Blockchain

Blockchain as a service (BaaS)

2 min read

With Blockchain technology sweeping across the tech industry in recent years, many enterprises attempt to figure out how to use distributed ledger technology to be more time- and cost-effective. Blockchain-as-a-service is a golden treasure that is eyed by many international corporations, especially those in the finance and banking industry.

What is BaaS? Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) is when an entity or tech company sets up all the “blockchain tech” and blockchain-connected nodes. It incorporates a multitude of features that cover every potential need in the blockchain space, so they can offer blockchain services to other companies. Enterprises can, therefore, use the cloud infrastructure to reduce the irritating back-end work of blockchain development.

  • What does Blockchain-as-a-service do?

What does Blockchain-as-a-service do? Before unraveling the role of Blockchain-as-a-service, it is crucial to distinguish between “public blockchain” and “private blockchain”.

With distributed ledger technology, blockchain serves as a digital spreadsheet or ledger that keeps records in a transparent way with no central data storage. Bitcoin is a classic example of a public blockchain. People residing in any part of the world can easily look up a Bitcoin transaction and access information on the public ledgers. But in case you don’t know, Blockchain can be owned jointly by the public as well as privately owned.

The emergence of BaaS can be attributed to the growing investments in private blockchain development by different enterprises. The privatization of blockchain, as its name suggests, means that access is only granted to that particular company.

What does a private blockchain do? With a private blockchain, any transaction can be transferred to and synchronized with the ledger, which guarantees transparency, encryption, and security. What’s more, the transactions conducted through private blockchain are speedy with almost zero transaction fees, which is of great benefit to the internal operations of the financial and banking institutions.   

For example, tech giant Microsoft provides BaaS through Azure. Another giant IBM also provides blockchain-as-a-service platform services. IBM Blockchain Platform made tens of thousands of lines of code available to the Hyperledger Project to help developers easily build secure distributed ledgers, and banks, in particular, speed up processing business. A new platform is built to facilitate the normally time-consuming cross-border payments and settlements, elevating the efficiency of financial transactions.

  • What are some of the providers of BaaS?

The development of private blockchain is hard to master, which creates immense opportunities for tech giants such as Microsoft, IBM, and Baidu. In recent years, they have started developing their own application development platforms to provide BaaS services to other corporations. Such platforms provide end-to-end solutions for an easy setup and management of blockchain nodes, so the corporations need not reinvent the wheel.

Blockchain technology is bound to change the way a business functions. With the growing potential of Blockchain-as-a-service, IT talents with blockchain skillsets are certainly in high demand. Check out one of our courses and make a leap in your career!


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