 2016 and 2017, we
without being reliant on any trusted third party. This can see that there is 139% increase in Google scholar, 253%

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 Fig. 3. Tradition SCM vs Blockchain powered SCM [1]

By analyzing generic use-cases from the domains, we have

tried to find out “why” and “how” blockchain is being used in
these use-cases. The identified properties/criteria are discussed
Fig. 1. Year-wise number of research publication
in more general terms in the next section.
1) Supply Chain Provenance: Supply Chain Management
(SCM) is the management of material and information flows
both in and between facilities, such as vendors, manufacturing
and assembly plants and distribution centers (DC). It keeps
record of different interactions between different entities until
the delivery of the product to the final point of consumption.
Figure 3 shows the interactions of different entities in a
traditional and blockchain powered SCM. We can see that in a
blockchain powered SCM, all the interactions among different
parties are kept in a single blockchain ledger. Therefore, all the
parties can see the transaction records related to any particular
product.
Walmart uses IBM’s Hyperledger (blockchain) technology
to track the source of their food and total traceability of the
Fig. 2. Subject area wise research publication food at their shelf [22]. Everleger has used blockchain in
diamond industry. They have used a combination of public
and private blockchain to provide permissioned control and at
increase in Scopus, 80% increase in Web of science, and a the same time provides clear audit trail for stakeholders [23].
large 316% increase in sciencedirect1 . Critical Analysis
• Multiple parties are involved in supply chain management
B. Subject Areas system and there is a trust deficit among the parties.
We have analyzed the “searched data” to find domains Therefore, one entity does not reveal its information to
which have received the most attention from blockchain re- other party.
• Currently, many practitioners solve or by-pass this prob-
searchers and practitioners. We have manually gone through
all the 843 entries in the scopus database. We have selected the lem by introducing a trusted third party. Both Party A and
Scopus database rather than Google Scholar because Scopus B trust the trusted third party and reveal their information.
only indexes research publications whereas Google Scholar However, finding a suitable trusted third party is very
often includes non-scholarly citations. We have found 673 hectic and in many cases impossible.
• Blockchain can establish trust among the transacting
valid entries out of the 843 entries in Scopus. By valid entries,
we mean the entries which are research publication, rather parties (see section V-A for trust building) without a
than information about the publication venues or conferences trusted third party.
(which is often included in the search result.2 ). Figure 2 shows 2) Inter Bank Transactions: In current banking system, we
the numbers of the subject area-wise research publications. can get real-time transactions if we transact within same bank.
However, it can take 2-3 business days if the transaction is
IV. A PPLICATION D OMAIN A NALYSIS between two different banks. Situation gets worse if it is
In this section, we will provide an analysis of three popular an international transaction. International transaction usually
application domains to which blockchain has been applied. involves a third bank. The transacting banks need to have an
account with this third bank, which are often referred to as
1 As of 14th of February, 2018. Nostro accounts. The problem with current setup is time and
2 All search results can be found at https://tinyurl.com/yb3pvbsa costing.

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 Due the relatively higher costs of business in inter banking will provide the details of this comparison using different
system, bankers are interested to see if blockchain technology criteria described in [14]. We have provided more in-depth
can simplify and reduce the cost for inter bank payments. (compared to [14]) analysis by considering different types
Some central banks such as the Monetary Authority of Singa- of consensus mechanisms (in V-D), and attack vectors (e.g.,
pore (MAS) and the Bank of Canada are working on solutions DDos (in V-C), 51% attack (in V-E)).
to use distributed ledger technology for interbank payments
A. Trust Building
[29], [30]. Ripple [24] , which is a crypto-currency, has
been proposed to provide global settlement network based on One of the most important features of blockchain technol-
blockchain. It has most impacted the traditional banking sector. ogy is immutability. The immutability is achieved by decen-
In fact this is the first kind of crypto-currency that bridges the tralized consensus mechanism. Each participating node takes
gap between the virtual currency market and the traditional part in a consensus mechanism to check whether any particular
banking sector. transaction is valid or not. Every node in the system has the
Critical Analysis same level of access (e.g., in terms of public blockchain)
and capability. This provides a solid foundation for building
• Blockchain has potential to be used for fast inter-bank
trust, because it democratize the whole system. In a traditional
payment transactions.
database, we have to rely on a single central authority which
• Performance is a vital in banking system. Blockchain in
controls who can do what in the system. This kind of system
its current form could not be able to handle the volume
is good when the party who controls the system is trusted and
of transaction in current banking system.
behaves honestly.
• However, a consortium could be built to create and
manage the crypto within that particular network. By this B. Confidentiality and Privacy
way the consortium can fix the price of that crypto for There is a misconception about blockchain is that data in
that network. blockchain is kept encrypted. However, this is not true. The
3) Health Care: In current health-care system, different data is digitally signed by the the transacting parties but not
providers keep record of their patients and they often cannot or by default encrypted. In fact, it is an open ledger system,
do not share their data with other providers. Health data is very where anybody can join and verify any transaction in the
private and the patients often have to blindly trust the health network. However, the privacy or confidentially of the partici-
care provider. In addition, accessing and sharing health record pating parties are kept by using public key cryptography. The
usually takes lot of admin time for the doctors and the patients. transactions reveal the transacting parties and the data in the
The vision of blockchain in health care system is to reduce the transaction (e.g., amount of coin in case of crypto-currency).
administrator time for the doctors so that they can spend more Recently, researchers are proposing strong anonymization us-
time with their patients and sharing of data. Researchers from ing cryptographic means such as Zero Knowledge protocol
MIT has proposed a blockchain based health record system [31].
called MedRec [2] which restores patients’ control over their
C. Robustness/Fault Tolerance
medical data. It links patient’s medical records from different
doctor’s database and allow the patient to share with any care Blockchain is a decentralized system and uses distributed
provider. computing mechanism to provide robustness and fault tol-
Critical Analysis erance. Data in the blockchain is stored distributedly. Each
participating nodes stores a copy of the blockchain. There-
• Health-care is fundamentally very complex and sensitive
fore, it can all types of cyber attacker that is relevant for
sector. Adaptation of technology is always very slow due
single point of failure. Attacks like Denial of Service (DoS)
to legislative requirements.
and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) are infeasible in
• However, interoperability and collaboration are very im-
blockchain network. If any particular node goes down or got
portant in this sector for service delivery and innovation.
compromised then other nodes can still continue the job.
Blockchain can be used to enable interoperability and
collaboration without compromising the security of the D. Performance
health care providers. Blockchain, specially bitcoin is notoriously slow. It takes
• Applying blockchain in health sector without rigorous 10 minutes to confirm a transaction in the network. This time
research and usability test could be catastrophic. For ex- could go up to 60 minutes if there is any soft fork [26] happens
ample, doctor’s access may get delayed due to scalability in the network. Traditional system database systems can be
issue of blockchain in a critical moment, which may designed to handle thousands of transactions per second. For
cause bad consequences. example Visa and Mastercard networks can handle 50,000
transactions per second. If the system administrator finds a
V. C OMPARISON BETWEEN B LOCKCHAIN AND DATABASE
performance bottle neck, he can replace or re-engineer the
T ECHNOLOGY
system to allow high volume of transaction.
Table I has summarized the comparison between database However, in terms of performance there are research going
and two versions of blockchain. In the following section, we on to improve the efficiency of the consensus mechanism.

