Demerits of blockchain technology
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Demerits of blockchain technology
One of the major weaknesses or rather demerits of blockchain technology is lack of scalability. Despite the fact that the bitcoin initiative is one of the most successful ventures in the world by the number of users or subscribers, only a few people, that is, one in a thousand actively uses it. Given that it is sluggish in terms of the processing speed, there is less likelihood that it will have its number of users increased. When compared to visa, this kind of technology can process so many transactions in a split of a second, though at a higher cost. Therefore, the fact that blockchain technology is slow is what makes it lose scalability in that many people are not so much attracted to subscribe to it (Attaran, & Gunasekaran, 2019).
Apart from that, the other disadvantage of blockchain is that it can be horribly inefficient. Most of the high-grade blockchain networks store a whole transaction history. For example, taking an example of the bitcoin base, this can store up to 100GB, which is the substantial proportion of the storage capacity of a laptop or a smartphone. For one to store blockchain data, this has to be downloaded. Besides, for a transaction in blockchain to be completed, there needs to have some sort of verifications for the payments to be sent or received, and this can take days or even weeks (Yano, Dai, Masuda, & Kishimoto, 2020).
Last but not least, blockchain is associated with the challenge of brain drain. More than 80% of the developers are moving abroad for better opportunities. This is due to the lack of existence of a robust network of blockchain technology. For instance, it is noted that most developers of the technology are now moving to regions that offer incentives such as tax-breaks as well as e-residency for startups. Such a move has discouraged the growth in blockchain technology in areas in which they were first initiated with hope that they will revolutionize the world.
References
Attaran, M., & Gunasekaran, A. (2019). Applications of blockchain technology in business
: Challenges and opportunities.
Yano, M., Dai, C., Masuda, K., & Kishimoto, Y. (2020). Blockchain and cryptocurrency
: Building a high-quality marketplace for crypt data.