Frequently asked questions about Jingtum Blockchain

1. How reliable is Jingtum blockchain?

Our public blockchain has run for more than 3 years 5 month until today, it could be seen from Jingtum blockchain explorer. With 10 seconds confirmation time, and block height, the running time can be easily calculated, which is longer than 90% of blockchain projects.

The platform robustly supports enterprise applications. Jingtum co-operated with Global 500 company in 2015 and also helps a lot of small businesses to join the network, which solves multi trust issues and realize value connectivity.

2. What is the advantage of a blockchain based solution versus a cloud-based solution?

The main difference focused on the cloud-based data management and blockchain since blockchain is basically a decentralized data storage system.

• The blockchain is decentralized, which means it is not controlled by a certain party, the data would be affected by centralized risk, e.g. politic reasons, fraud, natural disaster, etc.
• The blockchain is much safer, could rarely be hacked, theoretically, it is possible, but very hard.
  There is smart contract in Blockchain system, which offers more functionality, and bring the vulnerability in.
• Blockchain may track all the history, even it has been hacked, data never lost.
• Concerning writing speed, cloud storage is much faster

The more related article could be found on the internet. like Comparing blockchain and cloud services for business process execution by Rimba, Paul, et al.


3. Jingtum Blockchain is based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance, how secure is BFT compared with POW or POS?

There are some articles addressed in that:
BFT with POS
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQs#how-does-proof-of-stake-fit-into-traditional-byzantine-fault-tolerance-research
https://blog.cosmos.network/consensus-compare-tendermint-bft-vs-eos-dpos-46c5bca7204b
https://medium.com/@pavelkravchenko/consensus-explained-396fe8dac263

In our opinion,

• The POW or POS network is more public, and they are basically permissionless blockchain system, mean everyone could join in writing the blockchain. Whereas the BFT is permissioned blockchain, only the accredit node could join the consensus.
• Theoretically, the tolerance for bad nodes in BFT is 1/3, and 51% of the working ability in POW, and 51%of the stake in POS.
• Proof of work algorithms and chain-based proof of stake algorithms choose availability over consistency, but BFT-style consensus algorithms lean more toward consistency;

4. Can other blockchain users interfere with our application e.g. by causing a high transaction volume?

It happens in Ethereum, because it is POW system and the TPS (transaction per seconds) is low (below 100 per seconds), our system is BFT, as far we have 31 validating node (block producer), and the basic TPS is 3000–4000 per seconds, it is even harder for people to affect our blockchain by high transaction volume.

5. Is there a limit on storage capacity?

Yes and No.
No for the number of transactions.
Yes for the size of each transaction, we manually set a threshold for the maximum data stored in each transaction, the snippets of data could be saved here, in the future, Jingtum will integrate with IPFS solutions, so the big files could also be stored into blockchain.

But:

• It is not needed to save the data on the blockchain. For example, in an Access Control System, the data is controlled by the user with the user’s own device, user send it to the lock by p2p communication (like Bluetooth), only the hash should be stored on the blockchain, lock compare the data and the hash on the blockchain, then it is enough for it to validate the user.
• It is public to save all the data on the blockchain since all the transactions are public. Only if you want to broadcast or publish some data, for example, some people put their marriage vow or oath onto blockchain. Everyone could see that data if they know the transaction identity.

6. Can a blockchain be hacked and can TX data be stolen?

Hack: Theoretically Yes.
TX data were stolen: the hash is public on the blockchain, so itis not the problem of the blockchain, it related to how the user protects their device and address data.

In addition: To improve the security, private blockchain network, i.e. all the permissioned node are controlled by the owner, may help:

• The security could be ensured by another layer, on this private blockchain, only the authorized user can access it, e.g. with a certain account and password like in traditional network.
• All the nodes store data (even the hash data) the all the statistics are controlled by the blockchain owner.
• It cost more if a customer wants to build it for improving the security, the owner may want to have lots of servers. Jingtum Blockchain currently has 31 nodes.

7. How can we assure the privacy of our clients? (General Data Protection Regulation <GDPR> / Datenschutz-Grundverordnung <DSGVO>)

Jingtum blockchain offers ways to address the problem.

• We clarify it in our terms and conditions, we will not store even any related data from a user.
• The user data is only used for compliance and KYC reason.
• For public blockchain, if a user stores the hash rather than the data into a transaction, any party won’t know the information since only the hash is exposed and it was just a combination of meaningless characters.