We all know that big data is a massive technology, which has been considered as a highly technical concept over the years. The modern era of the digital world has given full access to big data in order to lead the digital transformation of various industries and nations across the globe. Big data is not, just like that concept, it is an ocean of interesting data science methods to understand and to implement. As I said above, big data is already started to revamp many interests and platforms like artificial intelligence, e-commerce, IOT, Banking, Government, SCM, CRM, healthcare, DBMS, education, agriculture and more. Just like this, there is another huge technology creating a huge impact all over the world.
( i.e) “The Blockchain Technology”.
Just like big data, blockchain technology is also creating its master-level influence on more than 20 + industries including, banking, healthcare, education, finance, insurance, supply chain, and more across the world.
So today we are going to cover a huge concept, (i.e.) The knot between big data and blockchain. Also, we are gonna discuss how these two technologies are taking responsibility for the digital transformation of the world by exploring their powerful use cases together.
First of all, let us understand what is blockchain.
Blockchain – A Technology Powering Crypto Sphere
Blockchain, is a decentralized technology, powering the cryptocurrency world. In general, blockchain has been recognized as familiar distributed public ledger technology. Blockchain is a connection of individual virtual blocks, where each block is taking responsibility to store and access the information of cryptocurrencies & their transactions. Know more about blockchain technology here: what is blockchain technology
Blockchain has come to the limelight after the success of the popular cryptocurrency “Bitcoin”. Followed by bitcoin there are several altcoins have been invented in cryptocurrency, whereas all the new cryptocurrencies are made to underlie the public ledger technology of Bitcoin, that is blockchain. After that to get separated from Bitcoin, Ethereum has been introduced along with its own blockchain. Then, this kind of creating a separate blockchain for cryptocurrencies is continued to grow inside the blockchain network. After that, the powerful use case of blockchain has been made to take it out of the cryptocurrency industry and avails for industrial-level usability.
By recognizing this immense technology, industries and organizations have started to adopt it, in order to tighten their security, privacy, transparency, and accessibility inside a closed network. This paved the way for the emergence of Private blockchains. You can check out the most notable industries which are powered by blockchain here. 9 Industries that are distributed by blockchain.
Hope we have given enough introduction to the blockchain, so let us move to the next segment of this article where we are gonna discuss how blockchain and big data work together, where they actually get connected, what are the use cases big data in the blockchain, the impact of blockchain on big data, Big data challenges. big data blockchain projects,
Big Data In Blockchain
We all must have to understand both technologies are dealing with data. Blockchain is in terms of ensuring data storage, and privacy and hence increasing data integrity, whereas big data deals with data in terms of ensuring the data quantity, variety, and velocity in order to bring better predictions.
So simply we can say this,
● Big Data Ensures Data Quantity
● Blockchain Ensures the Data Quality
Quantity and Quality are very important when the handling of data is large and hence risky. So, the only place where these two technologies can meet each other is, if there is a need of ensuring both data quality and data quantity. Large-scale businesses like GAFA’s ( Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) are often facing inconveniences in data management, as they are in the control of huge data. So this kind of business are must have to deal with two big giants on time to ensure the security level of their business data and drive their business in the right direction with better predictions.
Big Data Challenges and How Blockchain Could Resolve the Challenges ?
In order to understand the impact of blockchain on big data, We just have to understand the challenges of big data. Just like every other industry, big data is also facing some technical challenges and looking for a better solution that could pave the way for it. Big data is already at the top of the superior-level technologies list, so in order to enhance such technology and drive it in a smooth manner, there must be another superior-level technology. So, while finding a way to resolve the challenges in the big data industry there is no way, only blockchain could be the pain killer for the risks in data science. So, the big data industry ought to incorporate blockchain for better data analysis.
Big Data Challenges
Security Challenge: Data are highly insecure when they are stored in a centralized server, so there is a big chance for data hacks to occur while we handling large amounts of data in central cloud servers.
You can check out the list of cyber security and data breaches that occurred in 2019.
Handling The Quantity: The word big data is enough to explain this, as the day passes, the floating of data attains exponential growth everywhere. This becomes a risk for enterprises to handle data in one single or multiple servers.
Identifying Malicious Data: As the data are in heavy in volume, it is very time consumptive to segmentize the dirty data and filter out the real data. This is like finding black paper in a dark room. According to a report by Kaggle in 2017 among 16,000+ data professionals, 49.4% of answers denoted that the biggest challenge of the data science industry is identifying the inclusion of dirty data (unwanted data).
