What constitutes a blockchain platform, its design goals, and how that should be assessed have been a source of passionate debate among experts. This can be confusing for technical professionals who must evaluate these platforms for real projects. In the absence of a reference functional framework or asking the right questions, it is hard to objectively assess a candidate blockchain platform. This challenge is exacerbated by continuously changing designs, with innovative and technologically diverse components.
The framework:
- is applicable to public and enterprise platforms as two common design patterns. Public platforms enable decentralization in ubiquitous digital ecosystems. Enterprise platforms implement a distributed ledger in multiparty business environments.
- takes into consideration that future blockchain platforms will go beyond basic capabilities. Next-generation platforms offer interoperability and usability functions to set up and run more reliable production-grade digital ecosystems. This is while the line between public and enterprise blockchain platforms will start blurring. That is through interoperability protocols or configurable features to operate chains in either public or enterprise mode.