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 TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF D IFFERENT A PPROACHES WITH O UR P ROPOSED A PPROACH

Issue BlockChain Central Database Advantage

Trust Building Can operate without any trusted party Need a central trusted party Blockchain
Confidentiality of Data (by default)All nodes have visibility of the data It restricts access to authorized person Database
Robustness/Fault Tolerance Data is distributed among nodes data is stored in central database Blockchain
Performance Takes time to reach consensus (e.g., 10 mins for Bitcoin) Immediate execution/update Database
Redundancy (by default)Each participating node has the latest copy Only the central party has copy Blockchain
Security (by default) Use cryptographic measures uses traditional access control Blockchain

Consensus algorithm like Ethash [27] and X13 [28] can come Start

to an consensus within 10 to 20 seconds.

Yes
No
Aretheremultiple
E. Security parties?

The security of blockchain comes, in part, from its adapt- No

Isthereanytrust
deficitamongparties?
ability. The more users the system has the more users can be
required to achieve consensus. In Blockchain protocol, a block Yes

will be accepted if 51% of the mining nodes agree. Therefore, Yes

Isthereanytrusted
thirdparty?
if 51% of the mining nodes are controlled by the malicious
users then an “invalid transaction” can be accepted as “valid No

transactions”. If there are enough people in the network, it No Shouldtherecordof

transactionsbe

seems impossible but it can happen. immutable?

In terms of traditional database, the state of the database is Yes

maintained by a central system. Access to the data is restricted Isscalabilitya
critical
requirement?
by the access control mechanism set by that system. This
No
system is vulnerable, if the system administrator of the system
is compromised. Useblockchain

VI. W HEN SHOULD WE USE BLOCKCHAIN ?

No Yes
Ispublicverifiability
From the above discussion, it should be clear that important?

blockchain is not a general purpose technology but should

Usepublic
be applied judiciously to reap its benefits. Figure 4 provides Useprivate
blockchain
blockchain

a simple decision flow control diagram that can be used by

the business analyst or system architect to decide whether No Yes No Yes
Isdatadurability Isdatadurability
blockchain should be used or not. important? important?

In general, blockchain technology is useful in those use-

cases where there are more than one administrative authority UseOffͲchain UseOnͲchain UseOffͲchain UseOnͲchain
UseDatabase storage
and there is a trust deficit among those parties. A typical storage storage storage

example could be a supply chain management system, where

multiple parties collaborate together to deliver goods. Another Fig. 4. Decision Tree to determine the use of blockchain
example could be a consortium of independent companies
working on a government project, where there is a trust deficit
between the parties. VII. A SSESSMENT OF E XITING U SE OF B LOCKCHAIN
Currently, if there is a trust deficit among the collaborative We have analyzed a sample of 100 papers among the
parties, they usually select a trusted third party which both 800+ papers surveyed from Scopus using our decision tree
parties trust. For example, both buyer and seller trust bank model (see figure 4). We have found that the majority of the
to transact money among themselves. However, sometimes 100 papers are theoretical papers related to core blockchain
finding a trusted third party is challenging or risk prone. technology. We have identified 34 papers which are related to
If all the criteria above match then we can say that use cases or their implementations. In our analysis, we have
blockchain is a beneficial technology for that use-case. How- found that among these 34 papers, 25 papers have used the
ever, now we have to decide whether we should use public blockchain appropriately (e.g., used the unique properties of
blockchain or private blockchain. If the stored value in the blockchain), whereas the used cases in the other 9 papers
blockchain needs to be publicly verifiable then we should use could have used traditional databases to achieve the same
public blockchain, whereas if the data is only for specific functionality.
parties then a private blockchain is a better choice because We have found that 9 papers out of 25 papers(which used
consensus mechanisms can be simplified. the unique properties of blockchain) are related to supply chain

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