Introducing ProvenDB
All of us at Southbank Software are very happy to announce the early adopter release of ProvenDB — a Blockchain enabled database service layered on MongoDB.
Everyone agrees that the Blockchain is a big deal
By now everyone is aware of the significance of the Blockchain. Forbes says that the Blockchain “is revolutionary and has the potential to revolutionise nearly every industry.” Gartner says that “the business value-add of Blockchain will grow to slightly more than $176 billion by 2025, and then it will exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030.” Goldman Sachs says that the Blockchain has the potential to “verify the authenticity of everything from property titles to organic vegetables.”
How does this affect Database Management Systems? Well, the Blockchain itself can be thought of as a special type of database. Unlike other databases:
- Transactions on the Blockchain are public.
- It’s distributed (not controlled by any central party).
- It’s Tamper Proof: Once confirmed, transactions cannot be altered.
- It has an immutable history: The full history of all transactions is preserved.
Immutability is the killer feature
Of all of the attractive features of the Blockchain, immutability may be the most revolutionary for database management systems. There is an old saying “history is written by the winners.” However, in database management systems, history is generally written by the database administrator or privileged database developer. In most databases, historical information is whatever the application or DBA says it is. There is no practical way to detect backdating or tampering with historical data.
However, there is no arguing with the Blockchain. As the Wall Street Journal said, “Trust is a foundational feature of the Blockchain as the data written into it is immutable, and can never be changed, modified or removed.” There is also increasing legal recognition of the validity of Blockchain data: the National conference of State Legislatures says that Blockchain legislation has passed or is pending in 21 US states.
Trust is a foundational feature of the Blockchain as the data written into it is immutable, and can never be changed, modified or removed — Wall Street Journal
A database management system that implemented the immutability and tamper protection offered by the Blockchain would be an incredible step forward.
The Blockchain is just too expensive to be used as a regular database
Unfortunately, when compared to a traditional database, the Blockchain has:
- Very high latency and low throughput (i.e., poor Performance).
- Limited storage capacity
- Anonymity but no Privacy
- No structured storage
- Very expensive transactions
- Poor developer productivity when building Blockchain applications.
All of the above limitations are significant, but none is more significant than cost. Public Blockchains are simply not designed to store structured data. Each Bitcoin transaction can only store 64 characters of arbitrary data. As a result, the cost of storing a gigabyte on the Bitcoin or Ethereum Blockchain would run to the millions of dollars.
It’s true that alternative Blockchains have been developed that address some of these concerns. However these “minor” Blockchains cannot offer the level of cryptographic proof provided by a large public Blockchain.
So we face a dilemma:
EITHER we use a traditional database and sacrifice immutability and tamper detection
OR
We use the Blockchain and sacrifice performance and economics
Having it both ways
ProvenDB lets you have it both ways. It is a fully functional database service — layered on MongoDB Atlas, which adds Blockchain integration to provide:
- Versioning of data: New data doesn’t overwrite old data — instead a new version of data is created.
- Immutability: Selected versions of data are “pinned” to the Blockchain and cannot be altered.
- Tamper detection: Any attempt to tamper with database records can be detected by blockchain technology.
- Point in time history: The state of the database at previous points in time is always available.
- Complete data provenance: You can view the complete history of changes to any data item.
Using ProvenDB, you can develop applications that use the Blockchain to prove ownership of intellectual property, prove the timestamps for legal instruments, prove that database records have not been falsified or tampered with, or maintain a complete track of document histories. ProvenDB can, therefore, serve as the basis for Document Management applications, legal and accounting systems, government and regulatory applications or audit and access control systems that wish to assert Blockchain cryptographic proofs.
Developing a ProvenDB Blockchain enabled application is as easy as developing any MongoDB application. Most MongoDB applications can migrate to ProvenDB with little or no changes to program code.
Sign up for the early adopter program
You can sign up for the early adopter program at provendb.com. You’ll get early access to our free tier service with 1GB of database storage. You can also checkout our document set which includes full details of ProvenDB commands as well as our administration and developer guide.
We hope that ProvenDB will be the basis for a next generation of Blockchain enabled applications. Please leave a comment below, engage us on facebook, twitter or email us at support@provendb.com we’d love to hear from you! Thanks for reading.
ProvenDB integrates MongoDB with the Bitcoin Blockchain. Immutable versions of database state are anchored to the Blockchain, delivering an unparalleled level of data integrity. ProvenDB allows MongoDB developers to build high-performance applications that include cryptographic proof of data integrity and provenance without having to understand blockchain programming complexities.
