Eternal Blockchain Of The Spotless Big Data

A huge hype is not slowing around blockchain. Presented as untapped gold, it was topic on Davos Global Economic Forum, received investments measured in billions in the last few years including from industry giants, with the creation of open source projects such as Hyperledger that gather biggest financial institution and industries in the world.

Blockchain is a distributed database system that acts as a “ledger” to store and manage transactions across a public or private computing network. Each record in the database is called a block and contains details such as the transaction timestamp as well as a link to the previous block. Every piece of this information is mathematically encrypted when added as a new “block” to the chain of historical records. Various consensus protocols are used to validate a new block with other participants before it can be added to the chain.

Furthermore, each computer node in the network holds a copy of this information, and information remains in the same state for as long as the network exists. This prevents fraud and makes it impossible for anyone to change information about the records retrospectively.

Despite the hype, it is still young technology with a lot of experimentation which did not prove scalability and provided the return of investment.

Big data is also one of the emerging technologies described as the new oil. It refers to large and complex structured or semi-structured data which cannot be processed through the traditional data processing systems and has the potential to provide extraordinary insights into many industries. Yet it has challenges like “dirty data” (duplicate or erroneous information), inaccessible data and privacy issues.

The questions naturally arise how these two technologies can be connected since both deal with data, and with undoubted advantages of blockchain starting with cryptographic security, immutability, decentralization, and transparency.

In this potential “marriage”, big data brings quantity and blockchain quality, big data involves predictions from a large amount of data while blockchain is validating data.

Reducing costs

Big data require huge infrastructure and storage and with the volume of transactional information that has to be additionally stored for many organization becomes a challenge. Standard cloud storage vendors are not a cost-effective solution for storing such extensive load of data. Often, a necessity of keeping multiple copies of data-sets in different locations further increases costs and burdens on financial resources.

Blockchain can be excellent alternative providing more economical solution and bring down the costs of storage to great extent.

Enhanced data quality — Data integrity

Blockchain can eliminate one of the weakest points of Big data, providing the control of dirty data.

Blockchain ensures validation process of data via decentralized consensus algorithm and cryptography making in that way almost impossible any kind of data manipulation.

Being a decentralized system means, there is no single person who holds control and it cannot be altered without the approval of everyone involved. Any change would require multiple signatures of authorized users at every level of access. To change or modify the blockchain rules, a majority of nodes must be pooled together to create a consensus. And if any node (or unit) that begins to act abnormally, can easily be identified and eradicated from the network.

Additionally, all transactions and updates taking place on the blockchain-based data resource can be traced, which provides important transparency of all actions.

In this way, blockchain increases accuracy and facilitates comprehensive analysis delivering rich and reliable insights.

Real-Time Data Analysis

Companies or any kind of organizations that require real-time analysis of data on the large scale can rely on a blockchain to achieve this. For example, banks and financial institutions can monitor changes in border transactions in real time and make it possible to make quick decisions, whether it is to block a suspicious transaction or track abnormal activities.

Facilitates data access

Streamlining the access to data is also one of the possibilities in which blockchain technology can enhance Big Data. Users across various departments within one organization can be a part of the blockchain in which they can find the data needed for the various analysis. Using blockchain in this context can reduce the time cycle of data access and analysis.

Uncovering Social Data

When the popularity of bitcoin increased, fluctuation of this virtual currency started due to market changes, real-world events and public attitude towards technology.

With these fluctuations, virtual currency became perfect “ground” for social data analysis and predictions. A major reason is that social media users and bitcoin users are in the same demographic. Second, unlike “real” currencies the value of cryptocurrencies is determined almost only by market demand and events that are disseminated on social media. And finally, bitcoins are traded by individuals rather than large institutions. These cryptocurrency trends are excellent for discovering very valuable demographic information which links cryptocurrency performance to world events.

Data exchange and sharing

Blockchain can be used to build data marketplace for secure, fast exchange and monetization of any kind of data and from any source, IoT devices, industrial machines, weather stations, physical assets, autonomous cars, drones, and many others.

Using “smart contract”, a set of conditions recorded on the blockchain so that transactions automatically trigger when the conditions are met, monetization of data can be simplified and completed without any intermediaries and complicated legal procedures. Furthermore, these platforms can go beyond data exchange and provide AI and machine learning that can be applied to the data on the fly.