The beauty of blockchain technology is that it provides transparency, security and immutability to transactions. It is the transparency and immutability of the transaction ledger that gives blockchain its value, which is why many advocates are raising red flags over a recent patent application for an “editable blockchain,” a counterintuitive mutation that would allow users to literally rewrite history.
In this article, Jason Goldberg, director in Protiviti’s Business Performance Improvement practice, describes how using editable blockchain introduces operational, regulatory, IT and financial risk that isn’t present with the core technology or consistent with the underlying tenants of the platform.