Blog

Waves Enterprise activates anchoring

Referential data storage, or Anchoring, is now available on the Waves Enterprise Mainnet.

The immutability of data recorded to the blockchain is ensured by decentralization: since data is copied to every node in the network, changing it on one or even multiple nodes will immediately be detected and rejected by other nodes.

Therefore, the higher the level of decentralization for a network, the more secure it is. In this respect, private enterprise networks with a limited number of nodes could turn out to be more vulnerable to attack.

Gaining access to an enterprise blockchain’s data is technically a very challenging task. However, the smaller number of participants and transactions in a private blockchain, compared with a standard public network, makes it theoretically feasible.

Anchoring functionality effectively rules out this possibility, since an attacker would also need to take control of an entire public network with a large number of nodes.

Decentralization fosters reliability

To increase the trust that participants have in the data written to a private blockchain, a mechanism of referential data storage (anchoring) has been developed.

Anchoring involves publication of data from a private blockchain to a larger public network, where its alteration is no longer feasible due to the much larger number of participants and blocks. To replace or counterfeit data, an attacker would successfully have to target all linked networks, which is essentially impossible to carry out.

At the technical level, anchoring entails the transfer of block hashes from one network to another. As a result, a chain of data linked by hashes is formed, written to two or more blockchains rather than only a single one.

Waves Enterprise anchoring advantages

Most solutions that currently exist in the market offer anchoring to the Bitcoin blockchain as the most established network. However, this type of anchoring is limited by the Bitcoin network’s low throughput, and validation of a transaction could take hours.

Our solution is based on linking Waves-like networks, such as Waves Platform, Waves Enterprise and private networks based on them. This enables higher transaction speeds than would be allowed by Bitcoin-based anchoring solutions.

How to use anchoring

Anchoring can be turned on in any network node’s configuration file, and its results can be monitored in the Waves Enterprise client app. You will need to maintain the balance of the relevant network address and set up the frequency of anchoring and monitoring parameters.

Anchoring from Testnet to Mainnet is already available.

Once anchoring is activated, the blockchain will automatically start sending transactions to the target network and writing the results to the original network. In the client app’s interface, the status of each sent transaction will be displayed, enabling you to check at any time that your data is secure.