IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2021 - 53

Column: Energy and Security

When Do We Need
the Blockchain?
Deepak Puthal
Newcastle University

Elias Kougianos
University of North Texas

Saraju P. Mohanty
University of North Texas

Gautam Das
University of Texas at Arlington

Abstract-The questions " When do we use the blockchain? " or " Where do we use the
blockchain? " or " Why do we use the blockchain? " look simple, but these questions
become complicated due to the increasing utilization of the blockchain. These days, it is
being explored as a standard security solution. The blockchain has unique properties, and
these are entirely different from other standard security or cryptography solutions. This
article gives a summary of the uses of the blockchain, while answering the above three
important questions.

& THE BLOCKCHAIN IS being actively explored to
ensure data and transaction security. Since it
stores the transaction data permanently in a
chain (i.e., a distributed ledger) and does not
permit anyone to edit either the data or the
chain after block acceptance, it provides tamperproof storage of historical data.1,2 Modifying the
data after storing it in the chain of blocks is not
permitted in the conventional, immutable blockchain. Each block stores the hash value of the
previous block, so any modification to a block
corrupts all of the following blocks in the chain.2

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2020.3015606
Date of publication 11 August 2020; date of current version
2 February 2021.

March/April 2021

Several applications required real-time auditing.
In the social media use case, where users regularly update their data, the blockchain may not
be appropriate for secure data storage. Any application that demands real-time auditing, or frequent modification of stored data should not use
the blockchain for data storage. In the latest technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT),
edge computing, and cloud computing deployed
for several applications (e.g., Smart Healthcare,
Smart City), there are always demands of both
user and data privacy.2 Also, social media applications need a certain level of user and data privacy. Are these applications suitable to use the
blockchain for data storage? No, because of the
blockchain technology's data transparency property. Any user in the network can visualize the

Published by the IEEE Consumer Technology Society

2162-2248 ß 2020 IEEE

53



IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2021

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