There is a lot of excitement in the technology industry today, around blockchains, and related technologies. One such related technology is the Bluzelle Cache, Bluzelle Networks’ flagship product. But there is typically confusion around what is a blockchain, and whether or not related technologies are themselves blockchains or not.

What is a blockchain?

To get started, let’s briefly touch on what is a blockchain. A blockchain is a growing database of records, with each record being a new “block”, that gets appended to the chain, with the unique properties that all data is immutable and therefore immune to tampering. A blockchain is run by a network of servers (also known as nodes). The architecture of this network and the large number of nodes on the network ensure that the blockchain is immutable and protected from changes, by using “consensus”. Consensus is a means by which all these nodes intercommunicate, to come to a collective democratic decision on what new records should be added to the blockchain, implicitly also protecting the integrity of already-existing records.

What is blockchain? (Image credit to Coinmama.com)

Each node is “equal” in voting power and is expendable, so nodes can come and go. The equality and expendability of nodes is what makes the blockchain “decentralized”. The idea behind decentralization is the ability to have a group of arbitrary servers/nodes that can collaborate to run a network, including making collective decisions, in a fair way that doesn’t require central power authorities or any implied or explicit forms of trust between these nodes. Blockchains can therefore form and operate based on crowdsourced resources, without any organizations behind them.

What is Bluzelle Cache?

Bluzelle’s key service is also similar to the blockchain — to provide a database of records that are also immune to tampering. Bluzelle acts as a cache for key-value pairs. Being a cache, Bluzelle provides some of the key attributes that differentiate a cache from a database, such as data expiry and eviction.

Bluzelle Cache in fact was inspired by many blockchain concepts but is nonetheless, fundamentally different from a blockchain. Bluzelle consists of swarms. Each swarm is a network of nodes, each of which is equal in voting power and is expendable, much like the blockchain. Each swarm is mutually exclusive, meaning that the data on a given swarm is not found on any other swarm. Each swarm consists of nodes that are strategically located to provide edge caching values to customers of the cache. Like blockchains, Bluzelle swarms can form and operate based on crowdsourced resources, without central power authorities.

Each swarm is a decentralized collection of arbitrary nodes that participate in Bluzelle’s own flavour of consensus, to determine what new changes should apply to the network.

The opposites

Despite all the similarities, Bluzelle is fundamentally very different from a blockchain.

Permanent vs Temporary . Blockchains are by definition immutable. Once data is written to a blockchain, it is permanent and can never be changed or removed. Indeed an update can be recorded, or even a flag that the data has been marked deleted, but the original data itself always remains. Bluzelle, on the other hand, is mutable, by design. Being a cache, Bluzelle showcases the fact that data stored to it is temporary, and therefore transient in nature. As a cache, the data on Bluzelle can expire or be evicted by the network, automatically. Existing data on Bluzelle can be removed or updated, by the data owner, such that there is no trace of previously-recorded information. This difference is critically important — blockchains are permanent data stores but Bluzelle is specifically a temporary data store. In an era of data privacy concerns and laws like GDPR, the importance of being able to control the lifespan of data cannot be overstated.

. Blockchains are by definition immutable. Once data is written to a blockchain, it is permanent and can never be changed or removed. Indeed an update can be recorded, or even a flag that the data has been marked deleted, but the original data itself always remains. Bluzelle, on the other hand, is mutable, by design. Being a cache, Bluzelle showcases the fact that data stored to it is temporary, and therefore transient in nature. As a cache, the data on Bluzelle can expire or be evicted by the network, automatically. Existing data on Bluzelle can be removed or updated, by the data owner, such that there is no trace of previously-recorded information. This difference is critically important — blockchains are permanent data stores but Bluzelle is specifically a temporary data store. In an era of data privacy concerns and laws like GDPR, the importance of being able to control the lifespan of data cannot be overstated. Scale . Blockchains keep data forever, which means the blockchain database will grow without bounds. Imagine data added to a blockchain ten years ago. That data will still be in the blockchain today and will be there ten years from now. That blockchain’s database size will continually grow monotonically. Bluzelle is designed to automatically manage and appropriately throw data out, as needed. Therefore, the size of Bluzelle’s database very closely matches the exact current data needs of its users. So contrasted with a blockchain database that will grow without bounds, Bluzelle’s database will scale up and down to match demand. This is a more practical approach, given the dubious value of data that might be years or decades old.

. Blockchains keep data forever, which means the blockchain database will grow without bounds. Imagine data added to a blockchain ten years ago. That data will still be in the blockchain today and will be there ten years from now. That blockchain’s database size will continually grow monotonically. Bluzelle is designed to automatically manage and appropriately throw data out, as needed. Therefore, the size of Bluzelle’s database very closely matches the exact current data needs of its users. So contrasted with a blockchain database that will grow without bounds, Bluzelle’s database will scale up and down to match demand. This is a more practical approach, given the dubious value of data that might be years or decades old. Lifecycle . Blockchains operate on the basis of blocks. A blockchain’s new data records are not “final” until a block has been accepted by the entire blockchain, and this can take from several seconds to many minutes, depending on the blockchain’s design. Even if there is no new data from clients, new blocks happen regardless, and get added to the chain, even if they are trivially empty. Bluzelle does not have a concept of blocks. There is no collection of new transactions that fit into a block that gets added to the chain because there is no chain in a swarm. Rather, each Bluzelle swarm is its own state machine, with new data, changes, expiries, and evictions simply being changes to this state machine. Bluzelle therefore operates on a just-in-time basis, reacting to transactional requests instead of operating on the basis of regularly-timed discrete blocks.

. Blockchains operate on the basis of blocks. A blockchain’s new data records are not “final” until a block has been accepted by the entire blockchain, and this can take from several seconds to many minutes, depending on the blockchain’s design. Even if there is no new data from clients, new blocks happen regardless, and get added to the chain, even if they are trivially empty. Bluzelle does not have a concept of blocks. There is no collection of new transactions that fit into a block that gets added to the chain because there is no chain in a swarm. Rather, each Bluzelle swarm is its own state machine, with new data, changes, expiries, and evictions simply being changes to this state machine. Bluzelle therefore operates on a just-in-time basis, reacting to transactional requests instead of operating on the basis of regularly-timed discrete blocks. Speed. While intimately related to lifecycle, the speed and performance characteristics are very different between Bluzelle and the blockchain. The blockchain is expected to be a reasonable slow moving, bulky, and expensive data store that is suited for purposes of storing extremely-long lasting and/or highly secure data. The developer who stores to the blockchain knows they are not working with a real-time product and therefore uses the blockchain in appropriate use cases where performance matters less and immutability is key. Bluzelle exists precisely for the opposite purpose — extremely high speed, at the edge, where every millisecond matters, and where immutability is literally a hindrance, in favour of data almost always transient by nature.

In closing

On the surface, both Bluzelle and the blockchain are decentralized data stores. But once you look past this, they are fundamentally different, ranging from mutability vs immutability to the scale of their data footprints to the very different flows of their lifecycles. As a result of this, they each bring very different value propositions to software. Blockchains act like a source of truth for specific data types that need to be kept permanently, even if with great cost. Bluzelle is a high performance cache that uses some of the same decentralized concepts as the blockchain to guarantee integrity, but combines these with caching principles to bring a lot of the values of the blockchain, to provide a disruptive new edge data cache product that is vastly superior to incumbent caching products.

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