【Part 2】BaaS and BTaaS
BaaS —— Blockchain as a Service
BTaaS —— Blockchain Technology as a Service
This classification draws on the concept of PaaS / SaaS in cloud computing sector.
In picture 1, I put BTaaS and PaaS at one level, and Baas and Saas at another.
The reason for this classification is that they have one of the biggest common points, that is, they target the same users.
I have begun to pay attention to the concept of BaaS since last year, and also wrote two articles to clarify the concept under the pattern of public chains and alliance chains: "Degraded Alliance Chain and BaaS" and "Analysis on the Limitations of Alliance Chain and Public Chain".
The two articles mainly put forward two points of view:
First of all, the essence of the alliance chain is not about technology, but about business modeling. These business models are usually accompanied by equilibrium issues faced in the design of non-cooperative games. Whether or not a stabilization strategy that satisfies all parties in the system evolves becomes a key factor of the alliance chain; trying to completely rely on Byzantine fault-tolerant systems will absolutely not work.
Secondly as a special system, blockchain cannot be separated from its intrinsic financial attributes because they give rise to blockchain systems’ vitality. When its financial attributes are stripped, it will degenerate into a simple Byzantine fault-tolerant system. As a result, the ecosystem it supports will be greatly weakened.
Suppose the reader agrees with the two points mentioned above, then we come to a conclusion:
BaaS refers to the services provided by public blockchains, while BTaaS refers to the use of services provided by alliance chains.
We also draw the following conclusions:
The ecosystem that BaaS can support is far greater than BTaaS.
BaaS is closer to the specific structure particular to the Internet of value, while BTaaS is closer to corporate software solutions.
I’ll proceed to define BaaS and BTaaS:
Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) refers to using data generated by public blockchains to provide a series of operational services including blockchain-based querying, transactions and data analysis. These operational services may be decentralized or centralized. Currently, in the blockchain sector, blockchain browsers, digital currency trading platforms and other applications derived from public chains such as certificate-Factom and digital identity-uPort all fall under the umbrella of blockchain services.
Blockchain Technology as a Service (BTaaS) refers to using blockchain technology to build private distributed systems. These systems can be thought of as improved versions derived from classic distributed systems (Raft/Paxos/PBFT). Integration with existing cloud computing technology can provide developers and manufacturers with platform-level blockchain technology services.
Picture 2 shows the difference between BaaS and BTaaS and their application.
Readers may be confused about why I distinguish the two concepts so clearly? Because it determines the direction of the architecture of new businesses of blockchain.