In this chapter, you learned that there are three types of blockchain: public, consortium, and private. I described each blockchain—what makes them different, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and what challenges they pose.
Public blockchains run on community-driven networks that are incentivized by cryptocurrencies. Virtually anyone can access, read and send transactions, and choose to participate in the consensus process. The advantage of a public blockchain is that it is open for anyone to join. Furthermore, it is anonymous, so no one needs to know a participant's location and real identity. Moreover, a public blockchain is a trustless (permissionless) system because of the consensus mechanism, where a participant can influence the network by owning a bigger stake in the blockchain due to the economic resources they bring to the table. A public blockchain also presents challenges, such as limited scalability, storage constraints, network speed and costs, immutable smart...