'Real Big Data_ How to Leverage Bitcoin Blockchains for Unlimited Storage,' by Shankar Narayanan

Celsius-Network

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Jul 9, 2023
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Bitcoin has been around long enough to get noticed. It has evolved so much as a
currency, considering its volatile nature. Several international companies
accept bitcoins as payment. Bitcoin has evolved beyond its value both as an
e-currency and in its ability for instant transfer. The technology and
mathematical concepts around it also make it an interesting application for
common, everyday problems, such as storing big data. Big data is a buzzword for
the ever-growing, unstructured nature of data. Many databases are being built to
handle large-sized data using techniques such as scaling and replication. A
common problem in big data is governance — the ability to verify the
authenticity of data and to tell whether it has been modified. This is very
important for industries like healthcare and finance, which rely more and more
on big data. The blockchain is the public ledger of Bitcoin. It holds all
bitcoin transactions and can be viewed by anyone who has access. Each
transaction is collected in a block that contains information such as a
timestamp, a reference to the parent block, and a SHA-256 hash. How can this
help big data and governance? The following are some of the unique properties
that make blockchains ideal for big data: Tierion allows you to collect and
store big data on the blockchain. It can support any type of unstructured data
in the form of JSON, along with preset data names for elements such as phone
numbers and emails. It also has a REST API to insert and retrieve data. Tierion
provides a blockchain receipt using a system called chainpoint to make sure all
the data can be verified by receipts and timestamps. At the time of this
writing, Tierion provides a free account with up to 100 records per month with
two data stores. Registering is an easy process of signing up and providing a
few details.

After you sign up, you are prompted to create a data store. A
Tierion data store is similar to any NoSQL data store and does not follow any
strict schema. You can store data with any flexible schema using JSON, as with
any other NoSQL database. You can also group data sources for easy accessing.


You can insert your data into the blockchain in multiple ways. Tierion provides
a simple REST API and easy-to-use web forms by which you can insert records into
the data store. One of the advantages of having a schemaless design is to
collect web data. Tierion gives the necessary form action to insert records
directly from regular HTML web forms. You can collect surveys, feedback, or
register users to your site directly using any custom web forms.

The data
section contains the HTML form code. The form submits the POST action directly
to your data store using your unique datastore key.

The REST API can be used
to post data and retrieve it from your data stores. Refer to the REST API doc to
learn how. You would need to use your API key and your datastore key to insert
records into a particular data source. Find your API key information under the
API section.

Tierion also provides good external integration that lets you
integrate it with other apps such as Google spreadsheets. Using this, you can
integrate the data to an external source for analysis. You can also use the REST
API to build your own connector to Tierion. The "extras" section gives you
integration options that are easy to use. Slingshot is a POST query hook that
you can use to publish your new records and blockchain receipts. If you are
running any system that needs to return the receipts or process the records, use
this.

Zapier lets you integrate Tierion to thousands of services, such as
Salesforce, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, etc. You can easily export the data to
other services and configure triggers for automatic provisioning. You would need
a Zapier account. An invite for accessing the integration can be found in the
"extras" menu.

Tierion provides insights on the web through an easy-to-
download and integrate Javascript library. Live insights can be brought into a
webpage simply by embedding code. You can access Insights within the "extras"
section.

Dozens of services already store data on the blockchain and use its
features to address legal signing of documents. Tierion is one such service that
includes a wide range of applications in domains such as finance, healthcare,
and legal services. With the blockchain, your big data is no longer big.