Understanding The Type of Data : Big data is a collection of structured and unstructured data. In just 10 years we have gone through a massive digital growth. People are using smart devices, website and applications, hence this results in inefficiency of identifying what kind of data is, and segmenting it into a certain data panel.
Innovation of New kind Of Data analytics Tools and Software
As data are getting varied in volume, velocity, and variety, big data scientists have to adopt a big data tool that could be apt for handling a certain kinds of data sets. Check out the top 20 big data tools in 2019.
Meeting the Time frame
Data have to be handled on time because every second the world is generating billions of data in terabytes. So if we missed out a milli second the data will be dumped into existing data sets. According to big data analytics, it is very risky from the beginning, data analysts have to analyze data on time to bring better predictions.
Cost Management
Businesses have to invest a separate amount in order to set up a data warehouse and proceed with data acquisition, ETL, data validation, data modeling, data visualization and etc. Whenever the data floating increases it increases the cost of data Management.
How Blockchain Can Help In Big Data Challenges
Blockchain – A rescuer of big data risks and challenges, we have listed around 7 big data challenges above, but the most important challenges are Security, Handling the Quantity, and Identifying Malicious Data. If we can sort out these 3 challenges, then we can easily overcome the other challenges. Blockchain is found to be the remedy for fulfilling big data with security, quantity, and dirty data identification.
Blockchain can create fruitful relationships with big data in the following ways
1. Security – This is the top asset of blockchain ever. Data inside the blockchain are non tamperable
2. Transparency In Tracking – The other biggest challenge of data analytics is unable to find the origin of a data. The increased transparency nature of blockchain can easily find from where a data started to flow.
3. Data are Stored in a Decentralized Environment – No chance for hacking, as the data are stored in a distributed decentralized server. So there is no chance to hack data, without getting validated by each node.
4. Flexibility In Handling Various Data – Blockchain Doesn’t restrict data in terms of its type, it can store and hold any kind of data.
So by combining all these primary natures of blockchain, it could create a fruitful relationship with big data.
Reference: blockgeeks
Blockchain Use Cases In Big Data
Blockchain is adding kind of characteristic for data while proceeding data analytics process. It results in Blockchain generated big data, which is secured, and can’t be hacked as it is tightened with network architecture. Blockchain-based big data is become more valuable as it can easily differentiate structured and unstructured data.
Reference: towardsdatascience.com/blockchain-and-big-data-the-match-made-in-heavens-337887a0ce73
1. Blockchain ensures Data integrity and hence trust
As blockchain goes through a detailed verification process in order to store data, it ensures the data quality and integrity
2. Ensures data security
It is impossible to possess a data hack inside the blockchain networks, as the entire network verifies the data with a certain consensus algorithm.
3. Increases Computational power in predictive analytics
As blockchain integrates structured data in one place, it becomes easy to compute the data and bring better insights.
4. Real-Time Data Analysis Becomes possible
As blockchain provides fast and real-time processing access to the data, enterprises adopt blockchain to proceed with real-time cross-border transactions.
5. Provides access to data sharing
As data stored in the blockchain is accessible to everyone, it prevents data processing teams to proceed with data analysis on already analyzed data and reusing them.
Blockchain in Big Data: Future Statistics
According to InfoWorld, the worth of the blockchain ledger could be nearly 20% of the total big data market in 2030 and will cultivate a massive $100 billion as annual revenue.
Reference: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3203748/what-can-be-uncovered-when-big-data-meets-the-blockchain.html
Real life example of Big data with Blockchain
In japan banking sector they have made a consortium along with the involvement of 50 banks and have made an arrangement by prioritizing the Ripple cryptocurrency. They have remodeled their entire traditional banking system by capitalizing ripple with blockchain technology. This incorporation of banks in blockchain can produce a vast amount of data. Japan’s banking sector has made special concerns in order to lighten the data efficiency in transactions. Reference: https://bigdata-madesimple.com/introduction-to-blockchain-technology-and-what-it-means-to-big-data/
Other Big Data Blockchain Projects You Should Know
1. Storj
2. Filecoin
3. Omnilytics
4. Datum
5. Rublix
6. Provenance
Conclusion
Hope we have covered a variety of information about big data in blockchain, Also we have understood the use cases of big data with blockchain. The intersection of these two giant technologies sure will take a deep part in digitizing the world in the future.