Why 'Permissioned' and 'Private' are not Blockchains

Abstract

This is a comment to the paper “A Taxonomy of Blockchain Technologies: Principles of Identification and Classification” by P. Tasca and C. Tessone (2019) on the terminology of emerging technologies known as “blockchain,” and “distributed ledger technology.” Inaccurate notions create false prerequisites for development or even the wrong direction in progress. Alchemists of the Middle Ages tried to produce gold from other materials, spending many resources on impossibilities. Should we expect from any “permissioned” or “private” system any sort of decentralization effect and should we call such systems “blockchain” at all? The concept of blockchain is named and designed by Satoshi Nakamoto. With blockchain, appeared a bunch of other technologies. Why would anyone call something blockchain if it is not? So-called “private” and “permissioned” systems are not decentralized, and not standing on the same principles, which the blockchain is built on, nevertheless, have much in common. Let us dot the I's and cross the t's in the blockchain terminology.

Keywords: blockchain, distributed ledger technology, decentralization