Blockchain technology has been gaining a lot of attention in the business world due to its potential to revolutionize the way transactions are conducted. A business blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is designed specifically for enterprise use cases. It enables secure, transparent, and efficient transaction processing between multiple parties without the need for intermediaries.

The core requirements for a business blockchain are:

1. Shared Ledger: A shared ledger is the foundation of a business blockchain. It is a decentralized database that stores all the transactions in a secure and transparent manner. All participants in the network have access to the same ledger, which ensures transparency and reduces the risk of fraud.

2. Smart Contracts: Smart contracts are self-executing programs that automate the execution of transactions. They are stored on the blockchain and can be used to enforce the terms of an agreement between parties. Smart contracts help to reduce the need for intermediaries and increase the efficiency of transactions.

3. Privacy Services: Privacy is a key concern for businesses that use blockchain technology. While the ledger is transparent, the details of the transactions should be kept confidential. Privacy services such as encryption and zero-knowledge proofs can be used to ensure that sensitive information remains private.

4. Trust: Trust is essential for any business transaction. Blockchain technology provides a secure and transparent environment that enables participants to trust each other without the need for intermediaries. The immutability of the ledger ensures that transactions cannot be altered, which increases trust and reduces the risk of fraud.

In summary, the core requirement for a business blockchain is a shared ledger that supports smart contracts, privacy services, and trust. These features enable secure, transparent, and efficient transaction processing between multiple parties without the need for intermediaries.

Data security and privacy are very important requirements, especially for business use. There are two main issues with Blockchain. The first is that it must be possible to grant specific data access rights to individual users or roles. That’s very important because in a public chain like Bitcoin, all data within an block is readable by everyone. The second issue is compliance with data privacy regulation. Especially in Europe we do have a very tough data privacy regulation (General Data Protection Regulation). So we are faced with issues like for instance that there is a right to be forgotten within the GDPR or the requirement to have a data processing agreement with the data provider, which could be a big challenge in a decentralized system.

Decentralized data storage is a very core requirement of a distributed system. It must be possible to manage transactions and data storage in an efficient way. Sure, if decentralized data storage is your only requirement, there would be better solutions than Blockchain that solve that problem but obviously, the capability to manage data in a decentralized, distributed way is a fundamental requirement.

Smart Contracts are the most interesting part of Blockchain systems. While a standard contract defines only the terms of a business relationship, a Smart Contract is able to define also the conditions under which the contract is executed. A Smart Contract is a set of fixed rules, defined as a software program, executed on the Blockchain. Examples you can define with a Smart Contract are: The definition of criteria’s under which a payment is made, the definition of quality criteria’s and the rules if these are not observed. Because such coded and tamper-proof executed rules can eliminate a central authority, Smart Contracts play an important role in automating cross-company collaboration.