How much does it cost to put data on a blockchain? What are the trade-offs involved?

Question

I came across a presentation where it was said that the cost of putting data on a blockchain is rather high compared to existing IT implementations. What are the trade-offs I should be aware of in determining the cost of data on a private blockchain? Is it feasible to think of multiple parties accessing the blockchain for write purposes, as in the case of stakeholders in international trade? I would think that there is a lot of data to be written in such situations.

Answer 1

Any data that is entered onto the blockchain is replicated to every single node. So there is a minor bandwidth cost, and a larger long-term storage cost. You'd need to look at your particular situation, but at current hard disk and bandwidth prices, it's still pretty cheap even if you're adding 1 GB / day.

Comments

How about encrypted data? Would it cause a significant overhead in terms of performance when using three streams like in official example?

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MultiChain streams don't care about the format of the information – it's just a string of bytes from their perspective. So if you encrypt at the application layer before submitting to a stream it makes no difference at all.