Is Bluzelle a blockchain? This question comes up often. Blockchain is the hot technology right now, and the founders of the company behind the Bluzelle database are blockchain experts — but;

The short answer to the big question: No. And here’s why…

Bluzelle is not a blockchain. Blockchains, at the risk of giving a circular answer, are chains of blocks of data. Bluzelle is a database, and conceptually, not too different from common NoSQL databases. Blockchain data is immutable (can never be changed), and blockchains generally grow monotonically (some blockchains can be pruned). Blockchains also typically require some sort of proof in order to maintain integrity of the information contained within and reach global consensus, usually via proof of stake or proof of work.

The Bluzelle database came about as a result of years of work using blockchain and associated decentralized technology. Decentralized technology is a more generalized catch-all phrase for technologies that, like blockchain, have no central points of failure or governship. This is a key reason blockchains are very immune to attack and provide an extremely high level of reliability.

In using blockchain, the team at Bluzelle realized that while there is a strong need for decentralized databases, a blockchain is not akin to what is needed of databases. Bluzelle’s team realized that there was an opportunity to develop a database that uses blockchain-related properties to achieve decentralization, but has many departures from the rules that govern blockchains.

Bluzelle Database vs Blockchain

One of the key differences is that the Bluzelle database is mutable. Like any database, data can not just be inserted and searched upon but can also be updated or deleted. Data can also expire and it is upto the owners and users of the data to ensure the data remains “active”, either through usage or a sufficient paid service level.

Another key difference is replication. On a blockchain, every participating node has an exact copy of the entire blockchain. Put another way, all the data on the blockchain is on every node. Bluzelle shards data into swarms, where each swarm only stores portions of all the data.

One of the key similarities, on the other hand, is Bluzelle uses a swarm-level decentralized consensus model, comparable and similar in function to the consensus model that is backed by proof of work or proof of stake on most other blockchains. Bluzelle’s consensus is a modified version of RAFT, which is quite different from blockchain consensus models. A notable difference is Bluzelle’s consensus happens within each swarm. Bluzelle does not have network-wide consensus to manage its database data. This is intentional and key to the high performance required of a database.

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