What you should consider with Blockchain Cloud Solutions

Blockchain has many advantages: decentralized storage, strong security and sharable and traceable but non-modifiable data. For these and many other reasons, blockchain is growing in popularity across industries such as healthcare, supply chain and even entertainment. Darian Wilkin, Senior Solutions Engineer at DigitalOcean, says: “There are currently many blockchain companies building secure and decentralized products and services on public clouds.

He shares his insights on blockchain and cloud and how developers can build and manage these projects effectively.

What are some common use cases for blockchain cloud solutions?

Wilkin: Cloud technology is currently being used to build everything from blockchain APIs for business applications to supporting popular Proof of Stake networks such as Elrond. In its current form, blockchain technology is most useful for ensuring consensus and resiliency in a transaction system, making it useful for businesses looking to reduce costs, increase transparency, and speed up their transactions with other businesses. This is why the majority of blockchain and cloud use cases outside of finance and cryptocurrency lie in supply chain, logistics, healthcare and other regulatory and compliance-heavy industries.

Cloud-based blockchain technologies can help secure the exchange of medical data or provide traceability to the global supply chain of goods.

Do you expect more blockchains in the cloud in the future?

Wilkin: In the future, some blockchain experts have suggested that we will start to see blockchain-based decentralized cloud solutions, where data will exist on multiple data nodes. These blockchain-based clouds will be particularly suitable for industries such as logistics or financial services, where continuous monitoring and record keeping are essential.

How can developers control cloud hosting and storage costs?

Wilkin: Since blockchains are essentially built on thousands of nodes, with new ones constantly being added, they require an enormous amount of scalable computing power. But purchasing and managing on-premise servers that can support this scale of growth can be time-consuming, expensive and inefficient, especially for individual developers and small businesses. This is why developers are turning to cloud computing for their blockchain solutions.

For most developers, cost and storage will be deciding factors when choosing a cloud provider. Therefore, the first step in controlling data and storage costs should be to find vendors with simple and predictable pricing and solutions that enable the infrastructure to scale with the business. Complex invoicing masks inefficiencies in your infrastructure and increases administrative costs.

In addition, developers and business owners should ensure they are not overprovisioned, look for options that allow automatic scaling and scheduling, and be on the lookout for unused resources such as load balancers, snapshots, and storage volumes.

How can these projects be scaled effectively?

Wilkin: Developers working on blockchain projects want to ensure they choose cloud providers with flexible delivery options to scale more efficiently. Since blockchains already require a significant amount of computing power to operate, the more efficiently developers can set up their infrastructure with tools like autoscaling, the more control they will have over overall operating costs. As blockchains are deployed, developers will also think about how cloud providers support different regions and data centers that may be most applicable to their needs.

What should developers look for in a cloud provider?

Wilkin: The best cloud provider for blockchain solutions will be the one that is easiest for developers and businesses to use. As developers and entrepreneurs discover new uses and industry applications for blockchain, the less time they spend managing the infrastructure, the more time they will spend building their innovative applications. The ideal cloud solution will be able to scale up or down as needed, bringing simplicity and speed to projects as the blockchain industry grows and the technology becomes more advanced.

Cloud is just a canvas; the applications it runs give it life and meaning. Choosing a cloud that’s easy to understand and use will reduce ramp time and increase focus on what matters: what you’re building.