2 posts tagged with "cloud"

Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) promises the same thing every managed service promises: "Focus on your application. We'll handle the infrastructure." For databases (RDS, Cloud SQL), the tradeoff is clear — you give up some control for dramatically simpler operations. For blockchain, the tradeoff is more complex because blockchain isn't just infrastructure. It's governance.

Here's when BaaS makes sense, when self-hosted wins, and the actual costs of each.

Not every verifiable ledger needs to be a distributed blockchain running on multiple nodes. AWS and Azure both offer managed ledger services that provide cryptographic immutability without requiring you to operate your own infrastructure.

The question is: when is a managed service enough, and when do you need a self-hosted private blockchain?

Here's an honest, vendor-neutral comparison.