Factom could be the solution to the block chain bloat.
The blockchain is almost 28 gigabytes now and it will only keep increasing in size and more and more people are choosing to use bitcoin.New Bitcoin technologies in the market such as Omni and Counterparty enable users to put all sort of things on the blockchain. However, scalability poses as an important concern.Bitcoin’s underlying platform, blockchain, is not used for only bitcoins anymore. As the application of the blockchain is expanding, many people fear that it will soon run out of space.
With each new transaction, the blockchain increases in size. With the present maximum block size, it can support only 7 transactions per second. This limitation has led to a serious debate, which is called the “blockchain bloat.”The main argument of the “block chain bloat” is that some people wish to put trademarks, domain names, and also physical smart property on the blockchain while another group wants to keep the block chain pure.
As the Bitcoin network is the largest network and because it is inherently the most secure network, no party wants to leave it and initiate their own block chain. It is good that the dilemma is false.An expert team at Factom developed a software protocol, layered on top of Bitcoin’s protocol. They claim that the new software provides the best of both the worlds.Factom is a very simple extension of the block chain which allows building faster and cost effective applications.Factom uses hashing, a mathematical process which supports Bitcoin to take data of any size and then convert it to a certain numerical value of fixed length.
All the data is hashed together to create a single value every minute. This value is then inserted, 10 at a time, in a single transaction into the block chain.This process basically runs on all the data and crunches it to a very tiny size ultimately.This process can be done in reverse too, but it is important to prove if any particular data was used for the hash.
Bitcoin miners will keep its record.So, when anyone attempts to send a false document or coins which they do not have, Factom can inform the receiver immediately.Factom fixes this the block chain bloat problem by taking lots of hashes and then turning them into a single periodic hash on the block chain.The name Factom comes from the latin interpretation of Factum, which means “Anything stated and made certain.”Factom claims to be a simple, secure and innovation system which secures millions of real-time records in the blockchain, with a single hash.It provides the tools to build robust applications on the blockchain without any cost, speed or size limitations.
With Factom, it is possible to create more secure record keeping on a global scale. Proof of Existence, Proof of Process and Proof of Audit are the three types of proof which allow Factom to do so.
