Blockchain-as-a -Service

What is Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS)?

Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) allows businesses to use cloud-based solutions to build, host and use their own blockchain apps, smart contracts and functions on the blockchain infrastructure developed by a vendor. Just like the growing trend of using Software-as-a-service (SaaS) where access to the software is provided on a subscription basis, BaaS provides a business with access to a blockchain network of its desired configuration without the business having to develop their own Blockchain and build in-house expertise on the subject.

How Does the BaaS Model Work?

When an organization (customer) signs up for a Blockchain as a Service contract with an IT partner, they essentially enter into an agreement whereby the BaaS partner agrees to set up all the necessary Blockchain technology and infrastructure for the customer for a service fee defined in the contract agreement .The Blockchain as a Service partner or provider deploys the essential resources and leverages the required technology and infrastructure to set up and maintain Blockchain connected nodes on behalf of the customer.

Cost Analysis: BaaS Offering vs Self-Hosted Blockchain

When it comes to analyzing the cost of Self-Hosted Blockchain App, the total cost of ownership is expected to be high because of start-up costs (infrastructure, personnel, software, licensing, hardware, consulting and more), retirement costs (decommissioning of server racks) and operational costs (monitoring, cost per transactions, bandwidth expenses).It can cost upto hundred thousand dollars. While a blockchain application hosted in the cloud as a part of the BaaS offering can be bought for around USD 0.29 per allocated CPU hour. It means you will have to pay as you go, i.e., you need to pay for only the units of services used.

World’s Largest Blockchain-as-a-Service Enterprises-

Amazon Web Services Features-

Features-

• Fully Managed.
• Supports Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.
• AWS Key Management Service to secure Hyperledger Fabric’s CA (Certificate Authority).
• Uses Amazon QLDB technology to manage augmented ordering service.

Microsoft Azure-

Features-

• Supports Multiple Blockchain Frameworks, including Quorum, Corda, Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.
• Easy Deployment with Azure CLI, Azure Portal or Visual Studio Code with Azure Blockchain Extension.
• Built-in Consortium Management to manage members of the network.
• Complete Monitoring and Logging

SAP’s Cloud Platform Blockchain-

Features-

• Cloud Deployment.
• Monitoring of blockchain data in real-time.
• SAP Cloud Platform for Blockchain allows to prototype, build and test smart contracts and blockchain.

R3-

Features-

• Easy cloud-based deployment and quick setup of nodes with Docker.
• Built-in blockchain application firewall to provide additional security.
• R3’s Interoperability feature allows developers to operate with more than one application at a time.

Infura-

Infura provides the tools and infrastructure that allow developers to easily take their blockchain application from testing to scaled deployment — with simple, reliable access to Ethereum and IPFS.

Why should I use Infura?

There are many pain points for blockchain developers that can be solved by Infura. Here are a few examples:

Blockchain applications need connections to peer-to-peer networks which can require long initialization times. It can take hours or days to sync a node with the Ethereum blockchain and can use more bandwidth and storage than you had planned.

It can get expensive to store the full Ethereum blockchain and these costs will scale as you add more nodes to expand your infrastructure. As your infrastructure becomes more complex, you may need full-time site reliability engineers and DevOps teams to help you maintain it.

Infura solves all of these problems by providing infrastructure and tools that make it quick, easy and cost-effective for developers to connect to Ethereum and IPFS and start building awesome decentralized applications. No syncing required. No complex set-ups. Just your decentralized app, live and functioning, right now.

How is Infura different from other service providers?

Ethereum and IPFS API suite serves and supports thousands of decentralized applications every day and offers request response times up to 20x faster than other services or self-hosted solutions.It provide 24/7 access to expert support teams and have a strong track record of supporting developers for over 3 years.

How many projects can be made per account?

It’s Core subscription, offers free access to Ethereum APIs and allows you to create up to 3 projects. If you want to create more than 3 projects, you can upgrade to the Developer tier which allows you to create 10 projects.

Does Infura share or sell data from its users, such as wallet addresses and IP locations?

Protecting customer data is a core Infura value. Infura does not sell the personal information it collects. Additionally, Infura does not share the personal information that you provide with other organizations without your consent.

Which clients does Infura use?

Geth: Go Ethereum is one of the three original implementations (along with C++ and Python) of the Ethereum protocol. It is written in Go, fully open source and licensed under the GNU LGPL v3.

Open Ethereum: An Ethereum client developed by Parity Technologies and Gnosis using the Rust programming language, licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license.

Hyperledger Besu: Hyperledger Besu is an open source Ethereum client developed under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Java.

The top 5 enterprise blockchain platforms you need to know about

#1. Ethereum. Mature Smart Contracting Cross-Industry Platform. …

#2. Hyperledger Fabric. B2B-focused Modular Blockchain Platform. …

#3. R3 Corda. New Operating System for Financial Services. …

#4. Ripple. Enterprise Blockchain Solution for Global Payments. …

#5. Quorum. Enterprise-focused Version of Etheruem.

Advantages of BaaS:

Real-world blockchain use cases are rapidly emerging, but the skills and resources required to build blockchain applications are neither widely available nor cheap. Therefore, BaaS possesses the potentials to address this aperture and make blockchain technology accessible to a broader audience. A few benefits of blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) are discussed here:

With already established cloud platform blockchain adopters can receive seamless service with far more fewer cost than actual (on-premise) implementation.

In current blockchain architecture, several regulations and norms like node verification, node attachment, node deletion, forking must be taken care off. However, BaaS can take care of them without any intervention.

Blockchain technology is being used beyond cryptocurrencies. Therefore, interaction with another platform, service, infrastructure has increased a lot in the last few years. Since BaaS blockchain technology is built utilising existing cloud infrastructure, PaaS, IaaS, SaaS and similar other aspects of the cloud remains native to BaaS — offering a higher degree of interoperability.

Current blockchain implementation requires a moderate degree of knowledge in the domain of cryptography and distributed technologies. Alternatively, BaaS, which is offered as a complete service by the providers, allows deploying, managing and operating of enterprise blockchain technology without any technical knowledge.

Future Research Challenges and Risk Factors:

Three major problems of blockchain technologies, as inherited in its architecture, are Lack of scalability , lack of interoperability and its antithetic stand against The notion of green computing . Integration of BaaS may give birth to new complexities in terms of technical aspects. Blockchain highly suffers from scalability problem due to its capped transaction latency as well as consensus approach — as injected in its architecture to provide better security and to eliminate double spending problem.

Conclusion

Blockchain as a service is a promising offering that helps enterprises become future-ready with scalable solutions built on the blockchain technology.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) refers to third-party cloud-based infrastructure and management for companies building and operating blockchain apps.

• BaaS functions like a sort of web host, running the back-end operation for a block-chain based app or platform.

• BaaS may be the catalyst that leads to the widespread adoption of blockchain technology.