While the world rushes to slap a blockchain onto a growing number of applications to generate hype and excitement, RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan has told ZDNet that he is not convinced that many use cases of blockchain couldn't be addressed by more traditional mechanisms, such as a database.
"For example, we talk about like supply chain management, people tout that as a very classic blockchain use case," he said. "But to me, that seems like that's a shared database use case -- and you know, it's funny because people who don't understand the security nuances don't understand why a database is not worse than a blockchain, in fact I think in many cases it is better."
Ramzan said that in many cases, blockchain is a "heavy duty model" designed to address problems with a lack of trust, but often the solution has a number of trust assumptions built in. For instance, in the case of tracking an object, the process for assigning identifiers and adding the identifers to the blockchain need to be trusted.
The CTO told ZDNet that blockchain is starting to be regarded as magic.
"It's become this magical pixie dust, where people think you can solve all problems, and yes, maybe you can use it to address a certain set of problems, but just because you can and doesn't mean you should.
"You can buy a sledgehammer to push a thumbtack into a wall. You could also just use your thumb. It's a much cheaper solution, and probably better for other reasons as well. I think that's where we are."
Also read: 9 reasons to be cautious with blockchain[1]
However, Ramzan was not prepared to write off blockchain