Today Amazon announced a new kind of centralized database aimed at being a challenger to permissioned blockchains. The Amazon QLDB database is only available in preview but provides a “transparent, immutable, cryptographically verifiable ledger database service”. Those are some of the features that permissioned blockchains aim to achieve.
Many industries fear the entry of Amazon, especially banking and insurance. But Amazon launching a blockchain challenger is a bolt out of the blue. Particularly because it was a relative laggard in launching blockchain hosting.
In reality, permissioned blockchains are partially centralized and sometimes managed by one technology provider. So Amazon is aiming to get some of the benefits of blockchain without all the costs. Without a blockchain, there’s no redundancy and there is one central database to be targeted to manipulate.
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