The popularity of blockchain technology has brought a lot of attention to the idea of decentralized databases. As a result, decentralization has become a buzzword overestimating its actual use case.  

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The truth is that most future applications probably aren’t going to be purely centralized or decentralized as there are distinct advantages to both. While decentralization reduces the likelihood of a single point of failure, decentralized databases can limit throughput and be more difficult to maintain than centralized ones. Because of this, engineers should incorporate the advantages of both types of systems in order to develop well-rounded apps.

No More Centralized vs Decentralized. OPEN Brings the Best of Both Worlds

OPEN Platform gives developers the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits that both centralized and decentralized systems offer. This is made possible thanks to OPEN API and Scaffolding, which gives developers the option of running payment systems on the blockchain while keeping their codebase entirely off-chain.

Developers don’t need to know any blockchain programming languages in order to process cryptocurrency transactions. This means that OPEN’s hybrid system can easily be implemented into new and existing apps with just a few short lines of code. The easy-to-use design of the OPEN Platform makes it the perfect choice for developers who don’t have extensive knowledge about blockchain, but still want to benefit from on-chain advantages like:

• Auditability: Blockchain technology increases transparency, making it easier to track where money is going and what it’s being spent on. We can easily verify the purchase and ownership of the digital asset.
• Authorization: Smart contracts require both parties to meet their agreed-upon terms and conditions before the transaction takes place. A record of the transaction is permanently stored on chain and the data automatically propagated back to application’s database.
• Payment: Cryptocurrencies avoid the high fees charged by fiat payment providers, the liquidity waiting periods of up to 60-90 days, and fraudulent chargebacks.

With that said, there’s still one drawback that comes from having a completely on-chain application: throughput. Centralized databases process more information in less amount of time. For developers, this means slow transaction times that can drive away impatient customers.

At the moment, the Ethereum network can only process around 15 transactions-per-second, whereas centralized payment solutions can support more than 10,000 transactions. OPEN’s blockchain-agnostic approach mitigates this problem by allowing developers to accept payments on multiple blockchains and leave the computational intensive components of their application to off-chain servers.

The Future Is a Hybrid System

There is currently a growing interest in on-chain mobile applications. Right now, the focus is primarily on games like CryptoKitties, which use the blockchain to store characters, upgrades, and in-game items. But as the interest in blockchain technology continues to grow, more developers will explore ways to integrate it into their wide array of applications.

With OPEN Platform, developers have the ability to seamlessly integrate blockchain technology to increase security, as well as verify and preserve authenticity, while still using centralized databases to process more transactions and other activities going through the application.