Glenn_CostaRica
1. What benefits do blockchains provide in business-to-business collaborations?
As decentralized platforms where security, integrity and transparency are almost absolute, blockchains offer a solid set of benefits to organizations that need to keep business-to-business (B2B) interactions. One of these advantages ā a huge one ā is being able to conduct B2B transactions without the intervention of any third party. Any two businesses or more than two entities can keep all sorts of financial relations and communication, without worrying for approval from other entities. One more advantage is that you donāt even need to trust your counterparty if the business is conducted on a trustless Blockchain. If you have a business and you want to transact with some other organization, the Blockchain offers a higher degree of security, since you trust your decentralized code, not your business partner. You spend less time making sure that your partner is reliable, because the Blockchain is. One more advantage is complete transparency: in Blockchain-based businesses, parties can have total access to every single piece of data of the system all the time. Every movement, every transaction and every single rule of the operations is visible and is impossible to obscure. A decentralized Blockchain is an absolutely immutable and transparent database: no one can revert any previous action and no one can hide any single piece of data.
2. What property of a blockchain does the name āPermissionlessā refer to?
A truly open, public and decentralized Blockchain is inherently incapable of discriminating anyone who wants to use the system in a legitimate way, therefore, no permission is ever needed in order to participate in the system. No single human being and no group of people is in charge of organizing or managing the work of giving access to the system, of selecting transactions or of choosing who can transact and who cannot. No matter who you are, where you are or what you want, if you have the correct software and follow the basic rules of the network, you can be part of the platform. There exists no mechanism to deplatform you or your business ever either.
3. What are 3 examples of permissionless blockchains?
Some examples of permissionless blockchains are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tezos.
4. Who are allowed to join a permissioned blockchain network?
A permissioned blockchain allows to join only those members that are elegible according the central authority.
5. Why do you think permissioned blockchain networks are preferred by many companies?
A permissioned blockchain is a closed, non-public, more centralized and less distributed kind of ledger that can be, in a way, similar to permissionless blockchains. From the point of view of the user, superficially, this ledger might look very much the same while feeling even more convenient, as they could be faster and more efficient. However, a permissioned blockchain consists of a usually very limited number of nodes chosen and regulated by a central organization: this organization has the power over the system and can even, in most cases, add and eliminate nodes according to internal interests, hold almighty power to modify data or even shut down the network. Some companies would undoubtedly prefer to launch services or to establish B2B interactions on a permissioned blockchain, as they can be fully in control of the system all the time. In a private option, they can give enough privacy to their customers and users, they donāt need to worry about understanding cryptocurrencies in their chains as consensus derives from authority and, of course, they feel more comfortable without the immutability aspect that characterizes the public option.