Mine Labs , a New York-based blockchain startup has announced the development of Mediachain, a Bitcoin blockchain-based decentralized metadata protocol which relies on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to protect and ensure the rights to creative digital works.
Since early 2015, emerging blockchain startups have begun to focus on the development of blockchain-based identity and authentication systems to assist artists, freelancers and digital content providers to protect their work from being plagiarised. To encrypt and store digital rights on the Bitcoin blockchain, most of these blockchain startups have either encoded an ID into the Bitcoin blockchain using OP_RETURN or CoinSpark to reference centrally hosted data or used a custom-built blockchain to attach metadata directly to transactions.
But there are several challenges in using these two techniques in encoding metadata onto the Bitcoin blockchain.
For example, the maximum data storage per transaction allowed by the Bitcoin protocol’s built-in OP_RETURN code is 40 bytes. This restricted storage makes it difficult to store long strings of metadata onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Thus, using OP_RETURN to encrypt metadata onto the Bitcoin blockchain becomes extremely inefficient and is discouraged by core developers which think that it contributes to “blockchain bloat.”
The issue with the second technique of building a custom blockchain is security. Newly established blockchain networks with a lack of miners and hash power could be vulnerable to 51 percent attacks. The problem intensifies if the data and the blockchain becomes large and there is not enough hash power to secure the protected information.
Pete Dushenski explains , “As shorter walls are easier to attack, the city has grown at the expense of security. To bring this into relevant (Bitcoin) terms, the size of the city is the Blockchain and the height of its walls is the network’s hashrate. As such, the larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower […]
