Blockchain Data Structure

Question

I am looking for a general view on blockchain technology in the terms of data management and structure to put on chain, my objective is to have as much data as possible legally to be on the chain to perform data analysis/visualisation, business intelligence etc.

AFAIK blockchain is known ( or want to be known at least ) as the source of truth for data that is shared upon multiple parties, tending to this there is some Privacy Data Acts to protect individual data points of any individual, adding on there is multiple encryption techniques to be performed on the chain for encryption.

Now if everything we would put on the chain is encrypted in a way how can it be related back to the 'source of truth' that we are trying to get adding on legal constraints available where do we draw the line on this? My Question would be then how do we structure the data to be placed on chain and what cryptography methods is recommended?

Answer 1

Traditional Blockchains are a ledger and are good for storing transactional data, smart contracts(code that is stored at a certain address on the chain that can be activated), or storing on chain permissions/access. Access to data on the chain can vary. All users can view your transaction history, the main privacy there is that no one knows your address. After that smart contracts can provide a greater window of privacy by limiting users by their public private key addresses.

The issue though is that once something is deployed on a blockchain you can never take it down. That means if that encryption method is ever broken our you passwords/public-private keys are compromised, the data you stored up there is public information forever.

If you are using a traditional blockchain I would, based on personal experience, suggest you use the chain to manage your data, but store your data off the chain for now. This field is still new, and I would take a bigger look at decentralized technology in general. There are many decentralized options which may better suit your needs than the standard blockchain. Distributed Hash Tables(DHT) and IPFS are both decentralized data storage solutions that may make more sense for you to use, for example.