Different Types of Blockchains
There are many types of blockchains that exist and a number of different blockchains have evolved over a number of years. Here we will discuss some of the most notable ones.
Public Blockchains
Public blockchains are as the name suggest, public. This means anyone can participate as a node. Public blockchains are not owned by anyone, all users maintain a copy of the ledger locally and use a distributed consensus mechanism. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are considered public.
Private Blockchains
Private blockchains are as the name suggests, private. This means that only those who have decided to share the ledger between themselves participate. Participants are often invited to the private blockchain.
Semi-Private blockchains
Simply, part of the blockchain is private and can be shared to a particular group and the other part is public and available for anyone. These types are only partially decentralised.
Appchains
Is a blockchain that is exclusively designed to operate one specific application instead of multiple apps like a public blockchain is designed to do.
Other Blockchains
It is also worth noting other types of blockchains do exist, such as, sidechains, tokenised, tokenless, permissioned and shared ledger and propriety blockchains to name a few. It is useful to understand that other variations exists and of course are used for specific use cases.
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