The most innovative and beneficial technology has shown many remarkable uses so far. Blockchain has unique advantages to other technologies, but it also has its downsides. Thus, it is essential to get to know all the disadvantages of this technology before naming it irreplaceable and everlasting. Many people claim that Blockchain is now overhyped, but this technology has certain limitations and is not efficient enough when it comes to many digital interactions. However, after a proper research and the analysis of success and failure, we can finally determine which are the current issues and limitations of Blockchain technology.
The weak points of Blockchain technology
Complexity
Blockchain technology introduced the entirely new terminology and vocabulary, which is the first disadvantage for something that has the intention to grow continuously. For example, imagine that there are five most significant programs that we used for decades with a very similar order of commands and same shortcuts, and then, we suddenly get the new one which is way better than the others, but it has different architecture, controls, and shortcuts. How would you feel?
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Even though Blockchain technology has made cryptography pretty mainstream, this highly specialized industry is still full of tech jargon. However, there were several successful efforts made to provide glossaries and indexes so we would understand it more accessible.
Size of the network
Just like all distributed systems, Blockchain is not so much resistant to wrong actions, so it responds to attacks and grows stronger. To be efficient in this, it requires a massive network of active users. The blockchain is a robust network with a widely distributed grid of nodes. There are many debates about whether it is a fatal move for some permission Blockchain projects.
Network speed and transaction costs
After first few years of existence and being named as a free currency, Bitcoin has some quite important transaction costs. From the end of 2016, it became possible to process only 7 transactions per 1 second, and each transaction costs around 0.20$, while it can just store 80 bytes of data.
Some also believe that there is also a politically supported aspect of using the Bitcoin Blockchain, not for transactions, but as a vast store of information. It means that it forces miners to constantly reprocess and rerecord the information on the network.
Human error
When Blockchain is used as a database, the information that goes into the database has to be of high quality. So, as the data stored on a Blockchain is not necessarily trustworthy, the events must be recorded very accurately above all. That's the point where Blockchain's system of record is not much better than the one of the centralized database.
Security flaw
There is no particularly notable security flaw in Bitcoin and other Blockchain-based systems. For example, if more than a half of the computers work as nodes to make the network give the incorrect information, that info will become the real info, the truth. When Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, he was warning people about this possibility, calling it a "51% attack". This is exactly the reason why Bitcoin mining pools are closely monitored by the network community to ensure that no one gains this kind of influence over the network.
Politics
As Blockchain technology offers the opportunity to digitize governance models, and as the miners are making another form of governance model, there were some huge disagreements in public, between different community sectors.
These disagreements are a feature of Blockchain technology, and they are mostly expressed around the question of "forking" the Blockchain, which is a process that involves updating Blockchain protocol when a majority of network users agree to it.
Just like all distributed systems, Blockchain is not so much resistant to wrong actions, so it responds to attacks and grows stronger.These debates can be quite technical sometimes, but at the same time, they are pretty informative for those who are interested to know more about the mix of democracy, consensus, and Blockchain technology's features in governance.
Conclusion
Regardless of these disadvantages, Blockchain technology still has more positive than negative sides, so it has a lot to offer to modern-day technology.
