Sharing data accurately is practically the definition of modern IT systems. But surprisingly, accurate data sharing is a need that has gone largely unaddressed despite advances in cloud technology: Databases can help a single company keep its data accurate and consistent, but things fall apart when two or more companies — on different clouds, in different regions, with legally and operationally isolated systems — need to share that data.

Like deterministic databases, blockchains are distributed systems that organize updates into a shared, totally ordered change log.

Is it possible to mine the deterministic database literature to design a blockchain that offers the performance, consistency models and rich data schema support of a deterministic database?

They exploit deterministic database approaches to give their customers a familiar look and feel, allowing database tables to be defined using schema-based data models and offering cloud integration and API-based access, without exposing any of the implementation details of an underlying blockchain.

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