5 challenges blocking the way of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology promises to bring the massive revolution in many fields of the present society. Its decentralized format is the true strength of Blockchain technology that frees the society from the disadvantages of the centralized control system that promotes monopoly of rights and resources. However, the technology still has a number of challenges that need to be resolved in order to extract the maximum benefits of blockchain technology. Here are a few of such challenges:

Slow Speed of verification and validation

The speed matters a lot when we talk about technology. However, the Blockchain technology is actually slower than the present system of verifying or validating the transactions.

• The bank doesn’t need more than a few seconds for verifying the client’s transactions. Blockchain, however, requires comparatively much more time for the verification process as every network node should consent in order to validate a transaction.
• So, basically, the validation process requires a significant number of nodes to agree that significantly delays the transaction.

Miners can misuse it for vested interests

Another major factor is the key price of validating a specific transaction that can encourage the miners to abandon a number of transactions without solving them. The verification process involves a quiz based system that is actually too intricate for a common computer to solve.

• The miners who successfully solve the quiz get the incentives. It will compel the money mined investors to look for the “easiest quiz” rather than pursuing to solve a more intricate equation!
• It simply means that the number of transactions abandoned due to the complexity level will be higher and that reduces the total number of transactions completed.
• It leaves the unresolved empty blocks (or quizzes) that further complicate the validation for the next series of miners.

The miners may not publish the solutions

The solutions have a corresponding value to it and it can influence the decision of miners to publicly show the solutions. Many miners are also tempted to not publishing the solution after they have successfully validated a block- solely for their selfish motives.

• This practice diminishes the potential of the network as a whole as the best part of the network is not able to perform well due to the lack of the valid solution.

The ever-increasing size of the blockchain

Each time a new block is created it adds to the overall size of the Blockchain. It inflates the bock chain history. For taking part in the network validation ever node has to store the complete blockchain history as per the rules.

• Within a span of 1 year (2016-2017) the Block chain’s total size had almost doubled while the single transaction size does not exceed just a few bytes.
• As the history will increase with each block the overall load on each participating node of the blockchain will significantly increase. That will be a very tricky concern in the future and can also affect the overall efficiency of Blockchain.
• Whether or not the blockchain size should be increased is one of the major yet unresolved debates. The bigger size of blocks discourages a number of individual miners and thus helps in maintaining a manageable size.
• However, many experts opine that it can also affect the decentralized and uniform model of Blockchain technology.

The problem of sufficient space

There is a finite availability of space on the public blockchain that proves to be insufficient as the amount of transactions escalates beyond the modest volume. As a solution, the transactions with a higher price tag attached to them are treated on a priority basis.

• For getting maximum profit the miners put the high-fee transactions first.
• However, many people have the notion that this particular practice is discriminatory and can eventually affect the healthy growth of Blockchain as a tool to enhance the uniform, decentralized format of the transaction with equal access to all. 

Conclusion

Blockchain technology has the stamina to bring the positive changes the society. The decentralized model of Blockchain encourages the larger population to actively participate in the processes that promote transparency and accuracy. However, there are still a number of challenges that limit the capabilities of Blockchain technology. This article highlights such challenges that are preventing the Blockchain from delivering its best performance. Once these challenges are resolved the blockchain can truly revolutionize many fields of the society.