Blockchain Versus Database: A Critical Analysis

TLDR

Bitcoin has attracted industry and academic interest, and its underlying blockchain technology—an immutable, distributed ledger using consensus and cryptographic mechanisms—raises questions about its fundamental differences from traditional databases. The authors conduct a critical analysis of blockchain versus database technologies through a literature survey and propose a decision‑tree diagram to guide practitioners and researchers in selecting the appropriate technology. The study surveys research where blockchain solutions are applied across scenarios, then develops a decision‑tree diagram based on that analysis. Applying the decision tree to a sample of existing works shows how appropriately blockchain solutions have been employed in their respective problem domains.

Abstract

In recent times, Bitcoin has gained special attention both from industry and academia. The underlying technology that enables Bitcoin (or more generally crypto-currency) is called blockchain. At the core of the blockchain technology is a data structure that keeps record of the transactions in the network. The special feature that distinguishes it from existing technology is its immutability of the stored records. To achieve immutability, it uses consensus and cryptographic mechanisms. As the data is stored in distributed nodes this technology is also termed as "Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)". As many researchers and practitioners are joining the hype of blockchain, some of them are raising the question about the fundamental difference between blockchain and traditional database and its real value or potential. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of both technologies based on a survey of the research literature where blockchain solutions are applied to various scenarios. Based on this analysis, we further develop a decision tree diagram that will help both practitioners and researchers to choose the appropriate technology for their use cases. Using our proposed decision tree we evaluate a sample of the existing works to see to what extent the blockchain solutions have been used appropriately in the relevant problem domains.