You have drawn my attention. The concept seems to be well thought out. However, why exactly do you need blockchain technology for this purpose? Thinking on a high level, you could build a well secured database that is fast to search in, and can anonymize research data.
Hello, thank you very much for your feedback. We conceived this concept due to the challenges faced while performing our research. it is true that such an application could be implemented with a centralized system. However, decentralization is the only way to ensure the data is not manipulated, and all information is pubblicly available in a platform that can't be influenced by the will of any particular entity or government.
Decentralization is essential to hand over administrative authority from central institutions managing the data, such as governments and private entities, to the collectivity. In fact, if the database is controlled by one single entity, being it a private entity or government, it means that such entity has total control over the database, and such control can be influenced by personal conflicts of interests. Therefore, decentralization is the only way to ensure that scientific data become public property.
In addition, in terms of costs, creating an infrastructure ensuring the same level of data integrity protection of a smart contract deployed on the Etherum blockchain, which is basically impossible to compromise, and most importantly, maintaining such a platform up and running, would simply not be feasible.
