What is a Hybrid Blockchain and Why WinChain use Hybrid Blockchain to Support Large-scale Blockchain based Lottery?
As many starts to realize it’s not easy for a single blockchain to balance different characteristics, for example, decentralization, scalability, and security, new solutions like Hybrid blockchain starts to emerge. A hybrid blockchain usually consists of a public blockchain, and a private/consortium blockchain (or a permissioned network) that place restrictions on who is allowed to participate the network.
As its name suggests, a hybrid blockchain offers the benefits of both public blockchain and private/consortium blockchain. The private network generates the record of transactions which is stored and verified on the public blockchain. The benefits of the private or consortium blockchain include faster transaction speeds, data privacy, and a centralised control over providing access to the blockchain. This means Hybrid Blockchain is much better suited to highly regulated business, as it enables them to have the flexibility and control over what data is kept private versus what is shared on a public ledger, together with the operational needs of faster transaction, security and auditability features that are not available on public blockchains.
In the blockchain based lottery business, the operation of a large-scale national lotteries involves high volume of players and a large number of partners including game developers, lottery resellers, auditors etc. This creates a complex and the often-changing business network and compliance regulations require WinChain, the blockchain based lottery technology platform must be capable of dealing with this complexity.
With many years of lottery technology development experiences, Winchain team is fully aware of the challenges faced by today’s centralized lottery system. Since early 2017, Winchain starts to apply the blockchain technology into the lottery system and after a in-depth comparison of public blockchain, consortium blockchain, and private blockchain, WinChain decides to implement a hybrid blockchain system combining public blockchain and consortium blockchain together, the consortium part of the hybrid blockchain solution is used for transactions among game developers, resellers, auditors and other third-parties. It has a classic permissioned setup, where parties can view, transact, get reward and make changes based on permissions they are given. This network is fast, scalable and secure, the cost of transaction is also low. However, adding more parties and establishing their trust takes longer than on a public blockchain.
The public part allows any players to buy lottery tickets and put bets on a public network, with an easier process of trust establishment. Because public blockchain is completely open and desentralized, more people can participate in the lottery for prizes or rewards and they can be rest assured that the lottery they are playing with cannot be rigged, tampered, or cheated without consensus of the majority.
Similar to a large group of organizations can provide read-only access to their customers and write access internally and to suppliers to improve transparency of their processes, implementing a hybrid blockchain in lottery technology platform enables WinChain to grasp the benefits of both public and consortium blockchain and further optimize the lottery operating process accordingly.
