Public or private blockchains

[highperspective]

As I understand, there is currently a bit of a battle going on between private and public blockchains. The battle is not obvious, but there seem to be some bigger corporations favouring private blockchains, as they get all the advantages of a blockchain, without having to decentralise the power.
On the other hand we have all the startups and companies within the public chains, that are favouring decentralisation and a lot of other advantages.
Personally I hope that public blockchains will be the most used in the future, although I am aware that both will be used no matter what. Question is, will the public blockchains be better that the private ones, fast enough to force the corporations to use the public ones, or will the private ones win the race.
What do you hope/think?

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[TommyZ]

Public and private blockchains have different use cases and they both will be widely used. Companies implement private blockchains the same way they implement private websites and any other private systems. It doesn't make them bad because they want some privacy, perhaps even protect their users.

Blockchain as any other software is just a tool. It's excellent solution for corporations that needs to share some data with other corporations and make sure they achieve a consensus. What is the point making it public?

On the other hand for informations that everybody should be able to verify, like ID, government tax spending(I can't wait for that one), public blockchain is perfect solution. Anyone can access and verify data.

There shouldn't be any fight between public vs private blockchain. It's all about use cases.

[DooMAD]

There shouldn't be any fight between public vs private blockchain. It's all about use cases.

If companies learned their lesson from the early days of the internet, then yes, there shouldn't be any fight.   However, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the only "use case" some companies would be capable of seeing is the profit they could generate if they successfully created a walled-garden the people would (for reasons beyond my comprehension) actually want to use.  It's likely they'll all fail eventually, though.  The only private chains remaining will be the ones with valid use cases.  All the ones that try to copy an open and permissionless chain and then strip out the open and permissionless aspects will learn that the hard way.

[HeRetiK]

As I understand, there is currently a bit of a battle going on between private and public blockchains. The battle is not obvious, but there seem to be some bigger corporations favouring private blockchains, as they get all the advantages of a blockchain, without having to decentralise the power.

[...]

That's the thing though. Decentralizing power is the main advantage of blockchains. Without this aspect a distributed database would also suffice for 99% of the use cases. Main question being -- what are the practical use cases of private, permissioned blockchains?

I don't think the benefits are quite clear yet. And even once concrete use cases are found and implemented, I doubt that private blockchains would have to compete with public blockchains or vice versa. Company intranet sites don't compete with the public internet, do they? In the end I don't think that private blockchains will find much use in the first place.

[Hexah]

Well, we are used to public and if even there private will keep in touch and be used by most of the people I think there is no harm to it. They can operate with one another as long as they do good in the world of crypto marketing.

[lionelho]

Why corporate needs to use public blockchain if the business is only among several partners? If the business is not for crowd, what's the advantage to use public chain?

[MoonJeina]

As I understand, there is currently a bit of a battle going on between private and public blockchains. The battle is not obvious, but there seem to be some bigger corporations favouring private blockchains, as they get all the advantages of a blockchain, without having to decentralise the power.
On the other hand we have all the startups and companies within the public chains, that are favouring decentralisation and a lot of other advantages.
Personally I hope that public blockchains will be the most used in the future, although I am aware that both will be used no matter what. Question is, will the public blockchains be better that the private ones, fast enough to force the corporations to use the public ones, or will the private ones win the race.
What do you hope/think?

This is quite undeniable that private blockchain gives a very fast access and transactions because  private blockchains are designed by some private /individual developers or organisation  so it becomes quite easy for them to work out some basic transactions and giving fast access . Where as public blockchains are bit slow because of the involvement of numerous other tokens and projects as well .
But i think public blockchains are still better options to operate . There is no guarantee if making your own private blockchain would be economical when you have no guarantee of success . Using Public Blockchains makes the process quite cost-effective and beneficial for the ICOs . Private Blockchain is only suitable for the the big names who have a big reputation and trust level in the market . Following a decentralized pattern will always give some benefits in the long run.                                     

[HeRetiK]

Why corporate needs to use public blockchain if the business is only among several partners? If the business is not for crowd, what's the advantage to use public chain?

That is exactly why I don't see public and private blockchains competing with one another in earnest.

Why would business partners use public blockchains for internal transactions vs why would the public use permissioned private blockchains for their personal transactions?

I personally still am curious to see whether private permissioned blockchains are even viable.

[Ucy]

Private Blockchain for Private Companies/Individuals, No problem! Private Blockchain for Government, very crazy idea.
Public Blockchain should be imposed on most Governments agencies.
If only citizens understand the importance of public Blockchain they will be on the streets protesting until most government activities become public. Government cannot continue to de-anonymize its Citizens while many of its activities are hidden.. . does not make sense at all.

Know Your Government (KYG) and Know Your Customers(KYC) more appropriate.
KYC is onesided and dangerous. A tyrannical government could use all the info to enslave its Citizens.


 Public Blockchain is the key.

[ismart1]

The blockchain is a technology for itself and the public and private blockchains are exactly it, each one serves its purpose. Blockchain does not mean coins anymore, are basically decentralized CPUs, so to speak. So corporations may use blockchain do decentralize and expedite its information exchange, low costs and it´s nobody business and does not have to be public. Public blockchain otherwise has its own purpose and serve communities. Both have their applications and they do not concur with each other.

