Heavyweight players like Amazon and Microsoft dominate the cloud space with centralized databases. But an alternative decentralized system will help solve inherent problems in the existing system, according to Pavel Bains, CEO of Bluzelle, a start-up that uses blockchain technology to enhance the database ecosystem. Much like home-sharing platform Airbnb, Bluzelle allows users to rent out underused data capacity in everyday objects like computers and mobile phones, Bains said at CNBC's East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China on Thursday. The Singapore-based company, founded in 2014, implements the principles of blockchain technology to build decentralized databases. That is, to store data on many different data ecosystems instead of having everything in one host. The firm said that this method will bypass the scale and security issues traditional databases face.

"Right now, those cloud database providers (are) all centralized and it comes out with certain issues like scalability issues, security," Bains said, pointing to data breaches both U.S. company Under Armour as well as Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific experienced this year. The problem, he explained, is that there is too much data on a single network. "With a decentralized one, what it does is basically breaks up where everything is stored," Bains explained, likening it to smashing a plate, representing the dataset, into a thousand pieces, making it much more secure — a process called "sharding." This means that in the unlikely event hackers breach the database, they would possess only a "little piece of the puzzle, they can't take over the whole network," he said.

Data as a currency