Blockchain versus distributed ledger technology versus distributed databases

There have been several debates on how to differentiate blockchains from Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and distributed databases. Based on some of the user- and application-level features and heuristics, we can observe the following differences:

Let's now compare these technologies with an example use case discussed in the following section.

Comparing the technologies with examples

The following scenario is provided to aid your understanding of the core differences between the preceding three implementations.

Imagine that you plan to create a new digital platform for stock photography. If you want to invite photographers all over the world to use the platform and allow them to upload their work and be incentivized with their royalties automatically paid off by the consumers, you'd want to use blockchain to offer public access and incentivization and to transfer the royalties directly from the consumer to the photographer, thereby eliminating the need for a third party performing the duty payment collection, guaranteeing the return of royalties but with a service fee.

However, if you want your platform to form a private consortium of photographers, with their art exclusively available to a limited audience, and to handle royalties in conjunction with other means, you would use a DLT.

Finally, if you intend to use your platform to exhibit art by an eligible set of photographers that are accessible across the globe, with or without royalties (which is handled offline), you'd form a cluster of nodes that host this data and logic to handle access and payments. So, you would use distributed databases.

Let's now further discuss the types of blockchains available for different use cases.