[hopeAo]

As I understand, there is currently a bit of a battle going on between private and public blockchains. The battle is not obvious, but there seem to be some bigger corporations favouring private blockchains, as they get all the advantages of a blockchain, without having to decentralise the power.
On the other hand we have all the startups and companies within the public chains, that are favouring decentralisation and a lot of other advantages.
Personally I hope that public blockchains will be the most used in the future, although I am aware that both will be used no matter what. Question is, will the public blockchains be better that the private ones, fast enough to force the corporations to use the public ones, or will the private ones win the race.
What do you hope/think?

Public and private block chains have many similarities such as: 

•Both provide certain guarantees on the immutability of the ledger, even when some participants are faulty or malicious.
•Both are decentralized peer to peer network
•Both maintain the replica in synchronizing through a protocol referred to as consensus

While the only distinction between public and private blockchain is related to who is allowed to participate in the network, execute the consensus protocol and maintain the shared ledger.

A public blockchain network is completely open and is for anyone that wants to join and participate in the network. Bitcoin is one of the largest public blockchain networks in production today while the private blockchain network requires an invitation (permission) and must be validated by either the network starter or by a set of rules put in place by the network starter which places restrictions on whoever is allowed to participate in the network, and only in certain transactions.

[ericjarvies2]

Some chains simply cannot be entirely public.  As blockchain technology advances, and as the deployment and usage of multi-chain technology becomes more popular, we will see many system that employ a parent/main chain that is public, and child chains that are public, permission-based (meaning thier data is public, but the input of such is controlled), and those that are entirely private.

For example; In real estate, you have a number of players;

property owners (e.g.- general public)
buyers/sellers (e.g.- general public)
licensees (qualified/licensed/bonded/etc. professionals)
municipality/county governments (spatial/attribute land data)
province/state governments (assessment, taxation, registry, etc.)
professionals
etc.

In this scenario, if title conveyance is to be engaged, maintained, and preserved on/in a blockchain, a public blockchain would not work... not by itself anyways.  But, if permission-based chains are shared between the municipal/state governments, and private chains between property owners, licensees, professionals, etc., then a main/parent chain could serve as the final registry.  The data written to this public chain would be centralized, whist the chain itself would in fact be decentralized.  And this has to happen... it will not be practical writing the same type of data to multiple chains.

[Colorblind]

As I understand, there is currently a bit of a battle going on between private and public blockchains. The battle is not obvious, but there seem to be some bigger corporations favouring private blockchains, as they get all the advantages of a blockchain, without having to decentralise the power.
On the other hand we have all the startups and companies within the public chains, that are favouring decentralisation and a lot of other advantages.
Personally I hope that public blockchains will be the most used in the future, although I am aware that both will be used no matter what. Question is, will the public blockchains be better that the private ones, fast enough to force the corporations to use the public ones, or will the private ones win the race.
What do you hope/think?

I wouldn't completely agree that there is a battle going on. They (corporation) just tinkering with the tech, trying to find applications besides what BTC is used for currently. Intuitively it's easier to explain modern proposals as "private" blockchains, however all blockchain projects and proposals I saw have at least some decentralization in mind. Entirely controlled (100% centralized) block chain is nearly useless (because any modern database will beat it). AFAIK to date no application besides value (read money) transfer was launched live, only propositions that usually ends up with "Damn, it's much easier to do with SQL...".

[CryptoMath_TV]

In my opinion a public Blockchain is quite important in order to go confirm with local laws around the world.
If Cryptocurrency really want to change something, they shouldn't be illegal. Of course a private Blockchain isn't illegal you could argue now - but I am afraid that this could happen for obvious reasons in the future though.

[HeRetiK]

Some chains simply cannot be entirely public.  As blockchain technology advances, and as the deployment and usage of multi-chain technology becomes more popular, we will see many system that employ a parent/main chain that is public, and child chains that are public, permission-based (meaning thier data is public, but the input of such is controlled), and those that are entirely private.

You don't need a blockchain for that. A publicly accessible database, possibly including an easy to use public API, would serve the same purpose in this case.

[...]

In this scenario, if title conveyance is to be engaged, maintained, and preserved on/in a blockchain, a public blockchain would not work... not by itself anyways.  But, if permission-based chains are shared between the municipal/state governments, and private chains between property owners, licensees, professionals, etc., then a main/parent chain could serve as the final registry.  The data written to this public chain would be centralized, whist the chain itself would in fact be decentralized.  And this has to happen... it will not be practical writing the same type of data to multiple chains.

It's an interesting thought, but I don't think a mix of private and public blockchains is viable. Private blockchains could be made visible to the public without having to write the state to a public blockchain. Also if any private blockchain can write to the public blockchain, how would you prefer one private blockchain over another, ie. what happens if private blockchains try to push conflicting states on the public blockchain?

[neurotypical]

In the past couple of hours there were news of the president of Venezuela claiming to be creating a new cryptocurrency called "the petro" which would be a private blockchain that is backed by their oil reserves:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-03/petro-venezuelas-maduro-announce-launch-first-government-backed-cryptocurrency

This will be a good practical experiment in real life to see how private blockchains work. Of course I don't have much hope in they managing this properly given their track record, but it's worth paying attention to to see how it goes. This can only be positive for bitcoin in any case, the amount of headlines this is hitting is amazing, and they all mention bitcoin.

[kyxap]

I think it's no difference between public and private blockchains, because it's still decentralized, i can see only transactions, but not persons which sent this.